THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 195

Roman Britain

13-1. Roman Britain

THE character and history of Roman Britain, as of many other Roman provinces, were predominantly determined by the facts of its geography. To that cause, or set of causes, more than to any other, we must attribute alike the Roman desire to conquer the province and the actual stages of the conquest, the distribution of the troops employed as permanent garrison, the quality and extent of the Romanised civilisation, and, lastly, a great part of the long series of incidents by which the island was lost to Rome and Roman culture.

Geologically, Britain forms the northwest side of a huge valley which had its southeast side in northern and central France. Down the centre of this valley ran two rivers, the one flowing southwest along a bed now covered by the English Channel, the other flowing northeast through a region now beneath the German Ocean. From these rivers, the land sloped upwards, south-east to Vosges, Alps, and Cevennes, northwest to Cornwall, Wales and northern Britain. The two rivers have long vanished. But the configuration of their valleys has lasted. Though unquiet seas now divide England from north-western Europe, the two areas, that were once the two sides of the valleys, still look to each other. Their lowlands lie opposite ; their main rivers flow out into the intervening sea; their easiest entrances face; each area lies open by nature to the trade or the brute force of the other; each has its most fertile, most habitable, and least defensible districts next to those of the other.

Hence comes the peculiar configuration of our island. In southeast Britain there is little continuous hill country that rises above the 600 foot contour line. Instead, wide undulating lowlands, marked by no striking physical feature and containing little to arrest or even divert the march of ancient armies or of traders, stretch over all the south and east and midlands. For hills, we must go north of Trent and Humber or west of Severn and Exe. There we shall find almost the converse of the southeast. Throughout a large, scattered region, extending from Cornwall to the Highlands, the land lies mostly above, and much of it high above the 600-foot line ; its soil and climate are ill-suited to agriculture; its deep valleys and gorges and wild moors and high peaks oppose alike the soldier and the citizen. Behind this upland lies the Atlantic, and an Atlantic which meant of old the reverse of what it does today. To the ancients, this hill country was the end of the world; for us — since Columbus — it is the beginning.

These physical features are reproduced plainly in the early history of Britain. It was natural that about B.C. 50-A.D. 50 southern Britain should be occupied by Keltic tribes and even families which had close kindred in Gaul, and that a lively intercourse should exist between the two. It was no less natural that, even before Rome had fully conquered Gaul, Caesar's troops should be seen in Kent and Middlesex (B.C. 55-54) and Roman suzerainty extended over these regions; and when the annexation of Gaul was finally complete, that of Britain seemed the obvious sequel. The sequel was, indeed, delayed awhile by political causes. Augustus (B.C. 43-A.D. 14) had too much else to do: Tiberius (14-37) saw no need for it, just as he saw no need for any wars of conquest. But after 37 it became urgent. Changes in southern Britain had favoured an anti-Roman reaction there and had even perhaps produced disquiet in northern Gaul; Caligula (37-41) had made borne fiasco in connexion with it; when Claudius succeeded, there was need of vigorous action and, as it chanced, the leading statesmen of the moment favoured a forward policy in many lands. The result was a well-planned and deservedly successful invasion (A.D. 43), The details of the ensuing war of conquest do not here concern us.

It is enough to say that the lowlands offered little resistance. In one part of them, near the southeast coast, Roman ways had become familiar since Caesar's raids. In another part — the midlands — the population was then, as now, thin. Nowhere, despite the theories of Guest and Green, were there physical obstacles likely to delay the Roman arms. By 47 the invaders had subdued almost all the lowlands, as far west as Exeter and Shrewsbury and as far north as the Humber. Then came a pause. The difficulties of the hill country, the bravery of the hill tribes, political circumstances at Rome, combined not indeed to arrest but seriously to impede advance. But the decade 70-80 saw the final conquest of Wales and the first subjugation of northern England, and in the years 80-84 Agricola was able to cross the Tyne and the Cheviots and gradually advance into Perthshire. Much of the land which he overran was but imperfectly subdued and the northern part of it — everything, probably, north of the Tweed — was abandoned when he was recalled in 85. Thirty years later (115-120) an insurrection shook the whole Roman power in northern Britain, and when Hadrian had restored order, he established the frontier along a line from Tyne to Solway, which he fortified by forts and a continuous wall (122-124). Fifteen or twenty years later, about A.D. 140, his successor Pius, for reasons not properly recorded, made a fresh advance; he annexed Scotland up to the narrow isthmus between Forth and Clyde and fortified that with a continuous wall, a series of forts along it variously estimated at 12, or, more probably, at 18 or 20, and some outposts along the natural route through the Gap of Stirling to the north-east. This wall was not meant as a substitute for Hadrian's Wall, but as a defence to the country north of it.

Rome had now reached her furthest permanent north. But the advance was not long accepted quietly by the natives. Twenty years after Pius had built his wall, a storm broke loose through all northern Britain from Derbyshire to Cheviot or beyond (about 158-160). A second storm followed 20 years later, about 183; the Wall of Pius was definitely lost, and disorder apparently continued till the Emperor Septimius Severus came out in person (208-211) and rebuilt the Wall of Hadrian to form, with a few outlying forts, the Roman frontier. With this step ends the series of alternating organisation and revolt which make up the external history of the earlier Roman Britain. Henceforward the Wall was the boundary until the coining of the barbarians who ended Roman rule in the island.

The force which garrisoned this fluctuating frontier and kept the province quiet consisted of three (till A.D. 85, of four) legions and an uncertain number of troops of the second grade, the so-called auxilia, in all perhaps some 35-40,000 men, mostly heavy infantry. The three legions were disposed in three fortresses, Isca Siliirum (Caerleon on Usk, Legio II Augusta), Deva (Chester, Legio XX Valeria Victrix) andEburacum (York, Legio VI Victrix): from these centres detachments (vexillationes) were sent out to form expeditionary forces, to construct fortifications and other military works, and generally to meet important but occasional needs. Outside these three main fortresses, the province was kept quiet and safe by a network of small forts (castella), varying in size from two or three to six or seven acres and garrisoned by auxiliary cohortes (infantry) or alae (cavalry), some 500 and some 1000 strong. These forts were planted along important roads and at strategic points, 10 or 15 or 20 miles apart. Their distribution is noteworthy. In the lowlands there were none.

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