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The Roman Empire offers us singularly few instances, but it would be untrue to say that there were none. But while it is true generally that Romanization spread rapidly in the west, we must admit great differences between different districts even of the same provincial areas. Some grew Romanized soon and thoroughly, others slowly and imperfectly.

In the towns and among the upper class in the country Romanization was substantially complete as complete as in northern Gaul, and possibly indeed even more complete. But both the lack of definite evidence and the probabilities of the case require us to admit that the peasantry may have been less thoroughly Romanized. It was covered with a superimposed layer of Roman civilization.

Roman inscriptions are occasionally set up. The Romanization of Britain was plainly no mere interlude, which passed without leaving a mark behind. But it was crossed by two hostile forges, a Celtic revival and an English invasion. Romilly Allen. But how far it was borrowed from Romano-British originals and how far from similar Roman-provincial work on the Continent, is not very clear.

So far as institutions are concerned, Teutonism was less modified in England than in the German fatherland itself, For the gradual conquest and Christianization of Germany which began with Charles the Great, and went on until in the thirteenth century the frontier had advanced eastward to the Vistula, entailed to a certain extent the romanization of Germany.

Romanization, although as yet far from being accomplished, must sooner or later come into vogue, as is patent at the first glance at business.

Yet even in northern Gaul Romanization strode forward. The Gaulish monarchy of A.D. 258-73 shows us the position north of the Cevennes just after the middle of the third century. In it Roman and native elements were mixed. Its emperors were called not only Latinius Postumus, but also Piavonius and Esuvius Tetricus.

It is quite likely that such Romanization had begun at Verulam before the Roman conquest, and formed the justification for the early grant of such privileges. Certainly the whole lowland area, as far west as Exeter and Shrewsbury, and as far north as the Humber, was conquered before Claudius died, and Romanization may have commenced in it at once. Cambridgeshire, p. 64; E. Krüger, Westd.

Introduction of the Romanizing of the Country While Caesar thus showed to the conquered nation every allowable consideration and spared their national, political, and religious institutions as far as was at all compatible with their subjection to Rome, he did so, not as renouncing the fundamental idea of his conquest, the Romanization of Gaul, but with a view to realize it in the most indulgent way.

Here the Britons must have remained Celtic, or at least capable of a reversion to the Celtic tradition. Here, at any rate, a Celtic revival was possible. So far we have considered the province of Britain as it was while it still remained in real fact a province. Let us now turn to the sequel and ask how it fits in with its antecedents. The Romanization, we find, held its own for a while.

Closely as Greek civilization resembled Roman, easy as the transition might seem from the one to the other, Rome met here that most serious of all obstacles to union, a race whose thoughts and affections and traditions had crystallized into definite coherent form. That has in all ages checked Imperial assimilation; it was the decisive hindrance to the Romanization of the Greek east.