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 ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE civilized. The districts nearest to the Continent all that we should now call Kent and Essex and the valley of the lower Thames had learnt somewhat of Roman culture even before the landing of the Roman armies. After the conquest the remoter lowland districts readily imitated them. Progress was necessarily not uniform. Some stretches of country, like the Warwickshire midlands, were too thinly inhabited to show much result. Some corners lay outside the main current or preserved with more than average tenacity their native ways. There was a difference, too, between class and class. The wealthier and the better educated doubtless accepted Roman speech and fashions more fully and truly than the untaught shepherd or ploughman. But in the main the lowlands embraced the civilization which Rome offered them. The picture that rises before the student is that of a settled and Romanized population, living on the land in peace. There are small towns here and there, and outside of them numerous 'villas,' country-houses, and farms. Comfort is apparent, if not wealth ; agriculture, if not industry, is actively practised, and an orderly civil life prevails. No military element intrudes. No troops are quartered in this part of Britain. Till the fourth-century brings the need for defences along the south-east coast, no forts or fortresses are visible in it. The lowlands belong to the civilian. Far otherwise the uplands. Here towns and villages, ' villas ' and farms, agriculture and indications of settled life, are almost wholly wanting. Towards the north-east, no Romano-British town occurs beyond Isurium, that is, Aldborough in the vale of York, and no 'villa' beyond Wall, near Ripon. Towards the north-west the traces of civil life cease even further south. Towards the west they fail as we enter Wales, and as we approach Exeter. Everywhere the civilian stops where the hills com- mence. Instead, we find a military occupation. Its normal elements are not towns or ' villas,' but forts and fortresses. Here are concentrated all the troops which formed the army of Roman Britain. At need they could be led down into the lowlands to repress disorder, but no case is known where this need arose. Their proper work was to overawe the wild hill-men and to keep the frontiers against Caledonian or Irish enemies. This, indeed, was the Roman method throughout the Empire. The peaceful districts of civilian life were left to administer themselves with the aid of their own local police, while the provincial armies were posted along the frontiers or in restless and difficult regions. The system which the Romans employed in garrisoning these military districts was very simple. It had two main features, a large number of small forts and a small number of large ones, and it corresponds closely to the system of the Roman army under the Empire. For this army comprised two principal classes of troops, legions and auxilia. The fundamental distinction between these two classes lay in the fact that the legions represented the old citizen army of the Roman Republic, while the 'auxilia' were levied from among the subjects, not the citizens of Rome. The legionaries were naturally the more important. They were superior alike in birth and civilization, in morale and fighting i 193 25