How Roman was Roman Britain?

[guy]

A nice video from the British Museum:
 

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by guy

[caldrail]

Okay, the video was well intentioned and informative. However, the link with pre-caesarian Rome might be overstated, because whilst Roman good were clearly being traded into Britain, it probably wasn't the Romans doing the trade.

Remember they knew very little about Britain and even after Caesar had been there twice, troops embarking for an invasion ordered by Caligula mutinied because of superstition, not just about crossing a stretch of fearsome English Channel, but because of rumours about the strange peoples and monsters that were said to live in Britain. The same troops would try to mutiny again, under Claudius, whose freedman on the spot had to calm them down and remind them of their duty (and possibly, though it isn't recorded, the humiliation that Caligula had heaped upon them).

Gauls would have been the major trading parties, passing on Roman goods obtained along the frontier/provincial areas, and other Mediterranean sailors had long been reaching British shored before the Romans.