(The letters were impressed by a wooden cylinder with incised lettering, which was rolled over the tile while still soft.

In the reconstruction CAB in line 2 and IT in line 3 are included twice, to show the method of repetition.)] It remains to cite the literary evidence, distinct if not abundant, as to the employment of Latin in Britain.

Agricola, as is well known, encouraged the use of it, with the result (says Tacitus) that the Britons, who had hitherto hated and refused the foreign tongue, became eager to speak it fluently.

About the same time Plutarch, in his tract on the cessation of oracles, mentions one Demetrius of Tarsus, grammarian, who had been teaching in Britain (A.D.

80), and mentions him as nothing at all out of the ordinary course.[1] Forty years later, Juvenal alludes casually to British lawyers taught by Gaulish schoolmasters.