The labourers and servants of Calleva must be sought among the native population, and the _graffiti_ testify that this population wrote Latin.

It is a further question whether, besides writing Latin, the Callevan servants and workmen may not also have spoken Celtic.

Here direct evidence fails.

In the nature of things, we cannot hope for proof of the negative proposition that Celtic was not spoken in Silchester.

But all probabilities suggest that it was, at any rate, spoken very little.