Roman Britain (Routledge Revivals)

Edward Jones, Michael Hayhoe, Beryl Jones, Edward H. Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317694175
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Roman Britain, first published in 1972, gives the young reader a vivid impression of the British Isles immediately preceding, during and after the Roman occupation, which lasted for 400 years. Using a selection of extracts, both historical and imaginative, it offer a suitably comprehensive account of Roman Britain: the campaigns fought to subdue it, the military and civil government established to govern it, relations between the Imperial administration and the natives, and the departure of the legions to fight elsewhere in the Empire.

Selections of poetry by John Masefield, W.H. Auden, Rudyard Kipling and A.E. Housman are included, together with prose extracts from Bede, Tacitus, Hilaire Belloc, Henry Treece, Alfred Duggan, Rudyard Kipling. Physically compact, Roman Britain encourages young classicists and historians to engage imaginatively with the subject, whilst also supplying ample opportunity for more detailed discussion and further reading.

The long peace

20 The Roman Wall

ANDREW YOUNG

Though the Caledonian chieftain, Calcagus, was defeated, the Picts and Scots continued to harry the northern provinces until, in AD 122, the Emperor Hadrian began his famous wall from the Tyne to the Solway Firth. It remains a massive reminder of the power of Rome.

Though moss and lichen crawl
These square-set stones still keep their serried ranks
Guarding the ancient wall,
That whitlow-grass with lively silver pranks.

Time they could not keep back
More than the wind that from the snow-streaked north
Taking the air for track
Flows lightly over to the south shires forth.

Each stone might be a cist
Where memory sleeps in dust and nothing tells
More than the silent mist
That smokes among the heather-blackened fells.

Twitching its ears as pink
As blushing scallops loved by Romans once
A lamb leaps to its drink
And, as the quavering cry breaks on the stones,

Time like a leaf down-drops
And pacing by the stars and thorn-trees' sough
A Roman sentry stops
And hears the water lapping on Crag Lough.

From Collected. Poems 1960

21 On the Great Wall

RUDYARD KIPLING

The Wall was not the scene of constant fighting between Roman defenders and the northern attackers, but it had to be constantly garrisoned, never a popular prospect for the professional Roman soldier. In this passage from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling, such a man expresses his dismay at what he finds when he arrives at the Wall.

'Of course, the farther North you go the emptier are the roads. At last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that have been. No more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates who knew your Father when he was young, and invite you to stay with them; no news at the temples and way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. There's where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves. Your pony shies at them, and your men laugh.

The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watchtowers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by armed Britons of the North Shore. In the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The hard road goes on and on—and the wind sings through your helmet-plume—past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple heather country of broken stone.

Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind . . . always behind . . . one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!'

'Ah!' said the children, taking breath.

'You may well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall.'

'Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen-garden?' said Dan.

'No, no! It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with guard-houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast, from guard-house to guard-house. A little curtain-wall, no higher than a man's neck, runs along the top of the thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty feet high is the Wall, and on the Picts' side, the North, is a ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains. The Little People come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads.

But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the town behind it. Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the South side, and no one was allowed to build there. Now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the Wall; making a thin town eighty miles long. Think of it! One roaring, rioting, cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern beach! On one side heather, woods and ruins where Picts hide, and on the other, a vast town—long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall!!

My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great North Road runs through the Wall into the Province of Valentia.' Parnesius laughed scornfully. 'The Province of Valentia! We followed the road, therefore, into Hunno town, and stood astonished. The place was a fair—a fair of peoples from every corner of the Empire. Some were racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see cocks fight. A boy not much older than myself, but I could see he was an officer, reined up before me and asked what I wanted.

"My station," I said, and showed him my shield. Parnesius held up his broad shield with its three X's like letters on a beer-cask.

"Lucky omen!" said he. "Your Cohort's the next tower to us, but they're all at the cock-fight. This is a happy place. Come and wet the Eagles." He meant to offer me a drink.

