[Footnote 292:  Near Cilurnum the fosse was used as a receptacle for shooting the rubbish of the station, and contains Roman pottery of quite early date.]

[Footnote 293:  See p. 233.]

[Footnote 294:  See p. 232.]

[Footnote 295:  The existing military road along the line of the Wall does not follow the track of its Roman predecessor.  It was constructed after the rebellion of 1745, when the Scots were able to invade England by Carlisle before our very superior forces at Newcastle could get across the pathless waste between to intercept them.]

[Footnote 296:  Mithraism is first heard of in the 2nd century A.D., as an eccentric cult having many of the features of Christianity, especially the sense of Sin and the doctrine that the vicarious blood-shedding essential to remission must be connected with a New Baptismal Birth unto Righteousness.  The Mithraists carried out this idea by the highly realistic ceremonies of the Taurobolium; the penitent neophyte standing beneath a grating on which the victim was slain, and thus being literally bathed in the atoning blood, afterwards being considered as born again [renatus].  It thus evolved a real and heartfelt devotion to the Supreme Being, whom, however (unlike Christianity), it was willing to worship under the names of the old Pagan Deities; frequently combining their various attributes in joint Personalities of unlimited complexity.  One figure has the head of Jupiter, the rays of Phoebus, and the trident of Neptune; another is furnished with the wings of Cupid, the wand of Mercury, the club of Hercules, and the spear of Mars; and so forth.  Mithraism thus escaped the persecution which the essential exclusiveness of their Faith drew down upon Christians; gradually transforming by its deeper spirituality the more frigid cults of earlier Paganism, and making them its own.  The little band of truly noble men and women who in the latter half of the 4th century made the last stand against the triumph of Christianity over the Roman world were almost all Mithraists.  For a good sketch of this interesting development see Dill, ’Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire.’]

[Footnote 297:  Of the 1200 in the ‘Corpus Inscript.  Lat.’ (vol. vii.), 500 are in the section Per Lineam Valli.]

[Footnote 298:  ‘Corpus Inscript.  Lat.’ vol. vii., No. 759.]

[Footnote 299:  Some authorities consider him to have been her own son.]

[Footnote 300:  See p. 126.]

[Footnote 301:  The Gelt is a small tributary joining the Irthing shortly before the latter falls into the Eden.]

[Footnote 302:  Polybius (vi. 24) tells us that in the Roman army of his day a vexillum or manipulum consisted of 200 men under two centurions, each of whom had his optio.  Vegetius (II. 1) confines the word vexillatio to the cavalry, but gives no clue as to its strength.]