ountry-houses and similar
vestiges of Romano-British life. But other portions of the same
counties, southern Kent, northern Sussex, western Somerset, show very
few traces of any settled life at all. The midland plain, and in
particular Warwickshire,[1] seems to have been the largest of these
'thin spots'. Here, among great woodlands and on damp and chilly clay,
there dwelt not merely few civilized Roman-Britons, but few occupants of
any sort.

[Footnote 1: _Victoria Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 228.]

And lastly, Romano-British life was on a small scale. It was, I think,
normal in quality and indeed not very dissimilar from that of many parts
of Gaul. But it was in any case defective in quantity. We find towns in
Britain, as elsewhere, and farms or country-houses. But the towns are
small and somewhat few, and the country-houses indicate comfort more
often than wealth. The costlier objects of ordinary use, fine mosaics,
precious glass, gold and silver ornaments, occur comparatively
seldom.[1] We have before us a civilization which, like a man whose
constitution is sound rather than strong, might perish quickly from a
violent shock.

[Footnote 1: See my remarks in Traill's _Social England_ (illustrated
edition, 1901), i. 141-61.]

CHAPTER III

ROMANIZATION IN LANGUAGE

We may now proceed to survey the actual remains. They may seem scanty,
but they deserve examination.

First, in respect of language. Even before the Claudian conquest of A.D.
43, British princes had begun to inscribe their coins with Latin words.
These legends are not merely blind and unintelligent copies, like the
imitations of Roman legends on the early English _sceattas_. The word
most often used, REX, is strange to the Roman coinage, and must have
been employed with a real sense of its meaning. After A.D. 43, Latin
advanced rapidly. No Celtic inscription occurs, I believe, on any
monument of the Roman period in Britain, neither cut on stone nor
scratched on tile or potsherd, and this fact is the more noteworthy
because, as I shall point out below, Celtic inscriptions are not at all
unknown in Gaul. On the other hand, Roman inscriptions occur freely in
Britain. They are less common than in many other provinces, and they
abound most in the military region. But they appear also in towns and
country-houses, and some of the instances are significant.

The town site that we can best examine for our present purpose is
Calleva or Silchester, te