LONDINIUM

Evening Star, Issue 20054, 20 December 1928, Page 3

LONDINIUM

WHAT IT MEANT TO 1 THE ROMANS What seems likely iur a loii'C time to remain the standard work on .Homan London is reviewed in another column (■states tho London ‘ Times ’ of recent date). This is tho beautifully-illus-trated volume just issued by tho Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, containing an inventory of nearly all the Roman remains ever known to have been discovered in tho city, and a general account of Londinium as far as tho scanty historical references to it and the diverse evidence of archaeology allow such an account to be drawn up. Shall wo ever know much more about Roman London than this work can tell us? Tho answer is dubious. Hero is a site, quite unlike Sllchestcr, or Timgad, or Herculaneum, which has been in continuous occupation for nearly 1,900 years. It has been rebuilt over and over again; “ the upper Roman levels,” we are told, “have more often than not been destroyed by by mediaeval and later builders,” while the “deepening foundations of modern forro-concreto structure are driven relentlessly down to and below the natural gravel.” Obliteration proceeds faster than record; year by year the archaeological evidence grows less and less, and, though much cun he done still if tho public conscience is awakened to tile need, “ Homan London must at best remain a broken mosaic.” How very much a broken mosaic it is can he gathered at once from a glance at I he map in the present volume; tho sites which have been at one time or another' penetrated or explored are almost insignificant in comparison with the whole area enclosed by tho walls, while the relics of the Roman age si ill visible number ony _ thirteen, of which the Royal Commission recommends ten as especially worthy of preservation. The fact that most of Londinium was built of brick, wood, and rubble accounts for a good deal, as stone was scarce, and consequently London yields far fewer inscriptions than a place of tho same size might yield if a good stone had been ready at hand. Nevertheless, by tho cautious exercise of an arelueological logic which declines to go beyond the probable, the authors of the volume arrive at some fairly definite results, and enable tho modern inhabitants of London to form a distinct conception of the first four centuries of the city. Moro than one assertion which finds currency as fact in books about London will bo discovered, on investigation, to be untenable. Evidence, for instance, lias on tho whole failed to reveal a pre-Roman city; there is nothing solid to point to a, British town in existence before tho troops of Claudius overran South-eastern Britain in the year 4-i a.d.; at the most there could have been only the smallest trading settlement for a few years before the Roman occupation. There i.s no evidence for a heathen temple on tho site of St. Paul’s; that is a hoary legend which must go; and it may bo added that, according to tho,inventory, the Roman bath off the Strand is of a brick.which if it is Roman is known nowhere else. Tho solo public building which can he traced is the great basilica whore Lcandcnhall market now stands. This was on tho highest ground on tho eastern side of Walbrook, a stream which cut the city in two, and is, for tho things that have been found in it, of absorbing interest. , The earlier popuwas perhaps concentrated more on this eastern side than on the west, and the suggestion seems to ho that parts of the area within"tho walls were not densely populated. But of the importance of London, though its official status in the Imperial system may have been mean, there is no doubt; not only was its acreage remarkably .large, but it was for several reasons the chief city in Britain; and owed its preeminence to its relation to the river and the sea. It originated from certain favourable natural conditions; it was tho lowest point on the river where gravel patches arose out of the surrounding clay and marsh on both banks, and the tidal limit in Roman times was perhaps at London Bridge. London apyears to have developed as a trading centre in response not to native, but to Imperial requirements; it took the presence of the Roman power to call it into being. Such at least is the conclusion

lo which the positive evidence points about its rise. With regard to its fall, when tho Romans had abandoned the island, the present investigators think it quite possible that “the decivilised .sub-Roman Londoners” wore' on the whole left alone by tho Gorman invaders, and tlnm they may even have been saved by them from tho most destructive enemies of Roman Britain elsewhere—the Piets and Scots. In that event London would have changed its character gradually by infiltration rather than by any sudden blow.