PENGUIN BOOKS

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF BRITAIN
GENERAL EDITOR: DAVID CANNADINE

AN IMPERIAL POSSESSION

David Mattingly is Professor of Roman Archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, having held previous university appointments at the University of Michigan and the University of Oxford, where he was a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow. His research focuses on the archaeology of the Western Roman Empire and he has carried out fieldwork in Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Italy and Britain. His publications include An Atlas of Roman Britain (co-author); Tripolitanis; Farming the Desert: The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey. Vols 1-2 (co-author); Dialogues in Roman Imperialism (editor); Leptiminus (Lamta: A Roman Port Town in Tunisia, Reports 1-2 (co-author); Life, Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire (co-editor); Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World (co-editor); and The Archaeology of Fazzan. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London.

THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF BRITAIN

Published or forthcoming

I: DAVID MATTINGLY Roman Britain 100-409

II: ROBIN FLEMING Anglo-Saxon Britain: 410-1066

III: DAVID CARPENTER The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1314

IV: MIRI RUBIN The Hollow Crown: Britain 1272-1485

V: SUSAN BRIGDEN New Worlds, Lost Worlds: Britain 1485-1603

VI: MARK KISHLANSKY A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714

VII: LINDA COLLEY A Wealth of Nations? Britain 1707-1815

VIII: DAVID CANNADINE The Contradiction of Progress: Britain 1800-1906

IX: PETER CLARKE Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000

DAVID MATTINGLY

An Imperial Possession

Britain in the Roman Empire,

54 BC-AD 409

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Allen Lane 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
1

Copyright © David Mattingly, 2006
Maps copyright © J. E. Skinner and David Mattingly, 2006
All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
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EISBN: 978–0–141–90385–9

For the Harolds

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Britain and the Roman empire in the mid-second century.

Figure 2. Map of the British archipelago.

Figure 3. Peoples of Britain, including Ireland, in the Roman period.

Figure 4. Southern Britain in the late Iron Age.

Figure 5. Changing garrison patterns in Britain under Roman military occupation.

Figure 6. Military sites in southern Britain.

Figure 7. Military sites in northern Britain.

Figure 8. Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall.

Figure 9. The province of Britannia and its sub-divisions.

Figure 10. The main towns and peoples of Britain.

Figure 11. The road network, major towns, small towns and garrison settlements.

Figure 12. Rural settlement in southern Britain.

Figure 13. Rural settlement of Roman date in the East Midlands.

Figure 14. The villa landscape of the West Country.

Figure 15. Rural settlement and (inset) Roman material culture in northern Britain.

Figure 16. Ireland in the late Iron Age/Roman period.

Figure 17. Comparative distributions of villas and Romano-Celtic temples.

Table 1. Key dates in Roman history and of Britain in the Roman world.

Table 2. Main campaigns and battles of the conquest phase.

Table 3. Wars and revolts, 84–211.

Table 4. Civil wars and secession, late first to late second century.

Table 5. Religious dedications from Vindolanda.

Table 6. Wars, civil wars and revolts in Britain, 235–409.

Table 7. The army of Britain in the Notitia Dignitatum.

Table 8. The Antonine Itinerary and the connectivity of towns in Roman Britain.

Table 9. The current state of archaeological knowledge of the principal Roman urban sites in Britain.

Table 10. Inscriptions recording public benefactions in British towns and small towns.

Table 11. Curse tablets from Britain.

Table 12. Urban defences in Roman Britain.

Table 13. The main phases of construction of urban defences.

Table 14. Religious identity in Britain defined by differences in practice.

Preface

The Pelican Histories of England were landmarks in the field and have served their reading audience well through the second half of the twentieth century. As I sit typing the final words of my own book, I am very conscious of the fact that Ian Richmond’s Roman Britain was published in 1955, exactly fifty years ago, and, with revisions, has remained in print ever since. The story of Roman Britain has been written many times; indeed, perhaps too often and rarely with the verve or insight of Richmond. Consequently, and like other writers in this new series, I have felt humbled and daunted by the task of writing an account for the twenty-first century. Over recent decades Britain has become one of the most heavily researched provinces of the Roman empire, but this in itself makes the task of synthesis ever more difficult. Another challenge has been to address the subject as a history of Britain, rather than of the limited south-eastern part of the archipelago. Every telling of history is a product of its age and while Richmond’s account was from the twilight zone of the modern colonial period, my perspective has been built up in a much more sceptical post-colonial world, where ‘empires’ are no longer assumed to have been benign civilizing powers. The realities of Britain’s status as an imperial possession are not all comfortable ones for modern readers schooled on a vision of Roman imperialism as essentially a civilizing force for good.

