A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE administrative, not racial. Those who left Britain and those who stayed equally regarded themselves as ' Romani,' and indeed it is not probable that many did in reality depart. The fact is that the gap between the Briton and the Roman, visible enough in the first century, had almost become obliterated by the fourth century. The townspeople and educated persons in Britain seem to have employed Latin, as casual words scratched on tiles or pottery assist to prove, while on the side of material civilization the Roman element reigned supreme. Before the Claudian conquest there had existed in the island a Late Celtic art of considerable merit, best known for metal-work and earthenware and distinguished by its fantastic use of plant and animal forms, its predilec- tion for the ' returning spiral ' ornament, and its enamelling. This art vanished. In a few places, as for instance in some potteries of the New m Fig. I. New Forest Ware with Leaf Patterns of Native Tvpe. Forest (fig. i) and of the Nene Valley (sec. 5), its products survived as local manufactures, but even these were modified by Roman influences. In general it met the fate which overtakes every picturesque but semi- civilized art when confronted with an organized coherent culture. Almost every important feature in Romano-British life was Roman. The ground plans of the private houses form an exception ; they indi- cate in all probability that the Romans, coming to our shores from sunnier lands, accepted, as we might expect, some features of the native types of dwellings. But the furniture of these houses is Roman. The mosaic pavements and painted stucco and carved stone-work which adorned them, the hypocausts which warmed them and the bathrooms which increased their comfort were all equally borrowed from Italy. The better objects of domestic use tell the same tale. For example, the commonest good pottery is the red ware called Samian or Terra Sigillata. This was copied from an Italian original and manufactured in Gaul, and it completely superseded native manufactures as the fashionable and indeed universal material. Nor were these foreign elements confined to the mansions of the wealthy. Samian bowls and rudely coloured plaster and makeshift hypocausts have been found even in outlying hamlets, 160
