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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3

V >> Various >> Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3




II. _The Province of Britain and its Military System._--Geographically,
Britain consists of two parts: (1) the comparatively flat lowlands of the
south, east and midlands, suitable to agriculture and open to easy
intercourse with the continent, i.e. with the rest of the Roman empire; (2)
the district consisting of the hills of Devon and Cornwall, of Wales and of
northern England, regions lying more, and often very much more, than 600
ft. above the sea, scarred with gorges and deep valleys, mountainous in
character, difficult for armies to traverse, ill fitted to the peaceful
pursuits in agriculture. These two parts of the province differ also in
their history. The lowlands, as we have seen, were conquered easily and
quickly. The uplands were hardly subdued completely till the end of the 2nd
century. They differ, thirdly, in the character of their Roman occupation.
The lowlands were the scene of civil life. Towns, villages and country
houses were their prominent features; troops were hardly seen in them save
in some fortresses on the edge of the hills and in a chain of forts built
in the 4th century to defend the south-east coast, the so-called Saxon
Shore. The uplands of Wales and the north presented another spectacle. Here
civil life was almost wholly absent. No country town or country house has
been found more than 20 m. north of York or west of Monmouthshire. The
hills were one extensive military frontier, covered with forts and
strategic roads connecting them, and devoid of town life, country houses,
farms or peaceful civilized industry. This geographical division was not
reproduced by Rome in any administrative partitions of the province. At
first the whole was governed by one _legatus Augusti_ of consular standing.
Septimius Severus made it two provinces, Superior and Inferior, with a
boundary which probably ran from Humber to Mersey, but we do not know how
long this arrangement lasted. In the 5th century there were five provinces,
Britannia Prima and Secunda, Flavia and Maxima Caesariensis and (for a
while) Valentia, ruled by _praesides_ and _consulares_ under a _vicartus_,
but the only thing known of them is that Britannia Prima included
Cirencester.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Plan of Housesteads (Borcovicium) on Hadrian's
Wall.]

The army which guarded or coerced the province consisted, from the time of
Hadrian onwards, of (1) three legions, the Second at Isca Silurum
(Caerleon-on-Usk, _q.v._), the Ninth at Eburacum (_q.v._; now York), the
Twentieth at Deva (_q.v._; now Chester), a total of some 15,000 heavy
infantry; and (2) a large but uncertain number of auxiliaries, troops of
the second grade, organized in infantry cohorts or cavalry _alae_, each 500
or 1000 strong, and posted in _castella_ nearer the frontiers than the
legions. The legionary fortresses were large rectangular enclosures of 50
or 60 acres, surrounded by strong walls of which traces can still be seen
in the lower courses of the north and east town-walls of Chester, in the
abbey gardens at York, and on the south side of Caerleon. The auxiliary
_castella_ were hardly a tenth of the size, varying generally from three to
six acres according to the size of the regiment and the need for stabling.
Of these upwards of 70 are known in England and some 20 more in Scotland.
Of the English examples a few have been carefully excavated, notably
Gellygaer between Cardiff and Brecon, one of the most perfect specimens to
be found anywhere in the Roman empire of a Roman fort dating from the end
of the 1st century A.D.; Hardknott, on a Cumberland moor overhanging Upper
Eskdale; and Housesteads on Hadrian's wall. In Scotland excavation has been
more active, in particular at the forts of Birrens, Newstead near Melrose,
Lyne near Peebles, Ardoch between Stirling and Perth, and Castle Cary,
Rough Castle and Bar Hill on the wall of Pius. The internal arrangements of
all these forts follow one general plan. But in some of them the internal
buildings are all of stone, while in [v.04 p.0585] others, principally (it
seems) forts built before 150, wood is used freely and only the few
principal buildings seem to have been constructed throughout of stone.

We may illustrate their character from Housesteads, which, in the form in
which we know it, perhaps dates from Septimius Severus. This fort measures
about 360 by 600 ft. and covers a trifle less than 5 acres. Its ramparts
are of stone, and its north rampart coincides with the great wall of
Hadrian. Its interior is filled with stone buildings. Chief among these
(see fig. 1), and in the centre of the whole fort, is the Headquarters, in
Lat. _Principia_ or, as it is often (though perhaps less correctly) styled
by moderns, _Praetorium_. This is a rectangular structure with only one
entrance which gives access, first, to a small cloistered court (x. 4),
then to a second open court (x. 7), and finally to a row of five rooms (x.
8-12) containing the shrine for official worship, the treasury and other
offices. Close by were officers' quarters, generally built round a tiny
cloistered court (ix., xi., xii.), and substantially built storehouses with
buttresses and dry basements (viii.). These filled the middle third of the
fort. At the two ends were barracks for the soldiers (i.-vi.,
xiii.-xviii.). No space was allotted to private religion or domestic life.
The shrines which voluntary worshippers might visit, the public bath-house,
and the cottages of the soldiers' wives, camp followers, &c., lay outside
the walls. Such were nearly all the Roman forts in Britain. They differ
somewhat from Roman forts in Germany or other provinces, though most of the
differences arise from the different usage of wood and of stone in various
places.

