and Venta Icenorum, now
Caistor-by-Norwich. Besides these country towns, Londinium (London) was a
rich and important trading town, centre of the road system, and the seat of
the finance officials of the province, as the remarkable objects discovered
in it abundantly prove, while Aquae Sulis (Bath) was a spa provided with
splendid baths, and a richly adorned temple of the native patron deity, Sul
or Sulis, whom the Romans called Minerva. Many smaller places, too, for
example, Magna or Kenchester near Hereford, Durobrivae or Rochester in
Kent, another Durobrivae near Peterborough, a site of uncertain name near
Cambridge, another of uncertain name near Chesterford, exhibited some
measure of town life.

As a specimen we may take Silchester, remarkable as the one town in the
whole Roman empire which has been completely [v.04 p.0587] and
systematically uncovered. As we see it to-day, it is an open space of 100
acres, set on a hill with a wide prospect east and south and west, in shape
an irregular hexagon, enclosed in a circuit of a mile and a half by the
massive ruins of a city wall which still stands here and there some 20 ft.
high (fig. 4). Outside, on the north-east, is the grassy hollow of a tiny
amphitheatre; on the west a line of earthworks runs in wider circuit than
the walls. The area within the walls is a vast expanse of cultivated land,
unbroken by any vestige of antiquity; yet the soil is thick with tile and
potsherd, and in hot summers the unevenly growing corn reveals the remains
of streets beneath the surface. Casual excavations were made here in 1744
and 1833; more systematic ones intermittently between 1864 and 1884 by the
Rev. J.G. Joyce and others; finally, in May 1890, the complete uncovering
of the whole site was begun by Mr G.E. Fox and others. The work was carried
on with splendid perseverance, and the uncovering of the interior was
completed in 1908.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--General Plan of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum).]

The chief results concern the buildings. Though these have vanished wholly
from the surface, the foundations and lowest courses of their walls survive
fairly perfect below ground: thus the plan of the town can be minutely
recovered, and both the character of the buildings which make up a place
like Calleva, and the character of Romano-British buildings generally,
become plainer. Of the buildings the chief are:--

1. _Forum._--Near the middle of the town was a rectangular block cov