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Chapter Two: Roman Britain.
The first Roman invasion of the lands we now
call the British Isles took place in 55 B.C.
under war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year later, but these
probings did not lead to any significant or permanent occupation. He had some
interesting, if biased comments concerning the natives: "All the
Britons," he wrote, "paint themselves with woad, which gives their
skin a bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in battle." It was
not until a hundred years later that permanent settlement of the grain-rich
eastern territories began in earnest. In the year 43.A.D. an expedition was
ordered by the Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his
general Plautius and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after
Plautius's troops landed on Britain's
shores, Claudius felt it was safe enough to visit his new province. He wasn't
wrong. Establishing their bases in what is now Kent,
through a series of battles involving greater discipline, a great element of
luck, and general lack of co-ordination between the leaders of the various
Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued much of Britain in the short space of
forty years. They remained for nearly 400 years. The great number of
prosperous villas that have been excavated in the southeast and southwest
testify to the rapidity by which Britain became Romanized, for
they functioned as centers of a settled, peaceful and urban life. The
highlands and moorlands of the northern and western regions, present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily
settled, nor did the Romans particularly wish to settle in these
agriculturally poorer, harsh landscapes. They remained the frontier -- areas
where military garrisons were strategically placed to guard the extremities
of the Empire. The resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three
Roman legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester, in the
north; and Caerwent, in the south.
For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain
was a western breadbasket. Caesar had taken armies there to punish those who
were aiding the Gauls on the Continent in their fight to stay free of Roman
influence. Claudius invaded to give himself prestige; his subjugation of eleven
British tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Agricola gave us the most notice
of the heroic struggle of the native Britons through his biographer Tacitus.
Agricola also won the decisive victory of Mons Graupius in present-day
Scotland in 84 A.D. over Calgacus "the swordsman," that carried
Roman arms farther west and north than they had ever before ventured. They
called their newly conquered northern territory
Caledonia. The Caledonians were not easily
contained; they were quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the
scattered, home-sick Roman legionaries, including those under their ageing
commander Severus. By the end of the fourth century the Romans had had
enough; the last remaining Roman outposts in Caledonia
were abandoned. Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered.
The native tribes integrated into a town-based governmental system. Agricola
succeeded greatly in his aims to accustom the Britons "to a life of
peace and quiet by the provision of amenities." He consequently gave
private encouragement and official assistance to the building of
"temples, public squares and good houses." Many of these were built
in former military garrisons that became the coloniae, the Roman chartered
towns such as Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln, and York (where Constantine was declared
Emperor by his troops in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called municipia, included
such foundations as St. Albans (Verulamium).
The complex of baths and temples in the present-day city of Bath
show only too well the splendor of much of Roman life in southern Britain.
Chartered towns were governed to a large extent like Rome. They were ruled by an Ordo of l00
councillors (decurion) who had to be local residents and own a certain amount
of property. The Ordo was run by two magistrates, rotated annually. They were
responsible for collecting taxes, administering justice and undertaking
public works.
Outside the chartered towns, the inhabitants
were referred to as peregrini, or non-citizens, organized into local government
areas known as civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom boundaries. Canterbury and Chelmsford
were two capitals. In the countryside, away from the towns, with their
purposely built, properly drained streets, their forums and other public buildings,
bath houses, amphitheaters, and shops were the great villas, such as are
found at Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been
occupied by native Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted Roman
culture and customs. Developing out of the native and relatively crude
farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone walls, multiple
rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath houses. The third and
fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa building that further increased
their numbers of rooms and added a central courtyard. The elaborate surviving
mosaics found in some of these villas show a detailed construction and
intensity of labor that only the rich could have afforded; in most cases
their wealth came from the highly lucrative export of grain. Roman society in
Britain
was highly classified. At the top were those people associated with the
legions, the provincial administration, the government of towns and the
wealthy traders and commercial classes who enjoyed legal privileges not
generally accorded to the majority of the population. In 2l2 AD, the Emperor
Caracalla extended citizenship to all free born inhabitants of the empire,
but social and legal distinctions remained rigidly set between the upper rank
of citizens known as honestiores and the masses, known as humiliores. At the
lowest end of the scale were the slaves, many of whom were able to gain their
freedom, and many of whom might occupy important governmental posts. Women
were not allowed to hold any public office and had severely limited property
rights. One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system
of roads, in Britain
no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in Britain, a country with virtually
no roads at all, their first task was to build a system to link not only
their military headquarters, but also their isolated forts. Vital for trade,
the roads were also of paramount importance in the speedy movement of troops,
munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another. They also
allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to market. London was the chief administrative center of Britain,
and from it, roads spread out to all parts of the country. They included Ermine Street, to
Lincoln; Watling Street, first to Wroxeter, and
then to Chester, in the northwest on the Welsh
frontier; and the Fosse Way,
the first frontier of the province
of Britain, from Exeter
to Lincoln.
The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They followed
proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land, they avoided
wherever possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of the land, and
they stayed clear of the impenetrable forests. They also utilized bridges, an
innovation that the Romans introduced to Britain in place of the hazardous
fords at sriver crossings. An advantage of good roads was that communications
with all parts of the country could be effected. Roads carried the cursus
publicus, or imperial post. The Antonine Itinerary has survived: a road book
used by messengers that lists all the main routes in Britain, the principal towns and
forts they passed through, and the distances between them has survived. The
same information, in map form, is found in the Peutinger Table. It tells us
that resting places called mansiones were placed at various intervals along
the road to change horses and take lodgings. Despite these great advances in
administering a foreign land, the Roman armies did not have it all their own
way in their battles with the native tribesmen. Though it is true that some
of the natives, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw the Romans as
deliverers, not conquerors, heroic and often prolonged resistance came from
such leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices, betrayed by the Queen of the
Brigantes.
The revolt of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the
Iceni, nearly succeeded in driving the Romans out of Britain. Her people, incensed by
their brutal treatment at the hands of Roman officials, burned Colchester, London, and St. Albans,
destroying many armies ranged against them. It took a determined effort and
thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to reinforce Governor
Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 6l to defeat the British Queen, who took poison
rather than submit. Outside the villas and fortified settlements, the great
mass of the British people did not seem to have become Romanized. The
influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church.
Christianity had replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century,
as the history of Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not
successful in other areas. Latin did not replace Brittonic as the language of
the general population. The break up of Roman Britain began with the revolt
of Magnus Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander for
twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his
campaigns to dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large part of
the Roman garrison in Britain
with him to the Continent, and though he succeeded Gratian, he was killed by
the Emperor Thedosius in 388. The legions began to withdraw at the end of the
fourth century. Those who stayed behind were to become the Romanized Britons
who organized local defenses against the onslaught of the Saxon invaders. The
famous letter of A.D.410 from the Emperor Honorius told the cities of Britain
to look to their own defenses from that time on. As part of the east-coast
defenses, a command had been established under the Count of the Saxon Shore,
and a fleet had been organized to control the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to hold
the outlying province
of Britain, but
eventually, it was decided to abandon the whole project. In any case, the
communication from Honorius was a little late: the Saxon influence had
already begun in earnest.
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Originally published at http://www.picturesofengland.com/history/#
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