Forts of this kind were dotted all along the military roads of the Welsh
and northern hill-districts. In Wales a road ran from Chester past a fort
at Caer-hyn (near Conway) to a fort at Carnarvon (Segontium). A similar
road ran along the south coast from Caerleon-on-Usk past a fort at Cardiff
and perhaps others, to Carmarthen. A third, roughly parallel to the shore
of Cardigan Bay, with forts at Llanio and Tommen-y-mur (near Festiniog),
connected the northern and southern roads, while the interior was held by a
system of roads and forts not yet well understood but discernible at such
points as Caer-gai on Bala Lake, Castle Collen near Llandrindod Wells, the
Gaer near Brecon, Merthyr and Gellygaer. In the north of Britain we find
three principal roads. One led due north from York past forts at Catterick
Bridge, Piers Bridge, Binchester, Lanchester, Ebchester to the wall and to
Scotland, while branches through Chester-le-Street reached the Tyne Bridge
(Pons Aelius) at Newcastle and the Tyne mouth at South Shields. A second
road, turning north-west from Catterick Bridge, mounted the Pennine Chain
by way of forts at Rokeby, Bowes and Brough-under-Stainmoor, descended into
the Eden valley, reached Hadrian's wall near Carlisle (Luguvallium), and
passed on to Birrens. The third route, starting from Chester and passing up
the western coast, is more complex, and exists in duplicate, the result
perhaps of two different schemes of road-making. Forts in plenty can be
detected along it, notably Manchester (Mancunium or Mamucium), Ribchester
(Bremetennacum), Brougham Castle (Brocavum), Old Penrith (Voreda), and on a
western branch, Watercrook near Kendal, Waterhead near the hotel of that
name on Ambleside, Hardknott above Eskdale, Maryport (Uxellodunum), and Old
Carlisle (possibly Petriana). In addition, two or three cross roads, not
yet sufficiently explored, maintained communication between the troops in
Yorkshire and those in Cheshire and Lancashire. This road system bears
plain marks of having been made at different times, and with different
objectives, but we have no evidence that any one part was abandoned when
any other was built. There are signs, however, that various forts were
dismantled as the country grew quieter. Thus, Gellygaer in South Wales and
Hardknott in Cumberland have yielded nothing later than the opening of the
2nd century.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Hadrian's Wall.

From _Social England_, by permission of Cassell & Co., Ltd.]

Besides these detached forts and their connecting roads, the north of
Britain was defended by Hadrian's wall (figs. 2 and 3). The history of this
wall has been given above. The actual works are threefold. First, there is
that which to-day forms the most striking feature in the whole, the wall of
stone 6-8 ft. thick, and originally perhaps 14 ft. high, with a deep ditch
in front, and forts and "mile castles" and turrets and a connecting road
behind it. On the high moors between Chollerford and Gilsland its traces
are still plain, as it climbs from hill to hill and winds along perilous
precipices. Secondly, there is the so-called "Vallum," in reality no
_vallum_ at all, but a broad flat-bottomed ditch out of which the earth has
been cast up on either side into regular and continuous mounds that
resemble ramparts. Thirdly, nowhere very clear on the surface and as yet
detected only at a few points, there are the remains of the "turf wall,"
constructed of sods laid in regular courses, with a ditch in front. This
turf wall is certainly older than the stone wall, and, as our ancient
writers mention two wall-builders, Hadrian and Septimius Severus, the
natural inference is that Hadrian built his wall of [v.04 p.0586] turf and
Severus reconstructed it in stone. The reconstruction probably followed in
general the line of Hadrian's wall in order to utilize the existing ditch,
and this explains why the turf wall itself survives only at special points.
In general it was destroyed to make way for the new wall in stone.
Occasionally (as at Birdoswald) there was a deviation, and the older work
survived. This conversion of earthwork into stone in the age of Severus can
be paralleled from other parts of the Roman empire.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Section of Hadrian's Wall.]

