The Romanization of Roman Britain

e Romanization, we find, held its own for a while. The sense of belonging to the Empire had not quite died out even in sixth-century Britain. Roman names continued to be used, not exclus

omanization of Britain was plainly no mere interlude, which passed without leaving a mark b

nterlaced or plaitwork, which has been well studied by Mr. Romilly Allen. But how far it was borrowed from Romano-

, with the result that, once settled there, or perhaps rather in the course of settling there, they went on to pillage Roman Britain. There were also movements in the south, but apparently on a smaller scale and a more peaceful plan.[1] At a date given commonly as A.D. 265-70-though there does not seem to be any very good reason for it-the Dessi or Déisi were expelled from Meath and a part of them settled in the south-west of Wales, in the land then called Demetia. This was a region which was both thinly inhabited and imperfectly Romanized. In it fugitives from Ireland might easily find room. The settlement may have been formed, as Professor Bury suggests, with the consent of the Imperial Government and under conditions of service. But we are enti

s to emphasize them; see also Zimmer, Nennius Vindicatus, pp. 84 foll., and Kuno Meyer, Cymmrodorion Transactions, 1895-6, pp. 55 foll. The decision of the question seems to depend upon whether we should regard the Goidelic elements visible in wes

y latest period in the history of Calleva. Its inscription is Goidelic: that is, it does not belong to the ordinary Callevan population, which was presumably Brythonic. It may be best explained as the work of some western Celt who reached Silchester before its British citizens abandoned it in despair. We do not kn

xix. 628. Whether the man who wrote was Irish or British depends on the answer to the question set forth in the preceding note. Unfortunately, we do no

21. OGAM INSCRIPTI

the fourth century it had been found necessary to defend the coasts of East Anglia, Kent, and Sussex, some of the most thickly populated and highly civilized parts of Britain, against the pirates by a series of forts which extended from the Wash to Spithead, and were known as the forts of the Saxon Shore. Fifty or seventy years later the raiders, whether English seamen or Picts and Scots from Caledonia and Ireland, devastated the coasts of the province and perhaps reached even the midlands.[1] When, seventy years later still, the English came, no longer to plunder but to settle, they occupied first the Romanized area

y in Northants (Victoria Hist. i. 186), the raids must have covered all the midlands: see Engl. Hist. Review, 1895, p. 711; Zimmer, Realenc. für protestantische Theol. x. (

st. Review, xix. 625;

re, i.

ized houses, of city life and Roman culture, for a Celtic land. No doubt it attempted to keep up its Roman fashions. The writers may well be correct who speak of two conflicting parties, Roman and Celtic, among the Britons of the sixth century. But the Celtic element triumphed. Gildas, about A.D. 540, describes a Britain confined to the west of our island, which is ver

to a flourishing civilization. We may conclude that the Romanized part of Britain had been lost by his time, or that, if some part was still held by the British, long war had destroyed its civilization. Unfortunately we cann

uce it to obedience.[1] It may therefore have been, as Mommsen suggests, one of the least Romanized corners of Gaul, and in it the native idiom may have retained unusual vitality. Yet that native speech was not strong enough to live on permanently. The Celtic which is spoken to-day in Brittany is not a Gaulish but a British Celtic; it is the result of British influences. Brittany would have sooner or later become assimilated to the general Romano-Gaulish civilization, had not its Celtic elements won fresh strength from immigrant Britons. This immigration is usually described as an influx o

ll. leg. Germanicar. et Britannicin. cum auxiliis earum. Presumably it is either earlier than the Gallic Empire of 258-73, or falls between that and the revolt of Carausius in 287. The notion of O. Fiebiger

rm of the name is) was colonized from Corstopitum (Corbridge on the Tyne, near Hadrian's Wall). But the latter, always to some extent a military site, can hardly have

12,000 men. Hodgkin (Cornwall and Brittany, Penryn, 1911) suggests that the soldiers of Maximus settled on the Loire about 388, and that Riotamus was one of their descendants. He quotes Gildas as saying that the British troops of Maximus went abroad with him and never

ho is said to have gone from Ireland to Gaul about A.D. 428 to help the Romans and Aetius. Z

the age. Gildas wrote about A.D. 540, three generations after the Saxon settlements had begun. He was a priest, well educated, and well acquainted with Latin, which he once calls nostra lingua. He was also not unfriendly to the Roman party among the Britons, and not unaware of the relation of Britain to the Empire.[1] Yet he knew substantially nothing of the history of Britain as a Roman province. He drew from some source now lost to us-possibly an ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesi

ne than Mommsen seems to allow. Such a phrase as ita ut non Britannia sed Romania censeretur implies a consciousne

. Compare the phrases of Orosius, vii. 35 (Theodosius) posuit in Deo spem suam seseque adversus Maximum tyr

and, the native Celtic instinct is more definitely alive and comes into sharper contrast with the idea of Rome. Throughout, no detail occurs which enlarges our knowledge of Roman or of early post-Roman Britain. The same features recur in later writers who might be or have been supposed to have had access to British sources. Geoffrey of Monmouth-to take only the most famous-asserts that he used a Breton book which told him all manner of fact

prince with a Celtic name may have ruled Kent in 450. There were, indeed, plenty of rulers with barbari

h name Silchester disproves this idea. Had he used a genuinely ancient authority, he would have (as elsewhere) employed the Roman name. Another explanation may be given. Geoffrey wrote in an ant

ork, borrowed a few facts from Geoffrey of Monmouth, which are wanting in his first edition (see the All Souls MS.; the truth is obscured in the Rolls Series text). He also preserves one local tradition from Colchester: otherwise he contains not

ly too likely, as the quest advances, to prove a phantom. It is, too, a borderland, and its explorers need to know something of the regions on both sides of the frontier.

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