Decline
The importance of Isca as a trading centre is demonstrated by the more than a thousand Roman coins that have been found in the city. However, the dates of these coins suggest that the city was at its most prosperous in the first half of the fourth century and virtually no coins dated after AD 380 have been found, suggesting a rapid decline.
The forum and basilica were demolished around the middle of the 5th century when a cemetery, probably Christian, was established on the site. It continued in use into the Anglo-Saxon period when the town became known as 'Isca-Castra' or Exeter.
After the Romans left Britain in the early 5th century there is no evidence of Exeter for almost 300 years, until around 680 when a document about St Boniface reports that he was educated at the Abbey in Exeter.
Read more about this topic: Isca Dumnoniorum
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)