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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    a direct kind is lacking ; but in the absence of a single case of proved continuity we can only assume that the discontinuity which in many cases is proved was the general rule. It ought to be noticed, too, that a change of name such as from Ratae to Leicester or from Regnum to Chichester proves a break in the history of a town much more conclusively than a continuity such as Lincoln from Lindum Colonia proves the reverse ; for a tradition in the neighbourhood might preserve or antiquarian study (of which there was plenty in Anglo-Saxon England) recover a name, whereas if the history of the town were continuous its name would hardly be changed beyond recognition. The view that our towns can trace their history directly back to those of Roman Britain is certainly groundless and probably as false universally as it is in all the cases in which it can be tested. The ‘ villas5 or country-houses come next in order. There are hundreds of these scattered over the more civilfced parts of Roman Britain, and scores whose plan and arrangements are known to us. Our historians have generally assumed that they were the houses of real Romans from Rome, foreigners with civilized tastes who lived in Britain because Government service or commercial open¬ ings brought them, and built themselves houses rather like those they were accustomed to at home, adding 4 hypocausts ’ (hollow floors with heating-flues below them) by way of protest against the British climate. This is more than a mere assumption, it is a positive error ; and the only argument adduced in proof of it, the heating arrangements which are taken to prove the presence of occupants used to warmer climates, is valueless. The existence of fireplaces or hot pipes in a modern English house does not prove that its owner is an immigrant from Italy or even a retired colonel of the Indian army ; and what the British climate demands now it demanded sixteen centuries ago. Before the Romans came, the Britons had their own landed gentry; as did their cousins in Gaul, one of. whose houses dating
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