THE ROMANIZATION OF ROMAN BRITAIN
by
F. HAVERFIELD
Second Edition, Greatly Enlarged
With Twenty-One Illustrations
Oxford
at the Clarendon Press
1912
[Illustration: HEAD OF GORGON, FROM THE PEDIMENT OF THE TEMPLE OF SUL
MINERVA AT BATH (1/7). (SEE PAGE 42.)]
Henry Frowde
Publisher to the University of Oxford
London, Edinburgh, New York
Toronto And Melbourne
PREFACE
The following paper was originally read to the British Academy in 1905,
and published in the second Volume of its Proceedings (pp. 185-217) and
in a separate form (London, Frowde). The latter has been sometime out of
print, and, as there was apparently some demand for a reprint, the
Delegates of the Press have consented to issue a revised and enlarged
edition. I have added considerably to both text and illustrations and
corrected where it seemed necessary, and I have endeavoured so to word
the matter that the text, though not the footnotes, can be read by any
one who is interested in the subject, without any special knowledge of
Latin.
F. HAVERFIELD.
OXFORD, April 22, 1912
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. THE ROMANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
2. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON ROMAN BRITAIN
3. ROMANIZATION OF BRITAIN IN LANGUAGE
4. ROMANIZATION IN MATERIAL CIVILIZATION
5. ROMANIZATION IN ART
6. ROMANIZATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND LAND-SYSTEM
7. CHRONOLOGY OF THE ROMANIZATION
8. THE SEQUEL, THE CELTIC REVIVAL IN THE LATER EMPIRE
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
Head of Gorgon from Bath. (From a photograph) Frontispiece
1. The Civil and Military Districts of Britain
2, 3, and 4. Inscribed tiles from Silchester. (From photographs)
5. Inscribed tile from Silchester. (From a drawing by Sir E. M.
Thompson)
6. Inscribed tile from Plaxtol, Kent, and reconstruction of lettering.
(From photographs)
7. Ground-plans of Romano-British Temples. (From _Archaeologia_)
8. Ground-plan of Corridor House, Frilford. (From plan by Sir
A. J. Evans)
9. Ground-plan of Roman House at Northleigh, Oxfordshire
10. Plan of a part of Silchester, showing the arrangement of the
private houses and the Forum and Christian Church. (From
_Archaeologia_)
11. Painted pattern on wall-plaster at Silchester.(Restoration by
G. E. Fox in _Archaeologia_)
12. Plan of British Village at Din Lligwy. (From _Archaeologia
Cambrensis_)
13. Late Celtic Metal Work in the British Museum.(From a photograph)
14. Fragments of New Forest pottery with leaf patterns. (From
_Archaeologia_)
15. Urns of Castor Ware. (From photographs)
16. Hunting Scenes from Castor Ware. (From _Artis, Durobrivae_)
17. Fragment of Castor Ware showing Hercules and Hesione. (After
C. R. Smith)
18. The Corbridge Lion. (From a photograph)
19. Dragon-brooches. (From a drawing by C. J. Praetorius)
20. Inscription from Caerwent illustrating Cantonal Government.
(From a drawing)
21. Ogam inscription from Silchester. (From a drawing by C. J.
Praetorius)
Note. For the blocks of the frontispiece, of Figs. 3, 5, 15, 16, I am
indebted to the editor and publishers of the Victoria County History.
Figs. 6, 11, 14, 20, 21, are reproduced from _Archaeologia_ and the
_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_. For the block of Fig. 10 I
have to thank the Royal Institute of British Architects; for the block
of Fig. 18, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
CHAPTER I
THE ROMANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE
Historians seldom praise the Roman Empire. They regard it as a period of
death and despotism, from which political freedom and creative genius
and the energies of the speculative intellect were all alike excluded.
There is, unquestionably, much truth in this judgement. The world of the
Empire was indeed, as Mommsen has called it, an old world. Behind it lay
the dreams and experiments, the self-convicted follies and disillusioned
wisdom of many centuries. Before it lay no untravelled region such as
revealed itself to our forefathers at the Renaissance or to our fathers
fifty years ago. No new continent then rose up beyond the western seas.
