language of the Empire was the language of those in authority or
in official life even in its remotest provinces, and the
galley-master did but use the name which the Roman lords of
Britain had given to the prosperous city on the Colne, in which
the native Prince, King Coel, had his court--the city which
to-day is known under its later Saxon name of Colchester.

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.