"When I've handed over my men," I said. I felt angry and ashamed.

"Oh, you'll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense," he answered. "But don't let me interfere with your hopes. Go on to the statue of Roma Dea. You can't miss it. The main road into Valentia!" and he laughed and rode off. I could see the statue not a quarter of a mile away, and there I went. At some time or other the Great North Road ran under it into Valentia; but the far end had been blocked up because of the Picts, and on the plaster a man had scratched, "Finish!" It was like marching into a cave. We grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came. There was a door at one side painted with our number. We prowled in, and I found a cook asleep, and ordered him to give us food. Then I climbed to the top of the Wall, and looked out over the Pict country, and I—thought,' said Parnesius. 'The bricked-up arch with "Finish!" on the plaster was what shook me, for I was not much more than a boy.'

'What a shame,' said Una. 'But did you feel happy after you'd had a good _____' Dan stopped her with a nudge.

'Happy?' said Parnesius. 'When the men of the Cohort I was to command came back unhelmeted from the cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me who I was? No, I was not happy; but I made my new Cohort unhappy too ... I wrote my Mother I was happy, but, oh, my friends'—he stretched arms over bare knees— 'I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered through my first months on the Wall. Remember this: among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and I thought I had lost the favour of Maximus, my General), scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or folly. Either he had killed a man, or taken money, or insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the Gods, and so had been sent to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame or fear. And the men were as the officers. Remember, also, that the Wall was manned by every breed and race in the Empire. No two towers spoke the same tongue, or worshipped the same Gods. In one thing only were we all equal. No matter what arms we had used before we came to the Wall, on the Wall we were all archers, like the Scythians. The Pict cannot run away from the arrow, or crawl under it. He is a bowman himself, he knows!'

From Puck of Pook's Hill

22 Roman Wall blues

W. H. AUDEN

This rather sad little poem by W. H. Auden suggests some reasons for the ordinary Roman soldier's not liking service at the Wall!

Over the heather the wet wind blows,
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
I'm a Wail soldier, I don't know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,
I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;
There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I'm a veteran with only one eye
I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

From Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957

23 The problems of peace

ALFRED DUGGAN

Whatever the state of affairs on the Wall, the Roman occupation of Britain as a whole was not always a matter of fighting. Rules had to be made and forms had to be filled in, as they do in any civilized society. This description of a day in the life of a senior Roman administrator in Londinium shows some of the problems he had to deal with.

The climate of Britain is notoriously vile. But there are occasional fine days, and sometimes they come when they are wanted; otherwise it would be impossible to cultivate the soil of the island, instead of merely very difficult indeed. In the eleventh year of the Emperor Honorius, A.D. 405, the 10th of September was fine; C. Sempronius Felix, Praeses of Britannia Prima, realized that as soon as he woke, from the pattern made by the low sun on the ceiling of his bedroom. At once he thought of the harvest; a wet August had damaged the crops as they were reaped, but a few days of sunshine would dry the ground and enable the farmers to move their wagons between field and barn; they might save more corn than he had been counting on yesterday. He decided to go early to the office, and revise the provisional figures his clerks had made out during the storms of the last month. He threw off the bedclothes and clapped his hands for his valet.

In half an hour he was ready to set out. He was an African from the Mediterranean Sea, where men rise early to work before the heat of midday, and it pleased him to set an example; the provincials were too fond of lying in bed until this beastly island of theirs had warmed up after the chills of the night. He did not waste time on his toilet; it is the privilege of the head of any organization to dress as he pleases when his subordinates have to appear neatly turned out, and there was no one in Londinium who was his superior in rank. Besides, it was the custom of the ancients to bathe after the work of the day, and senior officials should follow ancient custom. He ate a bit of bread and smoked bacon while the valet fastened his tunic, and muttered a very short prayer to the Christian God while his hair was combed over the bald patch. On his way to the stairs he passed the stout door of the women's apartments, now standing open as the housemaids began their work; the eunuch whispered that the Lady Maria was not yet awake, and he did not enter. His young wife usually woke in a bad temper, and it was well to keep out of her way in the early morning; so the early-rising servants did their work very quietly. That was a good thing, though Felix did not really approve of a young lady who was always flogging her maids. However, he had not married Maria for her character, but for her family connections, and he seldom saw her except at meals.