No forgotten literature suddenly flashed out its long-lost splendours.
No vast discoveries of science transformed the universe and the
interpretation of it. The inventive freshness and intellectual
confidence that are born of such things were denied to the Empire. Its
temperament was neither artistic, nor literary, nor scientific. It was
merely practical.
Yet if practical, it was not therefore uncreative. In its own sphere of
everyday life, it was an epoch of growth in many directions. Even the
arts moved forward. Sculpture was enriched by a new and noble style of
portraiture. Architecture won new possibilities by the engineering
genius which reared the aqueduct of Segovia and the Basilica of
Maxentius.[1] But these are only practical expansions of arts that are
in themselves unpractical. The greatest work of the imperial age must be
sought in its provincial administration. The significance of this we
have come to understand, as not even Gibbon understood it, through the
researches of Mommsen. By his vast labours our horizon has broadened
beyond the backstairs of the Palace and the benches of the Senate House
in Rome to the wide lands north and east and south of the Mediterranean,
and we have begun to realize the true achievements of the Empire. 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 Empire wrought for the betterment and the
happiness of the world.
[Footnote 1: Wickhoff, _Wiener Genesis_, p. 10; Riegl, _Stilfragen_, p.
272.]
Their efforts took two forms, the organization of the frontier defences
which repulsed the barbarian, and the development of the provinces
within those defences. The first of these achievements was but for a
time. In the end the Roman legionary went down before the Gothic
horseman. But before he fell he had done his work. In the lands that he
had sheltered, Roman civilization had taken strong root. The fact has an
importance which we to-day might easily miss. It is not likely that any
modern nation will soon again stand in the place that Rome then held.
Our culture to-day seems firmly planted in three continents and our task
is rather to diffuse it further and to develop its good qualities than
to defend it. But the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety
of Rome was the safety of all civilization. Outside was the wild chaos
of barbarism. Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a
thousand miles of western Asia. Through all the storms of barbarian
onset, through the carnage of uncounted wars, through plagues which
struck whole multitudes down to a disastrous death, through civil
discord and sedition and domestic treachery, the work went on. It was
not always marked by special insight or intelligence. The men who
carried it out were not for the most part first-rate statesmen or
first-rate generals. Their successes were those of character, not of
genius. But their phlegmatic courage saved the civilized life of Europe
till that life had grown strong and tenacious, and till even its
assailants had recognized its worth.
It was this growth of internal civilization which formed the second and
most lasting of the achievements of the Empire. Its long and peaceable
government--the longest and most orderly that has yet been granted to
any large portion of the world--gave time for the expansion of Roman
speech and manners, for the extension of the political franchise, the
establishment of city life, the assimilation of the provincial
populations in an orderly and coherent civilization. As the importance
of the city of Rome declined, as the world became Romeless, a large part
of the world grew to be Roman. It has been said that Greece taught men
to be human and Rome made mankind civilized. That was the work of the
Empire; the form it took was Romanization.
This Romanization has its limits and its characteristics. First, in
respect of place. Not only in the further east, where (as in Egypt)
mankind was non-European, but even in the nearer east, where an ancient
Greek civilization reigned, the effect of Romanization was inevitably
small. Closely as Greek civilization resembled Roman, easy as the
transition might seem from the one to the other, Rome met here that most
serious of all obstacles to union, a race whose thoughts and affections
and traditions had crystallized into definite coherent form. That has in
all ages checked Imperial assimilation; it was the decisive hindrance to
the Romanization of the Greek east. A few Italian oases were created by
the establishment of _coloniae_ here and there in Asia Minor and in
Syria. But all of them perished like exotic plants.[1] The Romanization
of these lands was political. Their inhabitants ultimately learnt to
call and to consider themselves Romans. But they did not adopt the Roman
language or the Roman civilization.
[Footnote 1: Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 147; Kubitschek,
_Festheft Bormann_ (Wiener Studien, xx. 2), pp. 340 foll.; L. Hahn, _Rom
und Romanismus im griechisch-röm. Osten_ (Leipzig, 1906).]
The west offers a different spectacle. Here Rome found races that were
not yet civilized, yet were racially capable of accepting her culture.
