[Rollei] Roman Britain

[Marc James Small <msmall >]

I must jump into this discussion, as my particular area of academic
interest is "Sub-Roman Britain" (the province of Britannia and its
successor-states from roughly 407 AD until the stabilization of English and
Celtic lines around 650 AD.

Britain was a pretty wild place at the beginning of Roman rule under
Claudius in 43 AD, though some artisans and merchants already were
acquainted with Roman ways and the Latin language from the trade relations
between Gaul and Britain, and a few, at least, of the aristocracy had been
educated under the Romans.  It took approximately a century to fully subdue
the province and, even then, the Romans never did pacify the Highlands
(Northwest Scotland and Britain from roughly Aberdeen through Cornwall
(then Dumnonia) -- the Romans always maintained good roads, solid forts,
and sound military forces in these regions, and the locals simply ignored
the Roman rule that they were not to go about bearing arms.

By 300 AD, save for the Highlands, the province was an integrated part of
the Roman Empire and it was a land of small farms, villas, and towns which
served as industrial and commercial centers -- Londinium was the greatest
of these, but others, such as Eboracum (York), also thrived.  My copy of
both Collingwood & Myres and of Salway are upstairs in the attic and
currently unavailable, as my wife has hired some guys to paint the hallway,
but I believe the population of Roman Britian is generally regarded as
having been about a million.

The Fourth Century saw a decline in trade and a trend for the small farms
to be consolidated into "latifundia" -- large farms which we would regard
as similar to the holdings of our own "agri-business" corporations such as
ADM and which were to serve as one of the pillars on which the Feudal
System was to evolve.  Attacks from both east and west became frequent --
some of the "Scotti" (the Irish)  even settled in unpopulated areas of
Wales, while the "Saxon Shore" in eastern Britain became an area of
increasing military concern.  

The Fifth Century saw the Roman troops withdrawn in 407 AD and the province
cast onto its own resources;  it successfully remained part of the Roman
world for another two or three generations but the collapse of Gaul in the
later part of that century effectively cut off Britain from the
Mediterranean world, though we have sound evidence that at least a few of
the aristocracy continued to send their kids to Italy for education and
military training.  By 500 AD, the province was on short commons but, by
then, those "Saxon foeman, Saxon bowman" were on the scene and Britain was
being driven back into the Highlands which had remained obstinant under
Roman rule and which never did openly submit to English conquest, while the
Irish were persuaded to move their depredations north to the western
regions of Pictland, where they carried the name of "Scotti" to the Kingdom
of Dalradia, merged by Kenneth MacAlpine in the 10th Century with Pictland
to form the Kingdom of Scotland.

Archæologic evidence shows that living quarters became substantially more
crowded and fortified as the Fifth Century progressed, while the use of
currency declined (Gresham's Rule, yet again!) and the quality of trade
goods fell while their provenance shifted from the Mediterranean to goods
of Continental origin, especially those from Iberia.  There was an
onslaught of Bubonic Plague early in the Fifth Century along with a
climatic decline leading to reduced agricultural output.  Britain entered
the Fifth Century an integrated part of a major polity and left it a loose
federation of states attempting to survive in a world beset with violence
and the Four Horsemen.

There actually is a relatively rich literature on Britain in contemporary
sources:

CÆSAR discusses the political problems he had with the Belgæ who lived in
his day both in the Pays-Bas and in Britain, and his invasion in 54 BC and
its follow-up the next year.  

TACITUS discusses Britain both in the monograph he wrote on the life of his
father-in-law, Agricola -- one of the early governors of Roman Britain and
the fellow who convinced the Picts to leave the southern portions of the
island alone -- and in the ANNALES and HISTORIÆ.  '

SUETONIUS mentions Britain in several of his biographies.  

Several Classical geographers and historians mention Britain peripherally.

VERGIL mentions Britain and the "Picts who sport garments marked with
rectangular patterns", the first mention of the Tartan.

VEGETIUS mentions warfare in the English Channel.

There are a few other mentions in other Latin and Greek authors but I do
not have my bibliography at hand.

And there is also a fascinating Celtic literature:

GILDAS, a British monk, wrote a religious invective in Latin around 550 AD
which discusses the last days of Roman rule and the transition.  Gildas was
a primary source for the Venerable BEDE, whose work on early Anglo-Saxon
history in Britain is highly regarded.

THE GODODDIN, in Old Welsh, is an epic poem discussing a raid by a British
force against an Anglian tribe around 625 AD which resulted in a British
defeat although some of the British "fought like the soldiers of Arthur",
the earliest reference to King Arthur.

NENNIUS and the various Chronicles pick up from there, leading to Wace and
Layamon and the later writers on "the matter of Britain".

There are also a significant number of surviving epigraphia -- tombstones,
graffiti, monuments, and the like -- which show the persistence of Roman
culture into the late British and early Old Welsh world.

It was a fascinating time -- but it never had a population of ten million.

(One minor but interesting note:  the characteristic German tribe were the
Teutones, from whom we derive the modern name "Teutons", while the
characteristic Celtic tribe were the Belgæ who dominated north-western Gaul
and south-eastern Britain and from whom Belgium earns its moniker.  Modern
research suggests, rather strongly, that the Teutones were a Celtic tribe
who had crossed the Rhine and became part of the Germanic folk, while the
Belgæ seem to have been by origin a German tribe who had done the opposite.)

Marc



msmall    FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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