Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 16 CHAPTER III. THE BOROUGH OF ST. ALBAN'g. In that long era which elapsed between the reigns of Claudius and the ephemeral emperors who immediately succeeded Honorius, in the fifth century, the place known to the Eomans by the name Verulamium was existing near the site of the modern St. Alban's. It then shared, with London and Colchester, the reputation of being one of the most populous and prosperous of British cities. In evidence of its populousness, it may be stated that Tacitus records, that in an insurrection of the natives, as many as 70,000 Eoman citizens and their allies, resident in these three towns, were slaughtered by the. insurgents. At this time it had acquired the importance of a Municipium a place in which all the inhabitants enjoyed the privilege only conceded in other towns to Eoman soldiers and citizens. In the course of time it became so large, as that its boundaries included an area estimated to have been one hundred acres in extent. To the .north, a lake covering twenty acres on the southern, eastern, and western sides a strong wall and deep ditch formed its defences. Within these limits stood the dwellings of a civilized community, composed of the governor of the station, the magistrates, the council, the soldiers, the priests, the rich traders, and the humble artizans ; with the court house, the forum, the temples, the baths, and other public structures. We may infer its status as a city from the fact that its name is inscribed on coins of the empire, being probably once familiar to the inhabitants of the great city itself. In the latter half of the third century there was living in Verulamium a person named Albanus, who was a native of the place. He had been to Rome, where he served for seven years as a soldier under the Emperor Dioclesian.Wh...
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