Here, accordingly, her conquests differed from the two forms of conquest
with which modern men are most familiar. We know well enough the rule of
civilized white men over uncivilized Africans, who seem sundered for
ever from their conquerors by a broad physical distinction. We know,
too, the rule of civilized white men over civilized white men--of
Russian (for example) over Pole, where the individualities of two
kindred and similarly civilized races clash in undying conflict. The
Roman conquest of western Europe resembled neither of these. Celt,
Iberian, German, Illyrian, were marked off from Italian by no broad
distinction of race and colour, such as that which marked off Egyptian
from Italian, or that which now divides Englishman from African or
Frenchman from Algerian Arab. They were marked off, further, by no
ancient culture, such as that which had existed for centuries round the
Aegean. It was possible, it was easy, to Romanize these western peoples.
Even their geographical position helped, though somewhat indirectly, to
further the process. Tacitus two or three times observes that the
western provinces of the Empire looked out on no other land to the
westward and bordered on no free nations. That is one half of a larger
fact which influenced the whole history of the Empire. Round the west
lay the sea and the Sahara. In the east were wide lands and powerful
states and military dangers and political problems and commercial
opportunities. The Empire arose in the west and in Italy, a land that,
geographically speaking, looks westward. But it was drawn surely, if
slowly, to the east. Throughout the first three centuries of our era, we
can trace an eastward drift--of troops, of officials, of government
machinery--till finally the capital itself is no longer Rome but
Byzantium. All the while, in the undisturbed security of the west,
Romanization proceeded steadily.
The advance of this Romanization followed manifold lines. The Roman
government gave more or less direct encouragement, particularly in two
ways. It increased the Roman or Romanized population of the provinces
during the earlier Empire by establishing time-expired soldiers--men who
spoke Latin and who were citizens of Rome[1]--in provincial
municipalities (_coloniae_). It allured provincials themselves to adopt
Roman civilization by granting the franchise and other privileges to
those who conformed. Neither step need be ascribed to any idealism on
the part of the rulers. _Coloniae_ served as instruments of repression
as well as of culture, at least in the first century of the Empire. When
Cicero[2] describes a _colonia_, founded under the Republic in southern
Gaul, as 'a watch-tower of the Roman people and an outpost planted to
confront the Gaulish tribes', he states an aspect of such a town which
obtained during the earlier Empire no less than in the Republican age.
Civilized men, again, are always more easily ruled than savages.[3] But
the result was in any case the same. The provincials became Romanized.
[Footnote 1: English writers sometimes adduce the provincial origins of
the soldiers as proofs that they were unromanized. The conclusion is
unjustifiable. The legionaries were throughout recruited from places
which were adequately Romanized. The auxiliaries, though recruited from
less civilized districts, and though to some extent tribally organized
in the early Empire, were denationalized after A.D. 70, and non-Roman
elements do not begin to recur in the army till later. Tiberius _militem
Graece testimonium interrogatum nisi Latine respondere vetuit_ (Suet.
_Tib._ 71).]
[Footnote 2: Cic. _pro Font._ 13. Compare Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 27 and
32, _Agr._ 14 and 32.]
[Footnote 3: Tacitus emphasizes this point. _Agr._ 21 _ut homines
dispersi ac rudes, eoque in bella faciles, quieti et otio per voluptates
adsuescerent, hortari privatim adiuvare publice ut templa fora domos
exstruerent.... Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars
servitutis esset._]
No less important results followed from unofficial causes. The legionary
fortresses collected settlers--traders, women, veterans--under the
shelter of their ramparts, and their _canabae_ or 'bazaars', to use an
Anglo-Indian term, formed centres of Roman speech and life, and often
developed into cities. Italians, especially of the upper-middle class,
merchants and others,[1] emigrated freely and formed tiny Roman
settlements, often in districts where no troops were stationed. Chances
opened at Rome for able provincials who became Romanized. Above all, the
definite and coherent civilization of Italy took hold of uncivilized but
intelligent men, while the tolerance of Rome, which coerced no one into
conformity, made its culture the more attractive because it seemed the
less inevitable.
[Footnote 1: The best parallel to the Italian emigration to the
provinces during the late Republic and early Empire is perhaps to be
found in the mediaeval German emigrations to Galicia and parts of
Hungary (the Siebenbürgen Saxons are an exception), which Professor R.F.
