a capital at Colchester (Camulodunum) which then dominated south-eastern Britain. The rulers of this kingdom offered feeble resistance. They had not expected, and had failed to contest, the Roman landing and, after it was effected, they attempted only a guerrilla war ‘in marshes and woods.’ They hoped, we are told, to wear out the Romans’ patience and to see the invaders retire, as Caesar had retired a century before. The Romans did not retire. They hunted the guerrillas down, received the surrender of the Bodüni, probably an East—Kentish tribe unfriendly to its native overlords, and went forward. Their objective was the native capital, Colchester. They successfully forced the passage of a difficult river which must be the lower Medway, advanced to the neighbourhood of London, bridged the Thames, crossed it despite British opposition, and marched straight on Colchester. Within a few weeks of their landing, they had destroyed the dominant Celtic kingdom of the south-east and were ready, from a safe base on the Thames estuary, Colchester and London, to continue the conquest of the island. The advance was made in three divisions. The left wing, the Second Legion, moved south-west towards Somerset, Devon and South Wales; the centre, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions, towards Wroxeter (Shrewsbury) and Chester; the right, the Ninth Legion, towards Lincoln and the Humber. Within three or four years Rome held all the south and midlands. Part had been annexed and, so far as we know, this part included Kent; part had been left temporarily to client princes like Prasutagus, king of the Icèni in Norfolk, or Cogidubnus in West Sussex. So far the Roman conquest had moved fast. Not only were the invaders well organized. The country presented few physical obstacles and the natives were already familiar with Roman civilization. But now a pause followed. The conquerors had come to the edge of the difficult hills of Wales and northern England, where their opponents were wild tribes, unsoftened by any contact with Roman civilization, and burning with all the mountaineer’s love of freedom. Some thirty years were spent in reducing those tribes, and it was during this period that the 'protected' principalities were absorbed. About A.D. 80 the advance into Scotland began. About A.D. 122 the Emperor Hadrian built his Wall from Tyne to Solway. Hence-forward the Roman frontier was sometimes to the north, never to the south, of this line.
   The province thus acquired fell practically, though not officially, into two divisions, which coincide roughly with the lowlands, conquered in the first years of the conquest, and the hills which were conquered later (fig. I). The former, which includes Kent, was the district of settled and peaceful life. The troops appear to have been quickly withdrawn from it, and, with the exception of certain third— or fourth-century forts on the coast, there was (with the doubtful exception of Reculver at the mouth of the Thames estuary, see pp. 19, 23) probably no military post in Kent, or anywhere south of the Humber and east of the Severn, after the end of the first century. It was the Roman habit in most parts of the Empire to concentrate the army almost wholly on the frontiers or in otherwise unquiet areas, and to leave peaceful interior districts to police themselves without the burden of garrisons. So, too, in Britain. The whole army was posted in Wales or in the north. That was a vast military region, and it was almost purely military. It contained Few towns or farms or other manifestations of ordinary civilian life; it was a