Town and Country in Roman Britain

Abstract

The second edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain gives us what we have never had before—a detailed account of the distribution of population over a large tract of the Roman Empire. Hitherto it has been impossible to say what principles governed the distribution of population during that period; and the result has been that everything written about the population of the Roman Empire has been somewhat vague and inconclusive, and has generally been confined to sweeping generalizations founded on induction from a very few facts, or to mere repetition of isolated statements, some doubtless true, others perhaps exaggerated or misleading, made by ancient writers.