ouses, while for the British houses of the
plainer 'corridor' type the Mediterranean lands offer no analogies. We
cannot find in them either _atrium_ or _impluvium_, _tablinum_ or
peristyle, such as we find in Italy, and we must suppose them to be
Roman modifications of really Celtic originals. This, however, no more
implies that their occupants were mere Celts than the use of a bungalow
in India proves the inhabitant to be a native Indian.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Vict. Hist. Somerset_, i. 213-14. A few Romano-British
houses at Silchester (_in insula_ xiv. (1), see _Archaeologia_, lv. 221)
and at Caerwent (house No. 3, see _Arch._ lvii, plate 40) do bear some
resemblance to the Mediterranean type, as I have observed in _Archaeol.
Anzeiger_, 1902, p. 105. But they stand alone. Similarly, parallels may
be drawn between Pompeian wall-paintings of houses and certain 'villa'
remains in western Germany, as at Nennig; see Rostowzew, _Archaeol.
Jahrbuch_, 1904, p. 103. But these again seem to me the exception.]

The point is made clearer by the character of the internal fittings, for
these are wholly borrowed from Italian sources. If we cannot find in the
Romano-British house either _atrium_ or _impluvium_, _tablinum_ or
peristyle, such as we find regularly in Italy, we have none the less the
painted wall-plaster (Fig. 11) and mosaic floors, the hypocausts and
bath-rooms of Italy. The wall-paintings and mosaics may be poorer in
Britain, the hypocausts more numerous; the things themselves are those
of the south. No mosaic, I believe, has ever come to light in the whole
of Roman Britain which represents any local subject or contains any
unclassical feature. The usual ornamentation consists either of
mythological scenes, such as Orpheus charming the animals, or Apollo
chasing Daphne, or Actaeon rent by his hounds, or of geometrical
devices like the so-called Asiatic shields which are purely of classical
origin.[1] Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special fondness for the
cable or guilloche pattern, and we may conjecture that from
Romano-British mosaics it passed in a modified form into Later Celtic
art. But the ornament itself, whether in single border or in
many-stranded panels of plaitwork, occurs not rarely in Italy as well as
in thoroughly Romanized lands like southern Spain and southern Gaul and
Africa, and also in Greece and Asia Minor. It is a classical, not a
British pattern.

[Footnote 1: It has been suggested that these mo