The Romanization of Roman Britain

y helps us to trace out the chronology of the process. A few facts and probabilities emerge as guides. Intercourse between south-

points the same way. The peculiar status of municipium was granted in the early Empire especially to native provincial towns which had become Romanized without official Roman action or settlement of Roman soldiers or citizens, and which had, as it were, merited municipal privileges. It is quite likely that such Rom

tiq. Lond., xxi. 461 Journal of Roman Studies, i. 146. Mr. H.B. Walters has dealt with the Southwark piece in the Proce

been made by Claudius than by Nero, and more likely to b

t is just at this period (about 75-85 A.D.) that towns like Silchester, Bath, Caerwent, seem to take definite shape,[2] and civil judges (legati iuridici) were appointed, presumably to administer the justice more frequently required by the advancing civilization.[3] In A.D. 85 it was thought safe to reduce the garrison by a legion and some auxiliaries.[4] Progress, however, wa

Agr. 21, quoted in

ce of coins implies that the development of the place began in the Flavian period (Athenaeum, Dec. 15, 1904). At Bath the earliest datable stones belong to the same time (Victoria Hist. of Somerset, vol. i, Roman Bath), the f

wski), inscription of Salvius Liberalis; C. iii. 2864=9960, inscription of Iavolenus Priscus.

xix. (1905) 58, withdrawal of Batavian cohorts.

eliana, xxv. (1904) 142-7, and Proceedings o

d century than the later date when most of the town walls in Britain and Gaul were probably built, the end of the third or even the fourth century. T

er than about A.D. 250. Despite the ill name that attaches to the third and fourth centuries, they were perhaps for Britain, as for parts of Gaul,[1] a period of progressive prosperity. Certainly, the number of British country-houses and farms inhabited during the years A.D. 280-350 must have been very large. Prosperity culminated, perhaps, in the Constantinian Age. Then, as Eumenius tells us, skilled artisans abounded in Br

?m. Gesch., v. 97, 106,

ibus illae provinciae (Britain) redundabant accepit artifices, et nunc exstructione v

2,3, annona a Brittaniis sueta

Constantio Caesari, 11 tanto laeta munere pastionum. Traces of dyeing works have been discovered at Silchester (Archaeologia, liv. 460, &c

nt by marauding bands, and some abandoned by their owners.[2] Therewith came necessarily, as in many other provinces, a decline of Roman influences and a rise of barbarism. Men took the lead who were not polished and civilized Romans of Italy or of the provinces, but warriors and captains of warrior bands. The Menapian Carausius, whatever his birthplace,[3] was the forerunner of a numerous class. Finally, the great raid of 406-7 a

ins such as those which show victorious Constans on a galley, recrossing the Channel after his success (Coh

lle, Holbury, Carisbrooke, &c., in Hampshire (Victoria Hist. of Hants, i. 294 foll.). The Croydon h

rry Meeting, 1891). The one ancient authority, Aurelius Victor (xxxix. 20), describes him simply as Menapiae civis. The Ga

step would be natural enough. But Zosimus, a little later on (vi. 10, A.D. 410), casually states that Honorius wrote to Britain, bidding the provincials defend themselves, so that the act of 408 cannot have been final-unless, indeed, as the context of Zosimus suggests and as Gothofredus and others have thought, t

d. In the towns and among the upper class in the country Romanization was substantially complete-as complete as in northern Gaul, and possibly indeed even more complete. But both the lack of definite evidence and the probabilities of the case require us to admit that the peasantry may have been less thoroughly Romanized. It was covered with a superimposed layer of Roman civilization. But beneath this layer the native element may have remained potentially, if not actually, Celtic, and in the remoter distric