Day 2
Off to the nearby Garlic Farm the next sunny morning. We bought some garlic!
And on through winding, ditchy lanes to Brading Roman Villa. This was wonderful! The Romano-Brits had copied the invaders' styles of architecture and, boy, they must have felt pretty damn good sitting there sunning themselves on that southwest facing slope overlooking the English Channel. And they probably didn't feel too bad either when in winter they fired up the hypocaust. Do you remember that stuff? Borrowed from the Greeks, the Romans had not only under-floor, but up-inside-the-walls heating too!
Even now there's a vineyard just around the corner, but the Romano-Brits imported wine too, (though not, of course from as ridiculously far off as we tend to. Well, how could they? Two millennia ago there wasn't any wine in Australia, California or Chile......).
Anyway, take a look at this floor......
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Top left is a monkey and to the right a fox, quite clearly, and nearly 2000yrs later, a bushy-tailed fox! |
This one may pull your eyes out on stalks..... a swastika!
Here's my favourite though......
The emperor at the time was Caesar Gallus, (gallus means cockerel), and here he is, the emperor clearly depicted, in no more that 2cm square tiles, as a cock-headed, (and chicken-footed), man. (I'm sure my sister once had a "festival" jacket like that one).
Ancient though this is, doubtless Gallus wasn't the first immigrant person to be teased by the Brits, (nor the first cock-headed man!).
Up onto Bembridge Down which at first appears to be topped by an Iron Age or similarly ancient hill fort. If it ever was, (and I'm sure it was!), what remains of it has probably been lost underneath more modern defensive constructions.