236 THE BATH ROAD 



who decLare that this relic records how a certain 

 Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coiu for 

 washing a lady named " Vilbia " ! We are left to 

 take our choice between speculations unfavourable to 

 the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment 

 at the mode and extravagance of the payment. There 

 is, indeed, " another way," as the cookery books have 

 it ; but as that involves doubts about the scholarship 

 of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only 

 be hinted at in this place. Who shall decide where 

 antiquaries disagree ? 



The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. 

 Heathens that they were, they generally believed the 

 l)loodstained ruins to be haunted by evil s})irits, and 

 so built their settlements at some distance awav. 

 The site of Bath seems to have been, to some degree, 

 an exception. After lying waste for over a hundred 

 years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its 

 waters had not wholly died out ; and " Akeman- 

 ceaster," as the Saxons called it, entered upon a 

 new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman 

 Road through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough 

 acquired its name of Akeman Street ; the names 

 meaning, as some would say, the " Sick Man's Town," 

 and the " Sick Man's Road," from " aches " and the 

 fame of the place, even then, as a spot at which to 

 cure them. This has been characterized as absurd, 

 and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a 

 corruption of the Roman word Aquce affixed to the 

 word " maen," or " man," meaning " stone " or 

 "place," and joined to the word " csester," a form 

 of the Roman " castrum," a fortification ; the 



