How are the Ancient Romans viewed in Great Britain today?

[Formosus Viriustus]

Salvete Omnes !

 

The BBC had a very good series a few years back : 'What the Romans did for us'. It gave the Romans a very good press and it was pretty popular I guess : it has been shown at least one more time that I know of.

 

Re : Romanisation of Britain

 

I recently read :

' The Age of Arthur

[Northern Neil]

I tend to lean with Morris on this one. Arguing from common sense : only two generations ago English was a language hardly understood, let alone spoken or written, by anybody on the European continent. And now it has become the 'lingua franca' over here. And 'you guys' haven't even been here in the Roman way. ( All we got from you were movies and books and music and ... what have you ever done for us, h

[Northern Neil]

The Romans themselves weren't interested in remote hamlets and there simply wasn't the all-encompassing conversion you believe in. In fact, there's evidence that villages were opened to avoid Roman influence.

Mind you, a lot of Romano brit villages, even quite remote from the main Roman centres, were rebuilt with Rectangular buildings and small finds suggest a willingness to enjoy the luxurious material benefits of Roman culture.

Edited April 22, 2009 by Northern Neil

[sylla]

From the BBC's site, their current article on An Overview of Roman Britain (by Dr. Mike Ibeji) states the following regarding people's view of Rome:

"... grand, monolithic dictatorship which imposed its might upon an unwilling people, dictating how they lived, how they spoke and how they worshipped. They see the Romans as something akin to the Nazis (which is hardly surprising since the fascists tried to model themselves on Rome)."

Dr. Ibeji's own impression:

"Yet perhaps Rome's most important legacy was not its roads, nor its agriculture, nor its cities, nor even its language, but the bald and simple fact that every generation of British inhabitant that followed them - be they Saxon, Norman, Renaissance English or Victorian - were striving to be Roman."

[Ursus]

From the BBC's site, their current article on An Overview of Roman Britain (by Dr. Mike Ibeji) states the following regarding people's view of Rome:

"... grand, monolithic dictatorship which imposed its might upon an unwilling people, dictating how they lived, how they spoke and how they worshipped. They see the Romans as something akin to the Nazis (which is hardly surprising since the fascists tried to model themselves on Rome)."

Dr. Ibeji's own impression:

"Yet perhaps Rome's most important legacy was not its roads, nor its agriculture, nor its cities, nor even its language, but the bald and simple fact that every generation of British inhabitant that followed them - be they Saxon, Norman, Renaissance English or Victorian - were striving to be Roman."

 

 

That's very interesting, Sylla.

 

Nazis, eh? I wonder how many people made that assessment after a careful comparative study, as opposed to how many think that because it seemed a trendy thing to say.

[Ingsoc]

From the BBC's site, their current article on An Overview of Roman Britain (by Dr. Mike Ibeji) states the following regarding people's view of Rome:

"... grand, monolithic dictatorship which imposed its might upon an unwilling people, dictating how they lived, how they spoke and how they worshipped. They see the Romans as something akin to the Nazis (which is hardly surprising since the fascists tried to model themselves on Rome)."

Dr. Ibeji's own impression:

"Yet perhaps Rome's most important legacy was not its roads, nor its agriculture, nor its cities, nor even its language, but the bald and simple fact that every generation of British inhabitant that followed them - be they Saxon, Norman, Renaissance English or Victorian - were striving to be Roman."

 

 

That's very interesting, Sylla.

 

Nazis, eh? I wonder how many people made that assessment after a careful comparative study, as opposed to how many think that because it seemed a trendy thing to say.

 

It did seem the fashion of the many post-modernist and post-colonialist to see every empire as pure evil that only wants to destroy the innocent and peaceful natives

 

I'm not from Britain but I think there are general decline in the important of classic era have on the west today and Britain is no diffrent. see for example this thread.

[Ursus]

In honor of the Provincia Britannia subfolder, I have moved this topic to there and (at least temporarily) pinned it to promote discussion.

 

Hail Britannia!

[sylla]

Nothing new under the sun: all countries (peaceful, innocent or not) have always considered evil incarnated any Empire that tries to subjugate them, all and each one of the Empires included: George III for the American fathers, Napoleon for the British, Attila for the Romans and so on,

[caldrail]

The Romans themselves weren't interested in remote hamlets and there simply wasn't the all-encompassing conversion you believe in. In fact, there's evidence that villages were opened to avoid Roman influence.

Mind you, a lot of Romano brit villages, even quite remote from the main Roman centres, were rebuilt with Rectangular buildings and small finds suggest a willingness to enjoy the luxurious material benefits of Roman culture.

 

Naturally. There was a lot to gain from keeping the Roman occupiers happy - they were there, they weren't going away, and anyone who didn't like it received a visit from the military. Tacitus tells us very explicitly in Agricola that...

