ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK 



other hand, the Welsh and northern hills formed purely miUtary districts, 

 with forts and fortresses and roads, but with no towns or ordinary civilian 

 life. It was the Roman practice, at least in the European provinces of 

 the Empire, to mass the troops almost exclusively along the frontiers, and 

 Britain was no exception. The army which garrisoned this military 

 district was perhaps forty thousand men. It ranked as one of the chief 

 among provincial armies, and constituted the most important element in 

 Roman Britain. With the military district, however, we are not now 

 concerned. For our present purpose it suffices to note its existence, in 

 order to explain why the traces of military occupation are rare in Nor- 

 folk. But we may pause to examine the chief features of the non- 

 military districts within which Norfolk is included. These features are 

 not sensational. Britain was a small province, remote from Rome, and 

 by no means wealthy. It did not reach the higher developments of 

 city life, of culture or of commerce, which we meet in more favoured 

 lands — in Gaul or Spain or Africa. Nevertheless, it had a character of 

 its own. 



In the first place, Britain, like all the provinces of the western 

 Empire, became Romanized. Perhaps it became Romanized later and 

 less perfectly than the rest. But in the end the Britons generally adopted 

 the Roman speech and civilization, and in our island, as in all western 

 Europe, the diffisrence between Roman and provincial practically vanished. 

 When the Roman rule in Britain ended about 410 a.d., the so-called 

 ' departure of the Romans ' did not mean what the end of EngHsh rule 

 in India or of French rule in Algeria would mean. It was not an 

 emigration of alien officials, soldiers and traders. It was administrative, 

 not racial. Probably the country folk in the remoter parts of Britain 

 continued to speak Celtic during the Roman period : thus much we 

 may infer from continental analogies and from the revival of Celtic in 

 the sixth century. But the townspeople and the educated classes appear 

 to have used Latin, and on the side of material civilization the Roman 

 element reigns supreme. Before the Roman period 

 there was a Late Celtic art of considerable merit, 

 best known for its metal work and earthenware, and 

 distinguished for its fantastic use of plant and animal 

 forms, its employment of the ' returning spiral ' (fig. i), 

 and its enamelling. This art and the culture which 

 went with it vanished before the Roman, at least in 

 its characteristic forms. In a few places, as in the New 

 Forest and in Northamptonshire, its products survived ornament Illustrat- 

 as local manufactures ; in general it met the fate of ing the ' Returning 

 every picturesque but semi-civilized art when con- ^^^^^ ' (E^^^*^^"' 

 fronted by an organized coherent culture. Almost 

 every dominant feature in Romano-British life was Roman. The com- 

 monest good pottery, the so-called Samian or Terra Sigillata, was copied 

 directly from an Italian original and shows no trace of Celtic influences ; 

 it was indeed principally imported from Gaul. The mosaic pave- 



281 



Fig. I. Late Celtic 



