ROMANO-BRITISH NORTHAMPTONSHIRE easy they may well have brought down worked stones from our dis- trict/ The detailed survey which the last paragraph concluded has prob- ably made clear the character of the Romano-British life which existed in this district. Castor has been styled by some writers a ' municipium' and a legionary fortress ; others consider the Castles a smaller fort for the garrison of the town. But there is no trace at either spot, or any- where in the vicinity, of municipal institutions or of military occupa- tion, not even of the smallest garrison. Here we may rather think that the Roman and British civilizations meet. The Roman civilization centred in its towns ; the Celt was a dweller in the country and learnt town life chiefly from his conqueror. On the banks of the Nene in the neighbourhood which we have been surveying we see the Celtic country life condensing into a town. At two spots, at Castor and at the Castles, the houses were dense enough for the life of a town, and at the Castles they stood within a wall. But they were planted, many of them, in irregular fashion, not ranged along straight streets nor all facing one way, and they were surrounded by extensive suburbs which were very far from resembling the arrangements of an Italian town. We do not yet know whether in any part there were actual streets like those of Silchester, and we cannot as yet decide what precise stage in the develop- ment towards town life we have before us. But the general character of the site is plain. It was an extensive straggling settlement, half town, half country, that was no longer country and not yet perfectly town.^ But even without this interesting feature the site would be one of con- siderable importance. The number of the buildings, the comfort of their fittings — mosaics, painted stucco, marble wall-linings — the extent of the potting industry to be described below, all testify to this ; and while in a special sense we may say that Castor and the Castles do not form a full-grown town, in more general language we may class them as one of the more considerable town-centres in Roman Britain. Certainly they far surpass the sites which we shall mention further on in this article. Neither Towcester nor Norton nor even Irchester can rank with the remains near Castor. The evidence of coins indicates that the district was inhabited perhaps in British and certainly in early Roman times and throughout the Roman period, and we may safely assume that Roman influences early affected it. Its most important part was probably Castor. A milestone discovered outside the north gate of 'the Castles' (p. 170) marks the end of the first mile from some caput vice, and this caput can only be Castor, which is just a mile away. Whether the precise spot whence the mileage started was among the buildings round Castor
- Journal of the British Archteolopcol Association, xli. 419, 1. 51 ; Assodatei Anhit. Societies' Reports,
xvli. (1884), 281 ; 'Northamptonshire Notes and Queries, iii. 179, 495. For the inscription in p.irticuLir see Ephemeris, vii. 842 ; A rchieological Journal, xlvii. 239, xlix. 187 ; Ankaohgical Revietv, iii. 136 ; Anti- quary, xix. 76 (inaccurate). I have seen the stone and had a squeeze from Mr. J. T. Irvine, the finder. The material, I am told, is Barnack r.ig.
- Compare Westdeutsche Zeitschti/t, xix. 58.
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