 

The Britons were seduced with alluring vices: arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. In their simplicity they called these novelties 'civilisation' when in reality they were part of their enslavement

 

Now before we get too deeply mired in Roman social status, it's worth understanding what Tacitus actually meant. If you take any time to read the history of Rome by Cassius Dio, you discover that he talks time and time again about slavery. He doesn't mean status, imprisonment, enforced labour, chains, or the usual imagery we associate with such a label. What he does mean is that one person is compliant to anothers will whether he likes it or not. It's a question of freedom in this respect. Rather like a crime boss telling a victim that "I own you", simply because the victim has no way to defy the bosses control without retribution.

 

The Roman policy of settlement in Britain was to encourage to creation of thier own style of facilities and buildings. Tacitus mentions that too - the locals were encouraged either as individuals or communities to build Roman style architecture. Of course they did so. It was in their own interests. That doesn't mean they actually liked the new style, rather that it was the dominant style, the fashionable style, and the style their new masters liked to see, plus they probably got implicit help in building these places too. It might also be said that many Britons found the new styles more comfortable?

 

However, what Tacitus doesn't refer to is the nucleonic nature of Roman culture in Britain. They were concentrated in small areas, and indeed, this was the whole rationale for the urbanisation and spread of urban settlements throughout occupied Britain. All these 'advanced' settlements were a centre for the local area, a colony of romanisation. The countryside villa system plugged into this. The villa owner was a landowner, a patron of rural life, and thus extended Roman influence beyond the walls of the towns.

 

However, we must note that Roman villlas were not uniformly spread throughout Roman Britain. Far from it, the north of England has very few in evidence. The villa owner in Britain wasn't always a senior Roman. More often he was a British landowner who had thrived under the Roman system, and by definition, had adopted enough of its principles to be part of the hierarchy even in a potentially attentuated way. This means there was a local acceptance of that status quo. If the local natives did not accept the landowners social status, the villa would not have thrived. This implies there were many areas where the Roman influence was much less than in towns.

 

Archaeology confirms this. We see celtic settlements in use during the Roman occupation and retaining traditional styles of housing throughout the period. Caves would continue to be inhabited into the later medieval period. The remarkable thing is that there's little evidence of Roman infiltration into these native settlemets. Certainly Roman goods can be found there - these settlements traded with others and artifacts changed hands, but there's no sign of interference in the native lifestyle from the Roman authorities. Only one in six of rural settlements in Roman Britain can be identified as a villa. The concept of the Roman village, similar to a sleepy hamlet of the middle ages, is simply incorrect.

 

The views of Tacitus regarding the Britons and their adoption of luxury is relevant, but not all-encompassing. Many Britons carried on life as they always had. The image of Roman legions marching over the hill, crushing resistance, and leaving behind a Roman village is too simplistic - what we see through archaeological sources is a much more complex situation. Tacitus also mentions the political solutions used to maintain peace. By enlisting the tribal leaders as allies, control of territory is achieved without military occupation. Even in the dark ages, there were at least two celtic tribes whose chiefs retained Roman titles given to them in return for their loyalty. These weren't disenfranchised Romans at all - they were native settlements left to cionduct their business provided they paid tribute and observed Roman law. That was a common situation in Roman Britain, and one the Romans saw as the first step in acceptance of their ownership of the Islands.

[Formosus Viriustus]

Salvete Omnes !

 

Naturally. There was a lot to gain from keeping the Roman occupiers happy - they were there, they weren't going away, and anyone who didn't like it received a visit from the military. Tacitus tells us very explicitly in Agricola that...

 

The Britons were seduced with alluring vices: arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. In their simplicity they called these novelties 'civilisation' when in reality they were part of their enslavement

 

Now before we get too deeply mired in Roman social status, it's worth understanding what Tacitus actually meant. If you take any time to read the history of Rome by Cassius Dio, you discover that he talks time and time again about slavery. He doesn't mean status, imprisonment, enforced labour, chains, or the usual imagery we associate with such a label. What he does mean is that one person is compliant to anothers will whether he likes it or not. It's a question of freedom in this respect. Rather like a crime boss telling a victim that "I own you", simply because the victim has no way to defy the bosses control without retribution.

 

Couldn't agree more. That is pretty much the picture as it is painted in

 

John Morris' ' The Age of Arthur

[caldrail]

It is interesting to read that a young Roman man madly in love with a woman was pitied - his condition was regarded as emotional slavery. The concept of freedom, with respect of decision making primarily, was deeply imbedded in the Roman psyche.

