If we cannot find in the Romano-British house either _atrium_ or _impluvium_, _tablinum_ or peristyle, such as we find regularly in Italy, we have none the less the painted wall-plaster (Fig.

11) and mosaic floors, the hypocausts and bath-rooms of Italy.

The wall-paintings and mosaics may be poorer in Britain, the hypocausts more numerous; the things themselves are those of the south.

No mosaic, I believe, has ever come to light in the whole of Roman Britain which represents any local subject or contains any unclassical feature.

The usual ornamentation consists either of mythological scenes, such as Orpheus charming the animals, or Apollo chasing Daphne, or Actaeon rent by his hounds, or of geometrical devices like the so-called Asiatic shields which are purely of classical origin.[1] Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special fondness for the cable or guilloche pattern, and we may conjecture that from Romano-British mosaics it passed in a modified form into Later Celtic art.