iv
The scheme of Roman roads, following in the main these great straight limbs, covered the whole country, and was for the most part completed, we may presume, by the end of the second century.
It must not, of course, be imagined that these great military ways were the only means of communication in Roman times. Many historians have fallen into that grotesque error, with the result that history becomes meaningless to their readers. These great ways were only the main arteries, which were linked up in all the intervening spaces by a mass of local ways not specially constructed or engineered—most of them presumably aboriginal, and also maintained presumably by a local authority.
CHAPTER XII
THE DARK AGES
The Decline of the Roman Road: The Period at its Occurrence: Gaps: Roman Roads which Fell into Disuse: The Relationship of the Modern to the Roman System: Watling Street: Stane Street: The Short Cut Between Penkridge and Chester: Peddars Way: The coming of the New Civilization in the Twelfth Century.