Writing this book has taken me far longer than Penguin or I anticipated (and here I must acknowledge the patience and persistence of my editors David Cannadine and, most directly, Simon Winder). The delay in part reflects the explosion of new publication in the last decade, and in part my determination to bring a freshness of approach in comparison with what has become a rather jaded format in some of the rival books on Roman Britain. In short, I have tried to write a controversial book, but one that will be accessible to a wide audience, a book that will make people think for themselves about issues, and that does not always have clear answers to difficult questions. In the process I have tried to dispense with a series of sacred cows – most notably the intellectually lazy recourse to the concept of Romanization (which ultimately means everything and nothing). In place of Romanization, I offer a framework of analysis based on three broad groups of provincial society (military, urban and rural communities) and the diverse identities that they gave rise to in responding to the challenges and opportunities of Roman rule.

The fact that this book is in a history series has determined something of its structure. The conventional narrative framework of Roman Britain is heavily weighted towards military matters, though I believe I offer a new interpretational slant on traditional approaches to these sources. My focus is on the broad features of military occupation and I have endeavoured not to get too bogged down in the minutiae of the dating of occupation phases at individual forts. I have also attempted to show how the community of soldiers intersected with the civilian communities, wherever possible introducing the names of real people into the account. At the same time, my exploration of the social and economic history integrates a wide range of archaeological evidence. A synthesis focused more single-mindedly on archaeological evidence would have produced a rather different sort of book and it was a deliberate choice to try to integrate discussion of conventional history with the sort of social issues that recent work in theoretical archaeology has highlighted. One of the problems we face in reconstructing the lives of ordinary people is the difficulty of interpreting their thoughts and actions from their use of material culture. I strongly believe that the massive accumulation of high-quality data, especially relating to finds assemblages, makes Britain a particularly suitable case-study for the investigation of discrepant identities in the Roman empire. This book can only offer a rough framework – it is my sincere hope that other researchers will help put flesh on these bones.

This is my personal vision of the history of Britain under Roman imperial rule and I hope to show that this was a rather different world from that encountered in many other books on the subject. At the same time, I am conscious that my viewpoint depends on the fact that I am standing on the shoulders of giants, whose achievements have made possible this re-evaluation. I hope that the book succeeds in bringing together the best of older and newer approaches to the subject. There is a necessary level of speculation here – though I would contend that key assumptions of more orthodox views equally lack substantiation in the preserved evidence and my text is suitably qualified at many points. Above all, I want to engage and excite readers both new to and expert in the subject, even if some may choose ultimately to disagree with aspects of my conclusions. The date range of my title defines the period within which I believe that it is reasonable to argue that part of Britain was considered an imperial possession, from the conclusion of Caesar’s second campaign in 54 BC to the final revolt of the province in 409. This represents a lengthy interlude of foreign domination. As one reviewer of this book in draft succinctly put it, a key element of my view is that the ‘Romano-British episode was nasty, brutish and long’.

My debts to others are myriad and I can only acknowledge a few here. The book is dedicated to the two Harold Mattinglys, who first illuminated the ancient world for me. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my grandfather’s lap and hearing the myths of ancient Rome. My copy of his Penguin translation of the Agricola of Tacitus is among the most well-thumbed of all my books. My father has been a constant influence and I hope I have inherited some of his characteristic ability to ask really awkward questions about academic orthodoxies in ancient history. A third major influence was Barri Jones, my PhD supervisor at Manchester, who inspired me to commit to Roman archaeology. His early death in 1999 deprived me of a friend and adviser, and I have particularly regretted the loss of the opportunity to share drafts of this book with him. Tony Birley similarly nurtured my interests in Roman history and has remained a tremendous source of advice and support. Having provided extensive comments on early drafts of several chapters, he then made available to me (ahead of its publication) his indispensable The Roman Government of Britain and last, but far from least, undertook to read the entire typescript. As well as saving me from a truly embarrassing number of errors, he contributed much general wisdom and many insights on specific points to help me make this a far better book than it would otherwise have been. Numerous other academics and professional archaeologists have answered my questions, served as sounding boards for my wilder flights of fancy and sent me off-prints and texts of unpublished work. Particular thanks are due to Graeme Barker, Paul Bennett, Robin Birley, Roger Bland, David Breeze, Peter Carrington, Hilary Cool, John Creighton, Barry Cunliffe, Simon Esmonde Cleary, S. S. Frere, Mike Fulford, Michael Given, Chris Gosden, Bill Hanson, Ian Haynes, Richard Hingley, Bruce Hitchner, Nick Hodgson, Rick Jones, John Manley, Martin Millett, David Potter, the late Tim Potter, Richard Reece, Tim Strickland, Roger Tomlin, Peter Wells, Steve Willis, Andrew Wilson, Roger Wilson and Greg Woolf. I must also express my gratitude to Suzanne Blackmore of Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College, Leicester, who patiently answered questions about the current teaching of Roman Britain at A Level (as well as bringing the subject alive for my daughter Rebecca).

