A piece of leaden water-piping discovered in Eastgate Street, Chester, bears the name of Julius Agricola. Agricola was made Governor of Britain in A.D. 78. Tacitus, a Roman historian, who married Agricola's daughter, wrote a life of his father-in-law and a narrative of his work in Britain. From his writings we learn that Agricola first turned his attention to the fierce tribe of the Brigantes who inhabited the hilly districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and North-East Cheshire.

Agricola made the preparations for his expedition at Chester, which became his head-quarters, and built the fortified outposts of Mancunium on the Irwell and Melandra on the Derbyshire bank of the River Etherow, connecting them with one another with new roads. Both Mancunium and Melandra have been excavated in recent years, and at the latter you may see the foundations of portions of the wall laid bare, and the base of one of the principal gateways leading into the fort.

A Roman camp was usually square, with the corners slightly rounded, as has been proved by the excavations at Melandra and by the piece of Roman wall lately discovered at Chester, which shows a distinct curve towards the Pepper Gate. Roads crossed the camp at right angles. The wall or 'vallum' was protected when necessary by a fosse or ditch, but Agricola chose his positions with such care that one side at least was usually already guarded by the waters of some stream. Watch-towers were placed at the corners and on either side of the gateways.

Chester still preserves the shape and plan of the Roman fortress. Its four main streets, which are hewn out of the sandstone on which the city is built, cross each other at right angles. The Welsh called it Caer Lleon or Lleon Vawr—the 'Camp of the Legion'. The present walls are not, however, the work of the Romans, though here and there they have been proved to have been built on the foundations of the Roman walls. The lowest courses of the North Wall near the Deanery Field, when excavated, were found to be faced with massive stones of Roman masonry, with a Roman 'plinth' running along the base. The stones fit very closely together and no mortar was used. The inside of the wall was filled with rubble.

From time to time portions of Roman wall have been found in other parts of the city. One big piece is in the cellars of Dickson's seed warehouse. When the foundations of the offices of the National Telephone Company in John Street were being excavated a year or two ago, a fine piece of Roman wall was unearthed. The builders have left it standing where they found it, and you may now see it in the basement of the building, protected from future harm by an iron grid.

On the Roodee is a portion of Roman masonry of finely jointed stones which is thought to have been the quay of the Roman city.

In the middle of a Roman fortress was the Praetorium or general's quarters. Traces of such a building are to be seen in the camp at Melandra, and at Chester the foundations of a large edifice discovered in Northgate Street may possibly be a portion of a similar building.

Inscriptions show us that another legion, called the Legio Secunda, was stationed at Chester for several years. When Britain was more or less pacified and required fewer troops this legion was recalled and sent to the Roman provinces on the Danube.

Tacitus tells us that Agricola spread civilization among the Britons, sent the sons of chieftains to Rome to be educated, and even in time taught the Britons to adopt Roman habits and dress and to speak the Latin tongue. But he would not at first let them join the Roman legions in Britain; those who wished to fight for the Roman emperors were sent abroad to the Roman provinces on the Rhine or the Danube.

The soldiers of subject races were not for many years after their conquest allowed by the Romans to fight in their own country. The tombstones mentioned in the previous chapter prove this, for not one of them bears the name of any British soldier. A bronze tablet dug up at Malpas, on which is engraved a decree of the Emperor Trajan, shows that the soldiers who fought in the Roman army in Britain were not all Romans, or even Italians, for it speaks of Thracians, Dalmatians, Spaniards, and men of other nations conquered by Rome.

For seven years Agricola was a wise and a humane ruler. He removed many of the burdens put upon the Britons by previous governors, and it was chiefly due to him that the Romans were able to make their rule acceptable to the Britons. In time Britons became proud of the name of Roman citizens.

We have seen from the character of the remains that Chester was peculiarly a military city. Thus it differed greatly from many of the Roman cities of southern Britain, which lost their military character as the tide of war rolled northwards and westwards. These cities soon became busy centres of trade and civic life, with all the conveniences and luxuries of Italian towns. They had their temples and their basilica or town hall, theatres and public baths, palaces and colonnades of shops, and handsome villas of Roman officials. But life at Chester, with the continual arrival and departure of troops and stores, must have been hard and monotonous, with the din of warfare probably never far distant. The Welsh were never really subdued by the Romans.

Yet even at Chester there were buildings of importance, as we can see from the broken fragments of pillars in the little garden by the Water Tower, and in the basements of Vernon's Toy Bazaar and other shops in Chester.

These pillars were made to support the porches and colonnades with which the fronts and sometimes the sides also of Roman buildings were adorned. No doubt you have noticed them in pictures you have seen of ancient Rome. In a later chapter you will learn that the Englishmen of the eighteenth century copied the Roman or Italian style of architecture in their churches, town halls, and other public buildings, and from the buildings then made you can get some idea of those of a Roman town.

