As an interesting sidelight to the articles by the Rev.Frank Wain on 'The Earliest Times', the Society's Treasurer, Mr.Albert Davis, has sent us part of a speech given by a court orator in the year A.D.310 before the Emperor Constantine, who had been proclaimed so 5 years earlier at York.

'Britain, you are indeed fortunate,
And now more blessed than any other land,
Since you were the first to see Constantine as Emperor.
Nature rightly endowed you with every benefit of land and climate.
Your winters are not too cold, nor your summers too hot.
Your corn-fields are so productive they assure you of the gifts not only of Ceres* but of the Liberi* too.

No terrible beasts shelter in your woods,
No noxious snakes infest your earth.
Far from it! Your domestic herds are innumerable;
Their udders bulge with milk and their backs are laden with wool.
To make life the more pleasant the days are of the longest;
And no night goes by without some light since your flat shoreline throws no shadow.
While the night and its constellations revolve
The sun himself, who to us appears to go down,
In Britain seems only to go past.

* Ceres, goddess of agriculture: Liberi, children or the parents of legitimate children

Alcester & District Local History Society