Thirty years later Agricola, who was obviously a better administrator than a general, openly encouraged the process.  According to Tacitus, his efforts met with great success; Latin began to be spoken, the toga to be worn, temples, town halls, and private houses to be built in Roman fashion.[1] Agricola appears to have been merely carrying out the policy of his age.  Certainly it is just at this period (about 75-85 A.D.) that towns like Silchester, Bath, Caerwent, seem to take definite shape,[2] and civil judges (legati iuridici) were appointed, presumably to administer the justice more frequently required by the advancing civilization.[3] In A.D. 85 it was thought safe to reduce the garrison by a legion and some auxiliaries.[4] Progress, however, was not maintained.  About 115-20, and again about 155-63 and 175-80, the northern part of the province was vexed by serious risings, and the civilian area was doubtless kept somewhat in disturbance.[5] Probably it was at some point in this period that the flourishing country town of Isurium (Aldborough), fifteen miles from York, had to shield itself by a stone wall and ditch.[6]

[Footnote 1:  Tac. Agr. 21, quoted in note 3 to p. 13.]

[Footnote 2:  Silchester was plainly laid out in Roman fashion all at once on a definite street plan, and though some few of its houses may be older, the town as a whole seems to have taken its rise from this event.  The evidence of coins implies that the development of the place began in the Flavian period (Athenaeum, Dec. 15, 1904).  At Bath the earliest datable stones belong to the same time (Victoria Hist. of Somerset, vol. i, Roman Bath), the first being a fragmentary inscription of A.D. 76.  At Caerwent the evidence is confined to coins and fibulae, none of which seem earlier than Vespasian or Domitian:  for the coins see Clifton Antiq.  Club’s Proceedings, v. 170-82.]

[Footnote 3:  A. von Domaszewski, Rhein.  Mus., xlvi. 599; C. ix. 5533 (as completed by Domaszewski), inscription of Salvius Liberalis; C. iii. 2864=9960, inscription of Iavolenus Priscus.  Both these belong to the Flavian period.  Other instances are known from the second century.]

[Footnote 4:  Classical Review, xviii. (1904) 458; xix. (1905) 58, withdrawal of Batavian cohorts.  The withdrawal of Legio ii Adiutrix is well known.]

[Footnote 5:  See my papers in Archaeologia Aeliana, xxv. (1904) 142-7, and Proceedings of Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland, xxxviii. 454.]

[Footnote 6:  The town wall of Isurium, partly visible to-day in Mr. A.S.  Lawson’s garden, is constructed in a fashion which suggests rather the second century than the later date when most of the town walls in Britain and Gaul were probably built, the end of the third or even the fourth century.  Thus, its stones show the ‘diamond broaching’ which occurs on the Vallum of Pius, and which must therefore have been in use during the second century.]