Since 1992, I have profited hugely from being part of the thriving Roman and Iron Age research cluster in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester. I am profoundly grateful to both short- and longer-term colleagues – Colin Adams, Graeme Barker, Richard Buckley, Neil Christie, Patrick Clay, Nick Cooper, Hella Eckardt, Andy Gardner, Mel Giles, Annie Grant, Colin Hasel-grove, Simon James, Alan McWhirr, Rachel Pope, Jonathon Prag, Eberhard Sauer, Sarah Scott, Graham Shipley, Jeremy Taylor, John Vanderspoel, Marijke van der Veen, Jane Webster. I have also benefited from a terrific pool of Leicester postgraduate students with Roman interests (not all British focused), who have helped my understanding of the subject and particularly of new more theoretical approaches: Jennifer Baird, Andrew Birley, Alfonso Burgers, Fran Condron, John Coombs, Laura Cripps, Garrick Fincham, Colin Forcey, Hannah Friedman Gillian Hawkes, Anna Leone, Michelle Mann, Judy Meade, Phil Mills, Dominic Perring, Nick Ray, Judith Rosten, Tom Rust, Irene Schrufer-Kolb, Dan Stewart, Rob Witcher, Stephen Young. At another level, many of the more speculative ideas advanced here have been tried out on successive undergraduate classes, who have grappled with post-colonial thinking and the concept of identity with good humour and enthusiasm, coming up with some remarkable insights of their own.

In addition to Tony Birley, Paul Booth of Oxford Archaeology read the entire text with his habitual astuteness; many of his suggestions (plus information on new discoveries) are incorporated in my final version. Individual sections of the book were greatly improved by suggestions from the following additional readers: Neil Christie, Simon James, Richard Hingley, Colin Haselgrove, Bruce Hitchner, Mick Jones, Andrew Birley, Judith Rosten. Joe Skinner produced the illustrations from my roughs, though Jeremy Taylor provided the raw data on which Figure 13 is based. Simon Winder at Penguin was the ideal editor, gently persuading me to shed the excess baggage of an overweight first draft and providing perceptive and incredibly helpful guidance on how to sharpen the argument. Richard Duguid, Rebecca Lee and Chloe Campbell saw the book through production, with copy-editing input from Janet Tyrrell. Jenny Mattingly compiled the index.

It is customary to excuse those who read the draft work of responsibility for remaining errors. This is more than ever necessary here as in many ways this is an experimental, speculative and heretical book. In choosing not to follow every suggestion I have had from my readers, I have sought to retain the architectural structure of the book as I conceived it. In the end, this is my ‘take’ on the story and I unreservedly take responsibility for all remaining errors. This is a book about identity, communities and regions and in places there is a necessary level of detail to illustrate these themes. I hope that readers both familiar with and new to the subject will rise to the challenge this presents and will be encouraged to follow the bibliographical guidance for yet more detailed discussion of specific topics.

The book was completed during the 2004-5 academic year with the benefit of University of Leicester study leave and an AHRC Research Leave award. I am most appreciative of the support of my colleagues and especially of my Head of School, Marilyn Palmer. The observant reader may spot that a few paragraphs spread across several chapters are based on material published by me in rather different form (with fuller referencing) in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, and it is a pleasure to record my gratitude to its editor, John Humphrey.

