was supplied with its 'best china' from provincial and mainly from
Gaulish sources. The character of the ware supplied is significant. It
was provincial, but it was in no sense unclassical. It drew many of its
details from other sources than Arezzo, but it drew them all from Greece
or Rome. Nothing either in the manner or in the matter of its decoration
recalled native Gaul. Throughout, it is imitative and conventional, and,
as often happens in a conventional art, items are freely jumbled
together which do not fit into any coherent story or sequence. At its
best, it is handsome enough: though its possibilities are limited by its
brutal monochrome, it is no discredit to the civilization to which it
belongs. But it reveals unmistakably the Roman character of that
civilization.

The uniformity of this civilization was crossed by local variations, but
these do not contradict its Roman character. If the provincial felt
sometimes the claims of his province and raised a cry that sounds like
'Africa for the Africans' he acted on a geographical, not on any native
or national idea. He was demanding individual life for a Roman section
of the Empire. He was anticipating, perhaps, the birth of new nations
out of the Romanized populations. He was not attempting to recall the
old pre-Roman system. Similarly, if his art or architecture embodies
native fashions or displays a local style, if special types of houses or
of tombstones or sculpture occur in special districts, that does not mar
the result. These are not efforts to regain an earlier native life. They
are not the enemies of Roman culture, but its children--sometimes,
indeed, its adopted children--and they signify the birth of new Roman
fashions.

It remains true, of course, that, till a language or a custom is wholly
dead and gone, it can always revive under special conditions. The rustic