Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood.

  • R. G. Collingwood
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    6 Republics ’ ; the tribal organization was indeed the channel through which Rome governed the British country-side. In this sense, then, as the head-quarters of a tribal canton, the seat of justice and administration as well as commerce and trade for the tribe of the Atrebates, Silchester may be called a county town ; and we know of a dozen like it. Silchester is ioo acres in extent, less than a third the size of London ; but its population must have been a very small fraction of London’s, because of the way it is built. The houses of London in its great days were packed closely together ; those of Silchester were scattered freely and at haphazard over spaces which were mostly open gardens. Indeed, there are only eighty houses altogether, which allows an acre or more of ground to each. And these houses are built at all angles not only to each other but to the rectangular street-plan ; so much so that we are almost driven to the conclusion that some of the houses existed before the streets, though, no doubt, not before the conquest. The fact seems to be that many years before the Romans came Silchester was a flourishing town and capital of the British Atrebates, as Arras was capital of the Gaulish. It already imported Italian pottery, and (probably) struck its own coins ; in short it was a thoroughly civil¬ ized Celtic town. The conquering Romans did not burn it, or even raze its houses to the ground and rebuild a town in the Italian style : they allowed it to develop along its own lines, till some one, perhaps Agricola (for the dates fit, and we know that Agricola was interested in this kind of thing) induced the Atrebates to go in for a town-planning scheme, to lay out a chess-board street-plan and to build a square forum, two acres in extent, in the middle. The forum was a market-square surrounded by colonnades containing shops, and giving access to a fine county hall with what we should call county offices attached. What had been a big cluster of British country-houses thus developed into a town on the Roman plan; and later on,
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