I am grateful also to my wider family (parents, sisters and assorted in-laws) and friends who never lost interest in the project and did much to keep my attention focused on it through their questions. To Jenny, Rebecca, Susanna and Douglas I must extend special thanks. They have all lived this book with me and have helped me keep on track. Beyond the call of duty, they have read and commented on text, visited sites and discussed ideas. Above all, though, they created the time and space for me to write when I most needed to. Thanks to them, my great obsession has at last become An Imperial Possession.

University of Leicester
June 2005

NOTE ON DATES, PLACE-NAMES AND MEASUREMENTS

All dates are to be read as years AD unless stated otherwise, when they are differentiated as ‘BC’. Thus 43 for AD 43, but 55 BC. A few potentially ambiguous dates in the early first century AD have been so flagged. Ancient place-names are occasionally given in parentheses or used in Tables, but my normal practice has been to use modern place-names. The main exception to this rule is the key site of Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall, where the modern location is actually best known by its Latin name. Names of Roman provinces are often used in preference to the geographically less precise designation by modern country. Whenever used, ancient toponyms, Latin technical terms and names of British peoples appear in italics. Where reference is made to modern British local government regions, I have followed the boundaries as displayed on the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain (Southampton, rev. 4th edn, 1994), though in some areas these have been revised in subsequent local government reorganization. In addition to the figures illustrating this book, readers may find the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain a useful resource for locating specific sites. Measurements are normally given in metric units, such as kilometres. Where a figure is stated in ‘miles’ this normally indicates ‘Roman miles’ of 1.48 km.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

The Penguin History of Britain

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Figures and Tables

Preface

Part One
Introduction

1 The Spectre of Empire

2 Sources of Information and Rules of Evidence

3 ‘Nothing for us to Fear or Rejoice at.’ Britain, Britons and the Roman Empire

Part Two
The Military Community

4 The Iron Fist Conquest (43-83) and Aftermath

5 Britannia Perdomita: The Garrisoning of the Provinces

6 The Community of Soldiers

7 The Fashioning of the Military Identity

8 De Excidio Britanniae: Decline and Fall?

Part Three
The Civil Communities

9 Forma Urbis: The Development of Towns

10 Townspeople: Demography, Culture and Identity

11 The Urban Failure?

Part Four
The Rural Communities

12 The Villa and the Roundhouse

13 Provincial Landscapes

14 Free Britannia: Beyond the Frontiers

15 Rural Culture and Identity

Part Five
Comparative Perspectives and Concluding Thoughts

16 Different Economies, Discrepant Identities

17 ‘No Longer Subject to Roman Laws’

Bibliographical Essay

Index

PART ONE

Introduction

1

The Spectre of Empire

This book tells the story of the occupation of Britain by the Romans. It is not the same sort of history that characterizes most other titles in this series, where narrative is built up around a multiplicity of written sources of evidence. True, the Roman period marks the crossing over from prehistoric to historic Britain, but the light shed by conventional historical documents is dim indeed. There are no large surviving Roman works specifically dealing with Britain; we come closest with the biography of Agricola, a first-century governor of the province, written by his son-in-law Tacitus. There are, of course, snippets of historical and geographical information to be gleaned from a wide range of other source material, but these are too often imprecise and of ambiguous interpretation. Inscriptions and archaeological evidence have been extensively employed in support of the written sources, though the essential weakness of the basic source material necessitates a great deal of interpolation to fill in the many gaps in the narrative. No matter how authoritative the voice, the writing of the history of Britain in the Roman empire has of necessity been in large part an impressionistic sketch.

My fundamental theme is the fate of Britain as an imperial possession during nearly four centuries of foreign domination. Good history is meant to be objective, not judgemental, but in studying so remote a period through so threadbare a set of sources, we face serious interpretative difficulties that oblige us to make choices about the shape of our accounts. Consciously or subconsciously most writers on Roman Britain have tended to form a view on whether or not the fact of Roman government was a positive thing. As a famous spoof history of Britain puts it, ‘The first date in English History is 55 BC in which year Julius Caesar…landed…when the Romans were top nation on account of their classical education, etc…. The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at that time.’ This quote tells us nothing, of course, about ancient reality and everything about late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attitudes.

