Nicanor - Teller of Tales | Page 6

Rome," where the Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station of the Sixth Legion, called the Victorious, the flower of the Roman army, which men said had been there for upwards of three hundred years. He crossed the wide river Abus, and thought it the ocean of which he had heard tales; he stole at stations and begged at farms, and drank in all that he could see and hear.
Over hills and through valleys the great road ran, straightaway for league upon league, turning aside for no obstacle, invincible as its builders, ancient and enduring. It crossed rivers, it clove through darkling woods, it traversed wide and lonely wastes, and led past walled towns, worn by the feet of marching legions, scored with the grooves of wheels. And even as across the world all roads led to Rome, so here did all roads lead to Londinium, and therefore to Thorney on Tamesis.
And Londinium was no longer the collection of mud huts filled with blue-painted Britons, of which dim tales were told. For under Roman rule fair Britain had cast half off the shroud of her brutish early days, and blossomed into a civilization such as she never before had known, and would not know again for many hundred years. One passing glimpse of light she caught--even though it had its shadows--before the veil shut down once more with the coming of the Saxons. For, though Roman rule in Britain was said to end with the fourth century, Roman influence, Roman customs, Roman laws, survived and were paramount during the years of independence which followed, until throttled by the slowly tightening hand of Saxon barbarism. Then the old dark times returned.
The Romans were hard taskmasters, but the task they had was hard. They were often merciless, but those beneath them had been wild beasts to tame. They were in power supreme and absolute, and they lived in ease and plenty upon the toil of native serfs and bondsmen. Fair villas, stately palaces, costly foods and fine raiment--all the luxuries those old days knew were theirs. Under them was the mass of the native population, staggering beneath their burden of taxation, bound to the soil, often absolute slaves, who spent their lives toiling in brickfields, in quarries, in mines, and in forests, living in straw-thatched cabins upon the lands of masters who paid no wage. When there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment swift and sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and reward. Had Rome not been as strong as even in her decline she was, Romans could not have held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and land, on the verge of the civilization they maintained, were restless tribes, Scots, Picts, and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of unguardedness, for encroachment and disturbance.
So that their stern discipline was necessary, and not without results which went for further good. Under Roman rule all the surface of the land was changed. Great towns, walled and fortified, rose on the sites of ditch-surrounded villages. Marshes were drained, bridges were built, and rivers banked; forests were cleared and waste lands reclaimed. More than all, the land was tilled and rendered productive, so that Britain became the most important grain province of the empire. Romans found in Britain a scant supply of corn, grasses on which the cattle fed, wild plums, a few nuts and berries. They brought to Britain fruits and vegetables from many lands beyond the seas; from Italy gooseberries, chestnuts, and apples; walnuts from Gaul; apricots, peaches, and pears from Asia. Paved roads webbed the island, wide and well-drained, by which bodies of troops could be massed at any given point with incredible rapidity. Fortifications were built and in the north walls of solid masonry were thrown across the country from the Oceanus Ibernicus to the Oceanus Germanicus, for the determent of common foes.
That upon which Rome once set her seal could never wholly lose the mark; must remain bound to her by ties, which, stretching across the centuries, would link the future to the past. In spite of the bitterness of her defeat and ruin, and because she still was Rome, she was mighty enough to leave precious gifts to the peoples who should come after her. To Britain, because Britain had been her own, she left many legacies great and small: the sonorous richness of her speech, soon corrupted to make for a new world a new speech as noble; and more than all, she left the word of her mighty law, proudest monument ever reared by mortal hands to a nation's glory. Rome's sons builded well for her; and the labor of their hearts and hands was not for the day alone, but for the ages. Towns yet to rise