SOUTHERN BRITAIN.

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be. Tacitus probably does not mean more than that after the vigorous action of Agricola the efforts of Rome slackened, and the new conquests were neglected. An allusion in Juvenal completes our scanty knowledge. One of the Emperor Domitian's flatterers says to him: "You will take prisoner some king, and Arviragus the Briton shall be struck down from his chariot." It would be safe to infer that Arviragus was an enemy of Rome at some time during Domitian's reign, but certainly after the recall of Agricola, ie., some time between 84 and 96. But we know nothing

else about him. It is not till the reign of Hadrian (117-138) that Britain really reappears in history.

I

We find now that Southern Britain, roughly speaking the England of to-day, with which my story is especially concerned, has been thoroughly subjugated. Whatever disturbances occur hereafter in this part of the island until the time when the Romans leave it for good come, not from the native tribes, but from the legions themselves. Works of peace were briskly

But in later times, when Britain becomes England, the Lowlands of Scotland as far as the Firth of Forth are included.

carried on, roads constructed, towns built and enlarged, lands reclaimed from the sea. The main business of the Roman armies was to protect the province from the still unconquered tribes of the north. This was chiefly done by the construction of huge walls across the island at places where its breadth is least.

If we look into the map, we see that one such place is marked almost exactly by the fifty-fifth parallel of

N. latitude. The Solway Firth is at the western end; Newcastle-on-Tyne at the eastern. It was here that the first wall was built-an enormous work, exceeding in magnitude anything of the kind that the Romans constructed elsewhere, and so showing the value which they set on the province which it was intended to protect. It must not be supposed, however, that this huge fortification was finished at once. The work of completing and strengthening it seems to have been going

CONSTRUCTION OF THE WALL.

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on for more than eighty years, for an inscription has been found, in a quarry which was worked for the stone, that gives the names of the consuls for the year

207.

It was in 120 that the work was begun. In that year the Emperor Hadrian, who had determined to see with his own eyes all the provinces of the Empire, came to Britain. His policy was to contract rather than to extend its boundaries, and he accordingly drew the line of fortification far within the limits to which the Roman conquests had been pushed. It consisted of five parts:-A Trench, a Stone Wall,

Buildings for the Troops, a Rampart of Earth, Roads. In this enumeration, it must be remembered, we begin from the north.

1. The Trench. This keeps close to the northern side of the wall, though it has been discontinued where the wall skirts the edge of a cliff. In such places it would have not given any additional strength. Everywhere else it was drawn uninterruptedly, whatever the soil, whether earth or rock. Its dimensions vary. In one place its depth is as much as twenty feet; but here the northern edge has been artificially raised by

earth thrown up from the excavation. Elsewhere it is less than nine. Sometimes it is as much as forty feet broad at the top, and fourteen at the bottom. The average has been given as "thirty-six feet wide and fifteen feet deep."

The

2. The Wall. This was seventy-three miles and at half in length, from Wall's-End in the east to Bowness on the west. It was carefully constructed of stone, great pains having been evidently bestowed on using the most suitable kinds, which have sometimes been brought from a distance. The line which it followed. was purposely drawn so as to take in the highest ground. It has naturally suffered more from the effects of time and ravage than the Trench, and, therefore, we are not so certain about its dimensions. Venerable Bede, who lived at Jarrow, near to its eastern end, says that it was eight feet in breadth and twelve in height. Camden, who saw it in 1599, says, "fifteen feet in height and nine in breadth." A writer about twenty-seven years earlier says, "The height remains in some places yet seven yards," and gives the breadth at three yards. The breadth, of course, is much the same as it was at first. It may be taken, on an average, at eight feet, and perhaps we may put the average height, as it was, at eighteen.

3. Buildings for the Troops. These are of the three kinds:

a. Camps (stationes or castra stativa) were constructed at intervals of four miles (on an average) along the line of the wall. They were four-cornered,

The highest point is Winshields, where it is as much as a thousand feet above the level of the sea.