The meaning of the _vallum_ is much more doubtful. John Hodgson and Bruce,
the local authorities of the 19th century, supposed that it was erected to
defend the wall from southern insurgents. Others have ascribed it to
Agricola, or have thought it to be the wall of Hadrian, or even assigned it
to pre-Roman natives. The two facts that are clear about it are, that it is
a Roman work, no older than Hadrian (if so old), and that it was not
intended, like the wall, for military defence. Probably it is
contemporaneous with either the turf wall or the stone wall, and marked
some limit of the civil province of Britain. Beyond this we cannot at
present go.

III. _The Civilization of Roman Britain._--Behind these formidable
garrisons, sheltered from barbarians and in easy contact with the Roman
empire, stretched the lowlands of southern and eastern Britain. Here a
civilized life grew up, and Roman culture spread. This part of Britain
became Romanized. In the lands looking on to the Thames estuary (Kent,
Essex, Middlesex) the process had perhaps begun before the Roman conquest.
It was continued after that event, and in two ways. To some extent it was
definitely encouraged by the Roman government, which here, as elsewhere,
founded towns peopled with Roman citizens--generally discharged
legionaries--and endowed them with franchise and constitution like those of
the Italian municipalities. It developed still more by its own automatic
growth. The coherent civilization of the Romans was accepted by the
Britons, as it was by the Gauls, with something like enthusiasm. Encouraged
perhaps by sympathetic Romans, spurred on still more by their own
instincts, and led no doubt by their nobles, they began to speak Latin, to
use the material resources of Roman civilized life, and in time to consider
themselves not the unwilling subjects of a foreign empire, but the British
members of the Roman state. The steps by which these results were reached
can to some extent be dated. Within a few years of the Claudian invasion a
_colonia_, or municipality of time-expired soldiers, had been planted in
the old native capital of Colchester (Camulodunum), and though it served at
first mainly as a fortress and thus provoked British hatred, it came soon
to exercise a civilizing influence. At the same time the British town of
Verulamium (St Albans) was thought sufficiently Romanized to deserve the
municipal status of a _municipium_, which at this period differed little
from that of a _colonia_. Romanized Britons must now have begun to be
numerous. In the great revolt of Boadicea (60) the nationalist party seem
to have massacred many thousands of them along with actual Romans. Fifteen
or twenty years later, the movement increases. Towns spring up, such as
Silchester, laid out in Roman fashion, furnished with public buildings of
Roman type, and filled with houses which are Roman in fittings if not in
plan. The baths of Bath (Aquae Sulis) are exploited. Another _colonia_ is
planted at Lincoln (Lindum), and a third at Gloucester (Glevum) in 96. A
new "chief judge" is appointed for increasing civil business. The
tax-gatherer and recruiting officer begin to make their way into the hills.
During the 2nd century progress was perhaps slower, hindered doubtless by
the repeated risings in the north. It was not till the 3rd century that
country houses and farms became common in most parts of the civilized area.
In the beginning of the 4th century the skilled artisans and builders, and
the cloth and corn of Britain were equally famous on the continent. This
probably was the age when the prosperity and Romanization of the province
reached its height. By this time the town populations and the educated
among the country-folk spoke Latin, and Britain regarded itself as a Roman
land, inhabited by Romans and distinct from outer barbarians.

The civilization which had thus spread over half the island was genuinely
Roman, identical in kind with that of the other western provinces of the
empire, and in particular with that of northern Gaul. But it was defective
in quantity. The elements which compose it are marked by smaller size, less
wealth and less splendour than the same elements elsewhere. It was also
uneven in its distribution. Large tracts, in particular Warwickshire and
the adjoining midlands, were very thinly inhabited. Even densely peopled
areas like north Kent, the Sussex coast, west Gloucestershire and east
Somerset, immediately adjoin areas like the Weald of Kent and Sussex where
Romano-British remains hardly occur.

The administration of the civilized part of the province, while subject to
the governor of all Britain, was practically entrusted to local
authorities. Each Roman municipality ruled itself and a territory perhaps
as large as a small county which belonged to it. Some districts belonged to
the Imperial Domains, and were administered by agents of the emperor. The
rest, by far the larger part of the country, was divided up among the old
native tribes or cantons, some ten or twelve in number, each grouped round
some country town where its council (_ordo_) met for cantonal business.
This cantonal system closely resembles that which we find in Gaul. It is an
old native element recast in Roman form, and well illustrates the Roman
principle of local government by devolution.

