The Romanization of Roman Britain

actual remains. They may seem sca

he 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

le, since it plainly refers to the lower class of Callevans. When a weary brick-maker scrawls SATIS with his finger on a tile, or some prouder spirit writes CLEMENTINVS FECIT TVBVL(um) (Clementinus made this box-tile), when a bit of Samian is marked FVR-presumably as a warning from the servants of one house to those of the next-or a rude brick shows the word PVELLAM-probably part of an amatory sentence otherwise lost-or another brick gives a Roman date, the 's

e (discovered since) see Archaeologia, lviii. 30. Silchester lies in a stoneless country, so that stone inscriptions would naturally be few and wou

Latin Palaeography (1894), p. 211, first s

f this paper in its first published form-'un nombre de fai

n: FIG. 2. .

G. 3. Fecit tubul

G. 4. vi K(alenda

3, 4. GRAFFITI ON TILES

HESTER (P. 25). Pertacus perfidus campester Lucilianus

the surprise which tourists often exhibit when confronted with Roman remains in an excavation or a museum-a surprise that 'the Romans' had boots, or beds, or waterpipes, or fireplaces, or roofs over their heads. There are, in truth, abundant evid

tify that this population wrote Latin. It is a further question whether, besides writing Latin, the Callevan servants and workmen may not also have spoken Celtic. Here direct evidence fails. In the nature of things, we cannot hope for proof of the negative proposition that Celtic was not spoken in Silchester. But all probabilities suggest that it was, at any rate, spoken very little. In the twenty years' excavation of the site, no Celtic inscription has emerged. Instead, we have proof that the lower classes wrote Latin for all sorts of purposes. Had they known C

Cornish documents of the period when Cornish was definitely giving way to English. Another example, Valens

untry-houses are equally Roman. Larger inscriptions, cut on stone, have also been found in country-houses. On the whole the general result is clear. Latin was employed freely in the towns of Britain, not only on serious occasions or by the upper classes, but by servants and work-people for the most accidental purposes. It was also used, at least by the upper classes, in the country. Plainly there did not exist in the towns that linguistic gulf between upper class and lower class which can be seen to-day in many cities of eastern Europe, where the employers speak one language and the employed another. On the other hand, it is possible that

. Antiq. London, xxiii

MENTS. (The letters were impressed by a wooden cylinder with incised lettering, which was rolled over the tile while s

o speak it fluently. About the same time Plutarch, in his tract on the cessation of oracles, mentions one Demetrius of Tarsus, grammarian, who had been teaching in Britain (A.D. 80), and mentions him as nothing at all out of the ordinary course.[1] Forty years later, Juvenal allude

ee Dessau, Her

lustration. It has been argued that the name 'Kent' is derived from the Celtic 'Cantion', and not from the Latin 'Cantium', because, according to the rules of Vulgar Latin, 'Cantium' would have been pronounced 'Cantsium' in the fifth century, when the Saxons may be supposed to have learnt the name. That is, Celtic was spoken in Kent about 450. Yet it is doubtful whether Latin 'ti' had really come to be pronounced 'tsi' in Britain so early as A.D. 450. And it is plainly possible that the Saxons may have learnt the name long years before the reputed date of Hengist and Horsa. The Kentish coast

p. 102. I am indebted to Mr. W.H. Stevenson for