The pillars were of three different patterns or 'orders', and by observing carefully their differences you will be able to tell at a glance to which particular order a modern building belongs. The capitals of the Doric and Ionic pillars are much simpler in design than those of the Corinthian, which were often of a very ornamental nature.

The Romans felt the cold and damp of the British climate, so different from that of their own warm and sunny land. Many of their houses and public buildings were warmed by 'hypocausts' or heating chambers, and every city had its public baths with rooms heated by hot air. In Bridge Street is a hypocaust remaining just where the Romans left it. The pillars which you see in the illustration are those of another hypocaust found many years ago in Bridge Street.

The pillars were set up in rows on a solid foundation, being fixed in their places by cement. On the top of these a second floor of cement and bricks, several inches thick, was laid. The space between the two floors was heated by hot air, introduced through an opening in the side wall communicating with a furnace or oven. In their own country the bath was an important event in the everyday life of the Romans.

The floors of Roman buildings were paved with tiny blocks of brick called 'tesserae', three to four inches long and one inch wide. A piece of flooring in the Grosvenor Museum shows that the bricks were laid on a bed of cement or concrete in 'herring-bone' pattern, that is, with the bricks at right angles to one another. A large number of tiles used in roofing have been found all over the city; on many of these you will see the stamp LEG XX VV of the Twentieth Legion. There was a tile factory at Holt on the Dee where also many of these tiles bearing the same stamp have recently been found.

The Romans taught the Britons many useful trades. 'Veratinum' or Wilderspool became under the Romans quite a busy manufacturing town, the forerunner of a modern Warrington or Wigan. The site of the ancient Roman town has been carefully dug over. Traces have been found of many pits, hearths, furnaces, and ovens for the manufacture of glass and pottery, a bronze foundry, and an iron smelting furnace, and an enameller's workshop. In the museums at Warrington and at Stockport are many fragments of pottery found here. Most of it is of a rough brown-red ware, called 'rough-cast', of which the commoner utensils, water-jugs and bowls and funeral urns, were made. A more ornamental kind is called 'Samian', and is of a darker colour, highly glazed and decorated with embossed figures of men and animals. Many articles of iron, knives, padlocks, keys, nails, found on the same spot show that Veratinum was the Birmingham of the Roman occupation.

Roman coins have been dug up in large numbers at Chester and other sites along the Roman roads. Many of them are to be seen in Chester Town Hall and in our museums. Nearly all the emperors of the first four centuries are represented upon them. Several emperors came to Britain, and we may be sure that in their tours of inspection they paid visits to the important garrison city of the 'great legion'.

Some of these coins bear the name of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, who was born at York, and whose mother was perhaps a lady of British birth. There is unfortunately nothing to show that there was any Christian church in Roman Cheshire, though many of the Roman soldiers must have been familiar with the Christian faith. Romans who became Christians were allowed to worship in the basilica, which in after days, as we shall see, became the model upon which Christian churches were built. On a house near the East Gate of Chester are carved these words: 'The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.' This is the translation of an inscription on a Roman coin found when the workmen were digging the foundations of the building. The coins of the Emperor Magnentius show the monogram of the first two letters of Christ.

The Roman rule lasted for 370 years. During this period they had transformed a desolate and barren land, inhabited by a people that were almost savages, into a fertile and prosperous province; Britannia Felix the Romans themselves called it. Large tracts of forest land were cleared and brought under cultivation. Britain became one of the chief granaries of Rome. In the museums you may see the Roman querns or handmills with which they ground their corn.

The Romans worked the copper mines on Alderley Edge; stone hammer-heads with which the Britons crushed the ore for their Roman masters have been found there. A 'pig' of lead weighing over a hundredweight, dug up in the Roodee, shows that lead mines were extensively worked. The lead was brought to Chester from the mines of Denbighshire and was part of the tribute paid by the Britons to the Roman emperors. Salt, a scarce commodity in many countries, was obtained, as at the present day, from the salt beds of Northwich.

At the end of the fourth century the Roman empire was overrun by hordes of barbarians from Northern Europe. The Romans, weakened by luxury and wealth, were unable to beat back the ruthless invaders. Legion after legion was summoned from the distant parts of the empire for the defence of the imperial city itself. About the year A.D. 380 the 'Conquering Legion' marched out for the last time through the city gates of Chester, and by 410 no Roman soldiers were left in Britain.

With sorrow and despair the Britons watched the last soldiers depart. Their own fighting-men were far away in distant lands, and they knew that without the protection of the Roman legions on whom they had so long relied, they were left a defenceless prey of the foes that were threatening them on all sides.