AN EMPIRE IN MINIATURE.
Roman York : the Legionary Headquarters and Colonia of Eboracum. By Gordon Home. (Ernest Benn. 12s. 6d.).
THE conception generally held of Britain during the Roman occupation is of a province administered from the Imperial City by means of an obedient civil And military executive. This is true of the period before the reign of Marcus Aurelius. From that time onward, however, the Empire was robbed of its unity by the overweening ambition of various great generals. The moral stimulus of the early days of empire-making being removed, personal passions and vanity swept through the governing class, and profiteers and place-hunters swarmed in from the outposts of the Empire. People of all nationalities rose to the purple ; for example, one Magnentius, a Briton,
ruled over the whole of the western half of the Empire, as far as the Iron Gate of the Danube. We find generals., of very mixed blood, setting up in Britain as Emperors of the West, and wars waging between these claimants quite independent of the central authority. For long periods Britain .was a self-contained, grain-exporting kingdom, aloof from the broils and factions of the decaying Empire which had over- grown its own machinery of control.
As will be seen from these remarks, Mr. Home's research into the history of Roman York results in a vivid survey of the history of Rome herself. His thoroughness is remarkable ; and from the beginning of his book we are relieved of that idea which obsesses us all, that the world of the past was simpler than our own. We see not only the complex inter- relations of the Empire, but the resultant social and racial mingling in such a typical provincial capital as York (Eboracum). Our eyes ache with the strain of following our rapidly darting imagination, as we are inveigled to con- sider the drama of this old city, where Romans settled with British wives ; where their descendants married legionaries incoming from Asia Minor, from Spain, from the Balkans. What people of conflicting intellectual and instinctive inheri- tance must these hybrids have been. What beauty walked in those streets ; what vice lurked in those kennels. Some of these men who, after northern forays, were carried bleeding into the town, must have dropped blood still rich from Athenian fathers.
We have said nothing of Mr. Home's book, but that is his own fault, for from each page he sets us coursing into the labyrinths of the Roman story. A word must be added in praise of the excellent illustrations, tables, and index, and also
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