there is no evidence that the delicate “Samian” ware[235] was ever manufactured in Britain, though every house of any pretensions possessed a certain store of it.  The indigenous art of basket-making[236] also continued as a speciality of Britain under the Romans, and the indigenous mining for tin, lead, iron, and copper was developed by them on the largest scale.  In every district where these metals are found, in Cornwall, in Somerset, in Wales, in Derbyshire, and in Sussex, traces of Roman work are apparent, dating from the very beginning of the occupation to the very end.  The earliest known Roman inscription found in Britain is one of A.D. 49 (the year before Ostorius subdued the Iceni) on a pig of lead from the Mendips,[237] and similar pigs bearing the Labarum, i.e. not earlier than Constantine presumably, have been dredged up in the Thames below London.[238] Inscriptions also survive to tell us of a few amongst the many other trades which must have figured in Romano-British life,—­goldsmiths, silversmiths, iron-workers, stone-cutters, sculptors, architects, eye-doctors, are all thus commemorated.[239]

C. 14.—­But then, as always, the life of Britain was mainly rural.  The evidence for this unearthed in the Cam valley has already been spoken of, and in every part of England the “villas” of the great Roman landowners are constantly found.  Hundreds have already been discovered, and year by year the list is added to.  One of the most recent of the finds is that at Greenwich in 1901, and the best known, perhaps, that at Brading in the Isle of Wight.  Here, as elsewhere, the tesselated pavements, the elaborate arrangements for warming (by hypocausts conveying hot air to every room), the careful laying out of the apartments, all testify to the luxury in which these old landlords lived.  For the “villa” was the Squire’s Hall of the period, and was provided, like the great country houses of to-day, with all the best that contemporary life could give.[240] And, like these also, it was the centre of a large circle of humbler dependencies wherein resided the peasantry of the estate and the domestics of the mansion.[241] The existence amongst these of huntsmen (as inscriptions tell) reminds us that not only was the chase, then as now, popular amongst the squirearchy, but that there was a far larger scope for its exercise.  Great forests still covered a notable proportion of the soil (the largest being that which spread over the whole Weald of Sussex)[242], and were tenanted by numberless deer and wild swine, along with the wolves, and, perhaps, bears,[243] that fed upon them.

C. 15.—­Hence it came about that during the Roman occupation the British products we find most spoken of by classical authors are the famous breeds of hunting-dogs produced by our island.  Oppian[244] [A.D. 140] gives a long description of one sort, which he describes as small [Greek:  baion], awkward [Greek:  guron], long-bodied, rough-haired, not much to look at, but