In the general framework of Romano-British life the two chief features were
the town, and the _villa_. The towns of the province, as we have already
implied, fall into two classes. Five modern cities, Colchester, Lincoln,
York, Gloucester and St Albans, stand on the sites, and in some fragmentary
fashion bear the names of five Roman municipalities, founded by the Roman
government with special charters and constitutions. All of these reached a
considerable measure of prosperity. None of them rivals the greater
municipalities of other provinces. Besides them we trace a larger number of
country towns, varying much in size, but all possessing in some degree the
characteristics of a town. The chief of these seem to be cantonal capitals,
probably developed out of the market centres or capitals of the Celtic
tribes before the Roman conquest. Such are Isurium Brigantum, capital of
the Brigantes, 12 m. north-west of York and the most northerly
Romano-British town; Ratae, now Leicester, capital of the Coritani;
Viroconium, now Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, capital of the Cornovii; Venta
Silurum, now Caerwent, near Chepstow; Corinium, now Cirencester, capital of
the Dobuni; Isca Dumnoniorum, now Exeter, the most westerly of these towns;
Durnovaria, now Dorchester, in Dorset, capital of the Durotriges; Venta
Belgarum, now Winchester; Calleva Atrebatum, now Silchester, 10 m. south of
Reading; Durovernum Cantiacorum, now Canterbury; and Venta Icenorum, now
Caistor-by-Norwich. Besides these country towns, Londinium (London) was a
rich and important trading town, centre of the road system, and the seat of
the finance officials of the province, as the remarkable objects discovered
in it abundantly prove, while Aquae Sulis (Bath) was a spa provided with
splendid baths, and a richly adorned temple of the native patron deity, Sul
or Sulis, whom the Romans called Minerva. Many smaller places, too, for
example, Magna or Kenchester near Hereford, Durobrivae or Rochester in
Kent, another Durobrivae near Peterborough, a site of uncertain name near
Cambridge, another of uncertain name near Chesterford, exhibited some
measure of town life.

As a specimen we may take Silchester, remarkable as the one town in the
whole Roman empire which has been completely [v.04 p.0587] and
systematically uncovered. As we see it to-day, it is an open space of 100
acres, set on a hill with a wide prospect east and south and west, in shape
an irregular hexagon, enclosed in a circuit of a mile and a half by the
massive ruins of a city wall which still stands here and there some 20 ft.
high (fig. 4). Outside, on the north-east, is the grassy hollow of a tiny
amphitheatre; on the west a line of earthworks runs in wider circuit than
the walls. The area within the walls is a vast expanse of cultivated land,
unbroken by any vestige of antiquity; yet the soil is thick with tile and
potsherd, and in hot summers the unevenly growing corn reveals the remains
of streets beneath the surface. Casual excavations were made here in 1744
and 1833; more systematic ones intermittently between 1864 and 1884 by the
Rev. J.G. Joyce and others; finally, in May 1890, the complete uncovering
of the whole site was begun by Mr G.E. Fox and others. The work was carried
on with splendid perseverance, and the uncovering of the interior was
completed in 1908.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--General Plan of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum).]

The chief results concern the buildings. Though these have vanished wholly
from the surface, the foundations and lowest courses of their walls survive
fairly perfect below ground: thus the plan of the town can be minutely
recovered, and both the character of the buildings which make up a place
like Calleva, and the character of Romano-British buildings generally,
become plainer. Of the buildings the chief are:--

1. _Forum._--Near the middle of the town was a rectangular block covering
two acres. It comprised a central open court, 132 ft. by 140 ft. in size,
surrounded on three sides by a corridor or cloister, with rooms opening on
the cloister (fig. 5). On the fourth side was a great hall, with rooms
opening into it from behind. This hall was 270 ft. long and 58 ft. wide;
two rows of Corinthian columns ran down the middle, and the clerestory roof
may have stood 50 ft. above the floor; the walls were frescoed or lined
with marble, and for ornament there were probably statues. Finally, a
corridor ran round outside the whole block. Here the local authorities had
their offices, justice was administered, traders trafficked, citizens and
idlers gathered. Though we cannot apportion the rooms to their precise
uses, the great hall was plainly the basilica, for meetings and business;
the rooms behind it were perhaps law courts, and some of the rooms on the
other three sides of the quadrangle may have been shops. Similar municipal
buildings existed in most towns of the western Empire, whether they were
full municipalities or (as probably Calleva was) of lower rank. The
Callevan Forum seems in general simpler than others, but its basilica is
remarkably large. Probably the British climate compelled more indoor life
than the sunnier south.

2. _Temples._--Two small square temples, of a common western-provincial
type, were in the east of the town; the _cella_ of the larger measured 42
ft. sq., and was lined with Purbeck marble. A third, circular temple stood
between the forum and the south gate. A fourth, a smaller square shrine
found in 1907 a little east of the forum, yielded some interesting
inscriptions which relate to a gild (_collegium_) and incidentally confirm
the name Calleva.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Plan of Forum, Basilica and surroundings,
Silchester.]

