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