Even today, more than half a century beyond the effective end of a British empire, mainstream views of the Roman empire are constrained by collective assumptions about the legitimacy of imperialism, with profound consequences for our reading and writing of that history. To take an Anglocentric view first, there is still a broad consensus in favour of the benefits of Roman rule outweighing the negative impacts it brought, and this is closely bound up with issues of national nostalgia for our own lost empire. As a result, we have a curious and ambiguous relationship with our Roman heritage, which is difficult to reconcile with the hard facts of Roman conquest and domination. In our national mythology, the Roman period is presented as one of development and opportunity far more than one of defeat, subjugation and exploitation. There is surprisingly little attention focused on the themes of resistance and underdevelopment.

In France, by way of contrast, Vercingetorix is a national hero and the site of Alesia celebrated as a memorial to Gallic resistance to foreign conquest. For all its English-language sales, the Asterix series is also a quintessentially French celebration of national resistance. The roots of this fascination with resistance may be traceable to the real-life events of the sequence of German invasions in 1870, 1914 and 1940. Despite a brief flirtation with the legend of Boudica (or Boadicea as they styled her), Victorian and Edwardian Britain sided pretty much wholeheartedly with the Roman invaders of Britain rather than with the subjugated natives. This was perhaps a natural response from servants of a great imperial state that at the height of its power in the late nineteenth century controlled one third of the territory and population of the world and that modelled itself in part on Roman structures. Britain’s modern imperial role made most scholars sympathetic to the perspective and problems of the Roman state in its governance of empire and its civilizing mission in the frontier lands. The father of Romano-British archaeology in the early twentieth century, Francis Haverfield, summed up this attitude of underlying sympathy with modern colonialism:

The old theory of an age of despotism and decay has been overthrown, and the believer in human nature can now feel confident that, whatever their limitations, the men of the [Roman] Empire wrought for the betterment and happiness of the world.

This sort of nostalgic association with the colonizers and the ascribing of the best possible motives to them still underscore much writing on Roman Britain. The Romans brought towns, roads, stable government, the villa economy, art, culture, literacy, togas, baths and other elements of high culture. By the same token, the stereotypical native Britons in many popular accounts were at the time of conquest semi-naked, spiky-haired, tattooed and woad-painted barbarians, subsequently raised up by the experience of Rome to enjoy the benefits of civilization. This favourable vision of imperialism has for the most part been eagerly adopted in the popular image of Roman Britain. As an example, prominent Romans have been hailed up and down the country as the founders of many modern centres – a particularly notable case is Agricola, who occupies pride of place over the entrance to Manchester Town Hall among a throng of historical figures with Mancunian associations.

Rather different attitudes have developed, unsurprisingly, in northern and western Britain, where the history of rule from London in more recent centuries has led to the Roman period being equated as ‘more of the same’. The tendency here is to present Rome as provoking resistance and non-conformity in terms that reflect the twentieth-century rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism and Cornish regionalism. This has the potential to present as distorted a view of history as those who uncritically assert the natural justice of Roman rule.

Each generation of scholarship will tend to interpret the past in line with the perspectives and preoccupations of the moment. In attempting to write a new history for the globalized twenty-first century, I have been much influenced by recent dramatic changes of emphasis and interpretation. Studies of the pre-Roman Iron Age have been revolutionized by new theoretical approaches and Roman history is also starting to be affected by post-colonial perspectives. This book is very much concerned with the experience of people in Britain under Roman rule and as such it is far more social history than political history. It will explore the texture of life in Britain, making extensive use of archaeological material to supplement the meagre historical sources. This is a post-colonial history, in the sense that it questions aspects of the consensus model and attempts to widen debate about the nature and impact of Roman rule in Britain. There is inevitably much uncertainty and some speculation to fill the gaps, drawing on knowledge of the wider operation of the Roman imperial system and of other colonial regimes.