Two footmen waited for him outside. They were hefty, fierce-looking Germans, dressed in what the Divine Gratianus had considered the sort of armour German chiefs would have worn if they had ruled a population of skilled bronze-founders. In fact, they were extremely meek, terrified of infringing a law they did not understand; real soldiers bullied them dreadfully. In the good old days the ruler of a Province was guarded by soldiers, but the Divine Diocletianus had totally severed the civil service from the army; now a Praeses, or even a Vicarius, might not give orders to the most junior recruit. Sometimes Felix regretted that he had lost the power of the sword which Legates had once possessed. But gentlemen were not allowed to join the army, and it was as well that everyone should realize that he had no connection with the hard-drinking profligate boors who held military command in this degenerate age. He strolled along the sunny side of the street with his two attendants following, and tried to see himself as some magistrate of the Republic, a Praetor or a Quaestor, walking through the Sacred City with lictors in his train. It was his favourite daydream, for his education had taught him that the past was a great deal better than the present.

All the same, Londinium was looking very splendid on this fine September morning; architecture was one of the few arts that had improved since the days of the Republic, and this city, unlike most of those in Britain, had not been sacked in the Pictish War. It was very large, a mile long by half a mile wide, and since it had always been the financial capital of Britain (though not the military headquarters) it possessed a fine collection of government offices.

There were few citizens about at this early hour, and those he passed paid little attention to him; the lower classes backed against the wall and cringed in silence, and the more prosperous raised an arm in greeting; but nobody tried to hand him a petition. When he first came to this Province, ten years ago, everyone he met would thrust a paper into his hand, usually wrapped round a bribe; but now they had learned that he never did business outside the office, and that he only took presents after a transaction had been completed, as became an honest official.

It was at this morning hour, before the details of office work had altered the focus of his mind, that he liked to picture the whole Diocese, busy in the cause of Civilization. Here in the peaceful south the coloni grew corn and flax, on the northern moors sheep were sheared, from the western mines came lead and tin; stone must be quarried, fish caught, timber cut and charcoal burned, to supply the wants of the primary producers; there must be enough of every commodity, yet waste must be avoided. All this was the elementary work of the civil service. There should also be a surplus, after paying for defence, to support the sculptors, scholars and poets who were the embodiment of the Good Life of the Oecumene, the interlocking household of the Civilized World. It was much more difficult to find this surplus, and to keep it out of the military pay chest.

The Treasury building was in the old style of the Claudian Emperors, and the columns had been clumsily fashioned by barbarous provincials when the whole place was rebuilt after being burned by the Iceni; that was more than three hundred years ago, and Londinium had not since been sacked by an enemy, though occasionally Roman troops had plundered it in civil war. It was quite an historical monument, though Felix sometimes wished the Picts could have destroyed it in the troubles of forty years ago; then he could have rebuilt in the latest style, with modern conveniences. Nowadays there was more paper work, and the files had to be kept longer; while as most trials were held in private there was no need for the great judgment hall.

The Praeses strode through the portico into his private room off the entrance lobby. Waiting beside his desk, holding a bundle of rolled papers, was Paulinus the freedman, his confidential secretary. Instead of explaining the day's business he plunged into a discussion of the news: 'Good morning, sir. Have you heard anything about the campaign in Italy? or the Irish fleet in the Channel?'

'Nothing fresh, Paulinus. As I told you before, that is good news. If anything had gone wrong the rumour would reach...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Map of Roman Britain
• The fair land
• Invasion
• Early peace and resistance
• The long peace
• The Romans leave