T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 34

III. In Britain the invasion of the Saxons meant the burning and laying waste of the walled cities of the half- Romanised inhabitants. The Saxons had a horror of living within stone walls ; and examples such as the sack of Anderida quite well account for their peopling the cities in imagination with devils. In Gaul, on the other hand, the collapse of the Roman Empire was before barbarians, who had for generations served in her armies, and whose great ambition was to adopt her customs, and manners, and titles. Therefore they preserved her public buildings, and the Gallo-Roman population lived as before within their towns. The more important Roman stations in Gaul had been carefully stone-walled, usually on a rectangular plan, the translation in stone of the earth mounds of their entrench- -ed camps. The mason work was of grouted rubble, ashlar- faced, built in sections, with at intervals (generally ra- -ther long intervals) half-round curtain towers set upon them. Sometimes a double wall was built, and the interval packed with earth, to the level of the top of the inner wall. The outer one would then form a parapet, as at Toulouse. The curtain towers were generally quite small in diameter, and projected only a true semi-circle beyond the wall. At times their bases would be rectangular, (...)