The Roman empire is often cited as the greatest that the world has ever known in terms of its extent, population, civilization and longevity (though one or more of these criteria might be disputed by the Chinese, the British or other modern imperial powers). It was certainly a yardstick against which the nineteenth-century imperial powers measured their achievements and from which they freely borrowed imagery, titles and style. Much of the early history of Rome concerned the progressive subjugation of the Italian peninsula in a more or less continuous sequence of wars. Anyone familiar with Livy’s History of Rome will appreciate the remorseless nature of this process as year after year army levies were raised and sent off to fight, despite the expense and inconvenience that this imposed on a basically agrarian society. Compared to other ancient Italian peoples the Roman state was exceptionally aggressive and warlike. The unification of Italy, the Mediterranean and a large part of Temperate Europe under Roman rule was a lengthy process and achieved at huge human cost. For instance, more than 300 triumphs are recorded from the sequence of wars between 509 and 19 BC and a ‘triumph’ was only awarded for a victory in a battle that ended a declared war and killed at least 5,000 of the enemy. The total casualties must have far exceeded the minimum of 1,500,000 implicit in the figure. The human impact went much deeper than that, due to the practice of enslaving certain categories of prisoners taken in war. For example, in a five-year period of the Third Samnite War (297—293 BC), figures from Livy indicate that over 66,000 captives were enslaved from a variety of defeated enemies. The demographic impact of such relentless and ruthless warfare was probably profound, though in time the subjugated peoples were allowed to participate in the next round of expansion and in the foundation of colonies on captured lands. Latin colonies established from 334 to 263 BC are estimated to have required the seizure and re-allocation of over 7,000 square km of prime farming land to over 70,000 settlers.

The point here is that the Roman state could be a ruthless military power, inflicting major damage on its enemies. At the same time, she had mechanisms to reward peoples who submitted to her authority or who showed capacity to be reconciled to Roman rule after their subjugation. Specifically, the Roman model of provincial government involved a significant devolution of power to local authorities based around elite groups, whose wealth and status was often bolstered in the process. This ‘beneficent’ imperialism is an important aspect of the Roman case, but can be overstated if we want to assess the broader impacts on society as a whole.

Britain was a relatively late addition to the empire, by which time the nature of Roman expansionism had changed somewhat, due to the initiation of autocratic rule of emperors (principes) in place of the prior Republican system of government (Table 1 summarizes key dates and periods in Roman history and of Britain’s incorporation in the empire). The emperors tended to be wary of allowing potential rivals unlimited opportunities to gain military glory, and future conquests were mostly carefully controlled. However, once selected as an imperial project, the invasion of 43 involved the use of exemplary force to impose as quickly as possible an understanding of Roman military superiority. That will have meant major British casualties and the taking of slaves. Nor was the conquest rapidly completed. Major campaigning continued until 83, almost two generations after Claudius launched his invasion. In between times the Boudican revolt of 60—61 had exacted a huge cost on both native Britons and on Rome. For the majority of Britons, it is clear that in the short term the Romans were very bad news and, even in the medium and long term, Britain in the Roman empire was a colonized and exploited territory. This was not a Golden Age, though the opportunities provided by the empire were golden for some individuals among the British elite and assorted immigrants into the province.

The Roman view of Britain can be partially explored, though we have to understand the nature of our surviving source evidence, discussed in detail in Chapter 2. A fundamental point is that the ruling metropolitan elite of the empire produced the bulk of our written evidence. It is unsurprising to find that they were enthusiastic supporters of Roman world domination. As a result, their writings must be presumptively suspected of bias and distortion in the presentation of historical ‘facts’ and in their interpretation. To a large extent the history that we construct from these sources is the history of the victors, and gives their gloss on events. The extent to which the values and attitudes of the leading Romans were shared in Italian society at large and across the many provinces of the empire is a moot point. It is clear, however, that the

Table 1. Key dates in Roman history and of Britain in the Roman world.

Roman empire did not rest throughout its existence on a narrow Italian governing aristocracy. The Romans were a good deal more inclusive than many more recent empires, integrating the elite class of its subject peoples into the power structures of the state. Over time, many provincial aristocrats were incorporated into the ruling orders as senators and equestrians; indeed by the late second century there was a North African, Septimius Severus, on the imperial throne. There are grounds, then, for believing that to some extent the provincial elites around the empire adopted or incorporated elements of ‘Roman’ culture and social behaviour in the expectation of advancement in political, social or economic position.

The motivations behind power-sharing were potentially a good deal more complex than generally acknowledged and the rewards of empire (and the negative impacts also) were unevenly spread between the provinces. This is not to say that prominent Britons did not participate in the empire. Some probably enjoyed a level of influence and wealth that is hard to match in later imperial systems, where race and nationality have played a far more significant role in determining social position. Yet, Britons do not appear to have broken through in numbers to the very highest levels of Roman society. Because of the substantial military garrison, Britain as a whole probably endured more than its share of oppression. We do not have direct evidence for how British elite families felt about this, of course, but it is plausible that their commitment to the empire in general was in proportion to the rewards it offered them. To take this a stage further, we also need to consider what services Rome offered people below the level of the ruling elite.

