It was, indeed, a curious state of affairs in England. I doubt if
many of my girl and boy readers, no matter how, well they may
stand in their history classes, have ever thought of the England
of Hereward and Ivanhoe, of Paul Dombey and Tom Brown, as a Roman
land.
And yet at the time when this little Flavia Julia Helena was
sailing down the river Colne, the island of Britain, in its
southern section at least, was almost as Roman in manner, custom,
and speech as was Rome itself.
For nearly five hundred years, from the days of Caesar the
conqueror, to those of Honorius the unfortunate, was England, or
Britain as it was called, a Roman province, broken only in its
allegiance by the early revolts of the conquered people or by the
later usurpations of ambitious and unpincipled governors.
And, at the date of our story, in the year 255 A.D., the
beautiful island had so far grown out of the barbarisms of
ancient Britain as to have long since forgotten the gloomy rites
and open-air altars of the Druids, and all the half-savage
surroundings of those stern old priests.
Everywhere Roman temples testified to the acceptance by the
people of the gods of Rome, and little Helena herself each
morning hung the altar of the emperor-god Claudius with garlands
in the stately temple which had been built in his honor in her
father's palace town, asked the protection of Cybele, "the
Heavenly Virgin," and performed the rites that the Empire
demanded for "the thousand gods of Rome.
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