3. _Christian Church._--Close outside the south-east angle of the forum was
a small edifice, 42 ft. by 27 ft., consisting of a nave and two aisles
which ended at the east in a porch as wide as the building, and at the west
in an apse and two flanking chambers. The nave and porch were floored with
plain red tesserae: in the apse was a simple mosaic panel in red, black and
white. Round the building was a yard, fenced with wooden palings; in it
were a well near the apse, and a small structure of tile with a pit near
the east end. No direct proof of date or use was discovered. But the ground
plan is that of an early Christian church of the "basilican" type. This
type comprised nave and aisles, ending at one end in an apse and two
chambers resembling rudimentary transepts, and at the other end in a porch
(_narthex_). Previous to about A.D. 420 the porch was often at the east end
and the apse at the west, and the altar, often movable, stood in the
apse--as at Silchester, perhaps, on the mosaic panel. A court enclosed the
whole; near the porch was a laver for the ablutions of intending
worshippers. Many such churches have been found in other countries,
especially in Roman Africa; no other satisfactory instance is known in
Britain.

4. _Town Baths._--A suite of public baths stood a little east of the forum.
At the entrance were a peristyle court for loungers and a latrine: hence
the bather passed into the Apodyterium (dressing-room), the Frigidarium
(cold room) fitted with a cold bath for use at the end of the bathing
ceremony, and a series of hot rooms--the whole resembling many modern
Turkish baths. In their first form the baths of Silchester were about 160
ft. by 80 ft., but they were later considerably extended.

5. _Private Houses._--The private houses of Silchester are of two types.
They consist either of a row of rooms, with a corridor along them, and
perhaps one or two additional rooms at one or both ends, or of three such
corridors and rows of rooms, forming three sides of a large square open
yard. They are detached houses, standing each in its own garden, and not
forming terraces or rows. The country houses of Roman Britain have long
been recognized as embodying these (or allied) types; now it becomes plain
that they were the normal types throughout Britain. They differ widely from
the town houses of Rome and Pompeii: they are less unlike some of the
country houses of Italy and Roman Africa; but their real parallels occur in
Gaul, and they may be Celtic types modified to Roman use--like Indian
bungalows. Their internal fittings--hypocausts, frescoes, mosaics--are
everywhere Roman; those at Silchester are average specimens, and, except
for one mosaic, not individually striking. The largest Silchester house,
with a special annexe for baths, is usually taken to be a guest-house or
inn for travellers between London and the west (fig. 6). Altogether, the
town probably did not contain more than seventy or eighty houses of any
size, and large spaces were not built over at all. This fact and the
peculiar character of the houses must have given to Silchester rather the
appearance of a village with scattered cottages, each in its own plot
facing its own way, than a town with regular and continuous streets.

6. _Industries._--Shops are conjectured in the forum and elsewhere, [v.04
p.0588] but were not numerous. Many dyers' furnaces, a little silver
refinery, and perhaps a bakery have also been noticed.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Plan of supposed Inn and Baths at Silchester.]

7. _Streets, Roads, &c._--The streets were paved with gravel: they varied
in width up to 281/2 ft. They intersect regularly at right angles, dividing
the town into square blocks, like modern Mannheim or Turin, according to a
Roman system usual in both Italy and the provinces: plainly they were laid
out all at once, possibly by Agricola (Tac. _Agr._ 21) and most probably
about his time. There were four chief gates, not quite symmetrically
placed. The town-walls are built of flint and concrete bonded with
ironstone, and are backed with earth. In the plans, though not in the
reports, of the excavations, they are shown as built later than the
streets. No traces of meat-market, theatre or aqueduct have come to light:
water was got from wells lined with wooden tubs, and must have been scanty
in dry summers. Smaller objects abound--coins, pottery, window and bottle
and cup glass, bronze ornaments, iron tools, &c.--and many belong to the
beginnings of Calleva, but few pieces are individually notable. Traces of
late Celtic art are singularly absent; Roman fashions rule supreme, and
inscriptions show that even the lower classes here spoke and wrote Latin.
Outside the walls were the cemeteries, not yet explored. Of suburbs we have
as yet no hint. Nor indeed is the neighbourhood of Calleva at all rich in
Roman remains. In fact, as well as in Celtic etymology, it was "the town in
the forest." A similar absence of remains may be noticed outside other
Romano-British towns, and is significant of their economic position. Such
doubtless were most of the towns of Roman Britain--thoroughly Romanized,
peopled with Roman-speaking citizens, furnished with Roman appurtenances,
living in Roman ways, but not very large, not very rich, a humble witness
to the assimilating power of the Roman civilization in Britain.

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