What exactly was the view of Rome among the wider population of Britain? There are serious obstacles to our looking into the minds of people who were unenthusiastic about Rome. Unsurprisingly, the Romans were delighted to promote literary works of erstwhile enemies who embraced wholeheartedly the Roman way (Polybius the Greek and Josephus the Jew are famous examples). But there is a dearth of source material from any part of the empire on what Rome’s opponents themselves thought. The reasons for this are not hard to find. The extant literature of the Roman world has been through a series of filters to determine what has survived, but the state itself could have a primary impact. For example, the library of Carthage was largely destroyed as a deliberate act after its capture by Rome, denying posterity an alternative view of the Punic Wars. In Britain with no pre-Roman tradition of literature, there is even less possibility of hearing the voice of dissent expressed unambiguously in the surviving literary sources. The best we can hope for is reference to events that attest to unrest, and we must always bear in mind that our knowledge of these events is mediated through the writing of people aligned with the Roman state and fundamentally unsympathetic to those who opposed it. The conventional historical sources at our disposal, then, are probably far from objective.

The problems raised by the potential bias in the Roman sources are particularly acute in relation to our understanding of late Iron Age Britain. Chapter 3 explores new theories and evidence for the nature of these societies and their relationship with the expanding Roman empire in the century leading up to the Claudian invasion.

The tendency in the past to equate the British and the Roman empires has led to a too ready and uncritical approbation of the Roman empire. It is fair to say that in some past series on the history of England / Britain, the Roman period has been presented as a prequel to the heyday of the British empire. The stress on Rome’s civilizing mission, the universal benefits of her rule, and so on, has the effect of deflecting attention from the exploitative and repressive aspects of imperial rule. To some extent this contrasts with common perceptions of the Norman conquest, where the negative impacts have never been denied in quite the same way. The point is neatly illustrated in Tom Stoppard’s play Indian Ink where an Indian is informed by an ex-Memsahib that: ‘We were your Romans, you know. We might have been your Normans.’ One of the underlying questions in this book is whether this supposed difference between ‘nice’ Roman and ‘nasty’ Norman conquerors of Britain is sustainable.

Nor has the British empire been immune from revisionist views. Fifty years of post-colonial studies have done much to dent its reputation. There is increasingly widespread scepticism of the extent to which it was ever run for ‘the betterment and happiness of the world’. That is not to deny that there were many decent and humane individuals involved in the governance of the British empire who behaved honestly and with compassion to subject peoples, but the power dynamics of an empire are such that unscrupulous and less-principled individuals could have a disproportionate impact and were less likely to be disciplined for behaviour or bias that would have been unacceptable in Britain. The idea of the ‘white man’s burden’ was largely a post facto attempt at self-justification and, when power was abused, how often was the excuse trotted out that the ends justified the means? Yet one of the interesting effects of post-colonial criticism of imperialism has been to reinforce such apologia. Many people do not like to have their preconceptions challenged in this way. In 198 6 the performance of a new play by Howard Brenton called The Romans in Britain caused a furore because of the staged rape of a male Briton by a group of Roman soldiers. In part the outcry was to do with this being a graphic and shocking piece of sex and violence in a theatre, but for many people this was compounded by the fact that parallels were being drawn between Roman imperialism and the modern experience of Northern Ireland patrolled by British troops. The violence is the sort of plausible outrage that imperialism begets (and that we would prefer not to be reminded of).

There is an interesting consequence of the close alignment of many modern scholars with the Roman empire, in that these authors have missed a key ingredient of Britain’s history under Rome. Far from being a close comparison with Britain’s later experience of empire, the history of Roman rule provides a diametrically opposed perspective on imperialism and colonialism, with the boot very firmly on the other foot. In this book, considerably more emphasis than usual will be placed on the negative aspects of imperial rule and their impact on the subject peoples. Since there was no unified British identity as such, rather a mix of regional societies, the impacts also varied considerably across Britain. Britain’s early experience of empire was thus far removed from its later one, as victim rather than perpetrator. This account may in a certain way shed new light on modern colonialism too, by emphasizing the experience of subject people, who were in their turn imperial possessions.

