5i6 NORMAN LOCKYER LECTURE 



shone brightly on the provincial landscape. Little more than a century 

 later the bubble had burst. The towns — if Verulamium and Wroxeter 

 be taken as fair samples — lay in a state of semi-ruin. The town-walls 

 of Verulamium were crumbling in decay, and carts passed carelessly 

 over the fallen columns of the Wroxeter rharket-place. The reorganisa- 

 tion of the Empire under Diocletian and his colleagues brought to some 

 cities a momentary respite : at Verulamium houses were rebuilt, the 

 municipal theatre was raised from its ruins and (significantly, perhaps) 

 enlarged. But before the end of the fourth century the city was once 

 more in decay. Many of its remoter houses were no longer occupied, 

 save partially and intermittently by squatters. The city had degenerated 

 into a concentrated slum. How had this come about ? 



In part, the adversities which afflicted the cities of Roman Britain were 

 universal throughout the Empire. They were aggravated, however, by 

 local conditions. Successful town-life such as was contemplated in the 

 design of the Romano-British cities implies the creation of a considerable 

 and prosperous middle class. Such a class subsists on commerce and 

 industry ; and that is where the Romanisation of British town-life failed. 

 The time was not yet ripe for so drastic a revolution. In pre-Roman 

 Iron Age Britain, save to a limited degree in the south-east, there had, as 

 we have seen, been no significant development of commerce outside 

 circumscribed tribal units or complexes. Consequently, the extensive 

 remains of Iron Age urban life exhibit no hint of what we should to-day 

 call a bourgeoisie. Whether he lived in a capital city such an Maiden 

 Castle or in some obscure hamlet, the house and furniture of the Iron 

 Age householder scarcely varied in quality ; an individual here and there 

 might be marked by the possession of finer gear or some object of virtu, 

 but there is no hint of a substantive middle class distinguishable 

 economically from classes above and below. Such distinctions as existed 

 would appear to have been based rather on tribal grade than on personal 

 wealth. Upon this simple social system, the Roman regime attempted 

 to impose the differentiations and responsibilities of a developed 

 commercialism. Artificially reinforced, this foreign system seemed for 

 a moment or two to achieve some degi-ee of success. But it was 

 insecurely founded ; it lived on capital and collapsed in bankruptcy. 

 Nor are the reasons far to seek. 



Briefly, at no time was the productivity of the Roman province in- 

 creased to an extent commensurate with the cost of a huge garrison and 

 the whole paraphernalia of an imposed and radically foreign civilisation. 

 True, lead-mines, iron-mines, even occasional gold-mines were opened 

 up here and there, and must be supposed to have produced some small 

 revenue. Other industries were established, but mostly of a local and 

 trifling character, insufficient to return interest on the capital invested 

 in the province by the city-builders of the spacious days of Hadrian and 

 the Antonines. Soon after the end of the second century the trade in 

 one of the most popular of imports, the bright red terra sigillata, was 

 dwindling to vanishing point, and whole factories were, for this and parallel 

 reasons, closing down in Gaul and the Rhineland. Rome had eff^ected 

 a political and social revolution in Britain without achieving the necessary 

 counterpart, a commensurate economic revolution. Basically the 