 

Incidentially, one point I didn't stress earlier was the 'Roman village'. That didn't really exist. Why? Look at Britain before the Romans arrived. Britons lived in a very dispersed pattern, relying on the fortified settlements of dominant leaders as a refuge in times of danger. Small settlements were rare. You did get farmers who fortified their own hilltop farmyard, mostly as a symbol of social status, but I imagine when the chips were down they headed for the hillfort along with everyone else. Safety in numbers.

 

Notably, these hillforts protected resources. The available archaeology suggests that as villages, the hillforts didn't have enough agriculture to suport them indefinitely. For long term subsistence, the population who owed loyalty to the local chief needed to spread out and farm land in the area. Also, the uplands were popular. Lowlands were at that time often forested and boggy.

 

So the village in the sense we usually imagine it wasn't there - one reason why we name communities of Iron-Age Britons as 'settlements'

 

The Romans either developed those communities as towns in their own pattern, built their own colonies, or ignored the celtic ones if they weren't close to Roman activity, or if the settlement had no value or threat in the Roman mind. The villa was a substitute for the hillfort in a sense aside from the lack of defensive value, but then, the Romans weren't going to tolerate unrest. By combining the urban centers of Roman Britain and the villa sites found, you get a good sense of Roman cultural coverage, bearing in mind that the radius of influence isn't huge at all.

 

Roman architecture did spread, as I agreed before, but one important aspect is that although changes were dramatic in the first hundred years of Roman occupation, the pace of 'romanisation' slowed down to a crawl after that. It was as if the issues of who wanted to be Roman and who didn't had already been settled for the most part. There were some major changes later, such as the building of defenses in a troubled province that Jerome described as 'fertile in usurpers', or the rise in fall in the fortunes of one settlement or another, but these were circumstantial as opposed to deliberate policies.

Edited May 1, 2009 by caldrail

[iolo]

There seems to be some debate, but I hold with those who say that Romanization was never extremely strong in Britain to begin with outside of the southeast coast. After all, it took 3 legions to keep the place pacified, and few if any Britons made it to the Senatorial order. So perhaps what we're dealing with is a thin coating of Romanization that quickly wore off with the arrival of the Saxons, while Romanization on the Continent was much more embedded.

 

A reasonable explanation, but it leave another question in it's path, why was the area never very romanized? Fair enough it was under Roman influence for a shorter period of time (I've never really read anything on the Romanization of Britain) than some other areas but it should still be enough?

 

Read Kenneth Dark. The point is that Latin, for most of the British, was a 'Sunday best' language even under the Empire. The various British provinces hired German mercenaries, and a combination of climate change and plague helped them to take over in the Sixth Century, except in Britannia Prima (west of the Southampton-Liverpool line), and the soldiers' language had prestige. I believe, however, that there a great number of differences between English and other Germanic languages, and every one of them is paralled with 'Welsh'/British usage, which suggests a lot of learning, fast. The Papal pretence that there were no longer any Christians (the British were conservative in doctrine etcetera) helps people believe in an unlikely historical break - Oppenheimer puts the proportion of British with an 'Anglo-Saxon' genetic heritage at 5% even now. British was a low-status language, and Latin survived very well in the West.

[Dickonbard]

There are several references in this thread to the language(s) spoken by the 'natives' in Roman Britain. The general consensus seems to be that Brythonic survived all the way through to the 5th century and was the language in which the Britons talked amongst themselves, with enough people possessing a sufficient grasp of Latin to use it as a lingua franca in dealings with merchants, officials or soldiers from elsewhere in the empire.

 

This sounds plausible. But is there any archaeological or literary evidence that bears specifically on this point? Or is it more a matter of taking a general view of the degree of Romanisation in Britain, and then inferring from that the language that is likely to have been spoken?

[caldrail]

Modern welsh descends from the language spoken at that time. It would have been spoken in Cornwall and Devon too had Wessex not finally crushed the kingdom of Dumnonia (whose rulers were described as 'Welsh Princes' in the records of Ecgberts campaigns, and as far as I'm aware, 'Wales' is a name derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'Wealas' meaning 'Foreigners')

[quid est?]

Cerdic probably knew his declensions and spoke Welsh when he was upset. 'In 495 he was  described as ealdorman which at that point in time was a fairly junior rank. 

"It is thus odd to find it used here to describe the leaders of what purports to be an independent band of invaders, whose origins and authority are not otherwise specified. It looks very much as if a hint is being conveyed that Cerdic and his people owed their standing to having been already concerned with administrative affairs under Roman authority on this part of the Saxon Shore".

Furthermore, it is not until 519 that Cerdic is recorded as "beginning to reign", suggesting that he ceased being an 'ealdorman' and became an independent king in his own right.'

'Caesar Cerdic' was a bit much so 'Kynge Cerdic' it was.