It is pointless, of course, to try to assess how the British regional peoples would have fared had the Roman conquest not occurred. The pre-Roman Iron Age societies were not necessarily any less exploitative of ordinary people, and, in taking a critical view of the impact of Roman imperialism, it does not necessarily follow that life would have been better without Rome. However, the longevity of Roman domination (about fifteen generations) meant that its impacts were profound, both positively and negatively. We must assess not just Rome’s triumphs and achievements, but also the extent of her unpopularity and of resistance to her rule.

Empire can be defined as rule over very wide territories and many peoples without their consent. While ancient societies did not have as developed a sense of self-determination as modern states, the fact that subjugation was often fiercely contested militarily is symptomatic of the fundamentally non-consensual nature of imperialism. This book seeks to explore the nature of life under Roman domination from a variety of perspectives. It offers a critical and sceptical view of the nature of imperial systems. An empire is in general interested in its own maintenance, with regional development a secondary consideration, in itself underscored with self-interest. Wherever economic development did take place, there the state could extract more revenue. Where social institutions took root, there the state could govern more effectively and often more economically.

Recent work on the archaeology of colonialism has opened up entirely new perspectives on societies under imperial rule. Colonialism is essentially about the operation of power in situations that necessarily created or reinforced large inequalities within territories subject to exterior rule. Power is used to induce people to comply with imperial authority and to deliver up resources, but empires are inevitably also about the attempts by subjects to evade obligations, such as taxation. These power differences underscore the conventional history of action and response, but they also have correlates in the material world. This is where the archaeological record can help us to trace the impact of colonial rule on British societies under Roman rule. Roman imperialism has been defined as being focused on an inherent accommodation with local cultures (what is described as ‘middle ground’ colonialism). In this respect it has sometimes been contrasted with the approach of some more recent imperial projects that have had a much more violent and less respectful attitude towards pre-existing people on the land. The contrast is true to a point, but there is a danger that we may overlook the violent side of ancient empire in the process (see Chapters 4-5). At different times and places, and in separate relations with diverse social groups, it seems to me that the Roman empire could be both sorts of colonizing power. Similarly, looked at from the bottom up, there was probably a great deal of similarity between the lived experience of Rome’s humbler subjects and those of more recent imperial regimes, especially as regards attempts to avoid taxation and other fiscal controls and legal restraints. These tendencies need to be considered alongside the social outlook of native elites who became most closely aligned with the geopolitical system.

Romanization is a key concept in many studies of Roman Britain and a further departure in this book will be my attempt to dispense with it after this brief introductory notice. Romanization was not a Roman concept, but it has a long pedigree in Roman studies, being traceable back to a tradition of study developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that stressed the benign aspect of Roman rule and the cultural purpose of the Roman empire. Under this simple model the Romans brought the gifts of towns, villas, language, art and culture to grateful provincials and it was assumed that all of them perceived Roman culture as self-evidently superior to what they had before. Britons were thus depicted as enthusiastic participants in Roman lifestyle, with society undergoing progressive cultural evolution under Rome. Early excavation of Roman period sites in Britain focused on Roman forts, towns and villas, creating a research agenda that was predisposed to support these assumptions precisely because it focused on those elements of Romano-British society that were most closely aligned with a ‘Roman’ identity. Romanization has inevitably stressed the degree of similarity between Britain and the rest of the empire, while at the same time ignoring or downplaying the extent to which aspects of pre-existing British culture influenced developments.

The early enthusiasm for the approach in Britain and elsewhere in Europe was in part at least conditioned by the involvement of European scholars at the time in their own world of colonization and empire. A very close association between the scholarly view and the perspective of the imperial power was the predictable result. Some scholars talked of a Romanization policy on the part of Rome (somewhat akin to the equally specious insistence on the civilizing mission of white settlers in modern imperialism). Rather more surprising in my view has been the longevity of the Romanization paradigm into the post-colonial age, all the more so as Romanization suffers from other problems than simply being a hang-over from the period of modern imperialism. The model is unilateral, unidirectional and progressive, yet the archaeological evidence often stands in implicit contradiction of this. For instance, Romanization tends to reduce the question of cultural identity to a simple binary opposition: Roman and native. The fact that much of what we identify as ‘Roman’ culture in provinces like Britain in fact came from other provinces in northern and western Europe, rather than from Italy or even the Mediterranean region, should give us pause for thought. Moreover, attention has been drawn increasingly to the infinitely varied nature of the Roman cultural package found around the empire. Regionality and diversity should be just as important in our analysis as elements of homogeneity, but the Romanization paradigm is an obstacle to exploring these.