192 On the Roman Conquest of Southern Britain, 



occupation in our county, and then to connect them with the 

 general history of the conquest. 



At first sight nothing seems more remarkable than the paucity of 

 remains of the Roman period as compared with those that belong 

 to pre- Roman and Saxon times. We have within our limits only 

 three Roman stations mentioned in the Itinerary ; and not one 

 single regular inscription on stone has come down to us from either 

 of them or from the other places where Roman remains have been 

 unearthed — no epitaph, or altar, or milestone to mark the ways. A 

 tile at Calne (C.I.L. vii. 1241), a round stone tessera, vaguely said 

 to be from North Wilts, with the letters F VI (id. 1265), the Rudge 

 Cup, to be mentioned below (ib. 1291), and a few other trifles, are 

 the fragments that have been collected in the whole county under 

 the title of inscriptions. Nevertheless, there is evidence of a con- 

 siderable network of Roman roads, with villas upon them, from 

 which we may conjecture that the county was long and peaceably 

 occupied. 



We shall naturally first consider the great roads described in the 

 Itinerary of Antoninus, and those that are immediately connected 

 with them. The roads in the Itinerary are three, and I shall give 

 them in the order in which they stand in the text. 



(1) The road from Isca (Caerleon on Usk) to Silchester (Calleva), 

 near Mortimer, which cuts the north-eastern corner of the county, 

 making a circuit to avoid the Bristol Channel through the Roman 

 colony of Glevum or Gloucester. The Itinerary marks no station 

 between Durocornovium (Cirencester) and Spinae (Speen), near 

 Newbury, but carries the traveller from one to another without a 

 break. Poor man, if he had no better MS. road book, or, as the 

 Greeks called it, Synecdemus, than those copies from which the 

 itineraries have been printed, he must have found his journey long 

 and almost heart-breaking. The distance is really about forty 

 English miles, while the Itinerary only marks xv Roman miles. 

 Sir R. Hoare, noticing this blunder, thinks it arose from the 

 omission of the station Nidum, which he puts at Covenham Farm, 

 while others place it at Nythe Bridge. There is, however, an 

 obvious transposition in the arrangement of the Itinerary in which 



