eft.

The opposite of this has occurred at Calleva; here the rural house has
been used, with scarcely a change, to form a town. We see the Roman
street-plan introduced in surroundings which are not properly urban.
The outward expression of the civilised municipal system jostles
against a provincial and rural life. Here was a premature attempt to
municipalize the Briton, which outstripped the readiness of the Briton
to be municipalized. Silchester was probably a tribal centre before
the Roman came; for awhile it may have remained much the same under
Roman rule. But forty years after the Roman Conquest, in the reign of
Vespasian (about A.D. 70-85), the Romanization of the whole province
appears to have rapidly advanced. It was, indeed, encouraged by the
Home Government. Various details suggest that the laying out of
Silchester belonged to this very date. But to this the Callevan failed
to rise. He learnt much from Rome; he learnt even town-life; he did
not learn town-life in its highest form. When his town had been
'haussmannized' and fitted with Roman streets, and equipped with Roman
Forum and Basilica, and the rest, he yet continued to live--perhaps
more happily than the true townsman--in his irregularly grouped houses
and cottages amid an expanse of gardens. The area of Silchester
differed little from that of Aosta; its population, if we may judge by
the number of dwelling-houses, was hardly as large as that of Timgad.

_Caerwent_ (fig. 33).

I turn lastly to another Romano-British town, Caerwent (Venta
Silurum), between Chepstow and Newport in Monmouthshire. It is a
smaller town than Silchester. Both towns perhaps began with the same
area, 40 or 45 acres. But Caerwent never expanded; it remained not
much more than 45 acres within the walls. Land was probably valuable
within it; certainly its houses are packed closer, and its garden
ground is smaller than at Silchester. Its general type is, however,
the same. It has a very similar Forum and Basilica, Temples, an
Amphitheatre, and a large number of private houses which resemble
closely those of Silchester. It has, moreover, at least in the parts
that have been so far excavated, distinct traces of a rectangular
street pattern, which, if it was carried through the whole town, would
provide (including the Forum) twenty 'insulae'. The size of these
blocks cannot be determined with any precision. Indeed, in some cases
the houses seem to have encroached on and distorted