Kaindl has so well and minutely described. The present day mass
emigration of the lower classes is something quite distinct.]
The process is hard to follow in detail, since datable evidence is
scanty. In general, however, the instances of really native fashions or
speech which are recorded from this or that province belong to the early
Empire. To that age we can assign not only the Celtic, Iberian, and
Punic inscriptions which we find occasionally in Gaul, Spain, and
Africa, but also the use of the native titles like Vergobret or Suffete,
and the retention of native personal names and of that class of Latin
_nomina_, like Lovessius, which are formed out of native names. In the
middle Empire such things are rarer. Exceptions naturally meet us here
and there. Punic was in almost official use in towns like Gigthis in the
Syrtis region in the second century, and Punic-speaking clergy, it
appears, were needed in some of the villages of fourth-century Africa.
Celtic is stated to have been in use at the same epoch among the Treveri
of eastern Gaul--presumably in the great woodlands of the Ardennes, the
Eifel and the Hunsrück.[1] Basque was obviously in use throughout the
Roman period in the valleys of the Pyrenees. So in Asia Minor, where
Greek was the dominant tongue, six or seven other dialects, Galatian,
Phrygian, Lycaonian, and others, lived on till a very late date,
especially (as it seems) on the uncivilized pastoral areas of the
Imperial domain-lands.[2] Some of these are survivals, noted at the time
as exceptional, and counting in the scales of history for no more than
the survival of Greek in a few modern villages of southern Italy or the
Wendish oasis seventy miles from Berlin. Others are more serious facts.
But they do not alter the main position. In most regions of the west the
Latin tongue obviously prevailed. It was, indeed, powerful enough to
lead the Christian Church to insist on its use, and not, as in Syria and
Egypt, to encourage native dialects.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jerome, _Comment. in epist. ad Galatas_, ii. 3. His
assertion has, however, met with much scepticism in modern times, and it
must be admitted that he was not a very accurate writer.]
[Footnote 2: K. Holl, _Hermes_, xliii. 240-54; William M. Ramsay,
_Oesterr. Jahreshefte_, viii. (1905), 79-120, quoting, amongst other
things, a neo-phrygian text of A.D. 259; W.M. Calder, _Hellenic
Journal_, xxxi. 161.]
[Footnote 3: Mommsen (_Röm. Gesch._ v. 92) ascribes the final extinction
of Celtic in northern Gaul to the influence of the Church. But the
Church was not in itself averse to native dialects, and its insistence
on Latin in the west may well be due rather to the previous diffusion of
the language.]
In material culture the Romanization advanced no less quickly. One
uniform fashion spread from the Mediterranean throughout central and
western Europe, driving out native art and substituting a
conventionalized copy of Graeco-Roman or Italian art, which is
characterized alike by its technical finish and neatness, and by its
lack of originality and its dependence on imitation. The result was
inevitable. The whole external side of life was lived amidst Italian, or
(as we may perhaps call it) Roman-provincial, furniture and environment.
Take by way of example the development of the so-called 'Samian' ware.
The original manufacture of this (so far as we are here concerned) was
in Italy at Arezzo. Early in the first century Gaulish potters began to
copy and compete with it; before long the products of the Arretine kilns
had vanished even from the Italian market. Western Europe henceforward
was supplied with its 'best china' from provincial and mainly from
Gaulish sources. The character of the ware supplied is significant. It
was provincial, but it was in no sense unclassical. It drew many of its
details from other sources than Arezzo, but it drew them all from Greece
or Rome. Nothing either in the manner or in the matter of its decoration
recalled native Gaul. Throughout, it is imitative and conventional, and,
as often happens in a conventional art, items are freely jumbled
together which do not fit into any coherent story or sequence. At its
best, it is handsome enough: though its possibilities are limited by its
brutal monochrome, it is no discredit to the civilization to which it
belongs. But it reveals unmistakably the Roman character of that
civilization.
The uniformity of this civilization was crossed by local variations, but
these do not contradict its Roman character. If the provincial felt
sometimes the claims of his province and raised a cry that sounds like
'Africa for the Africans' he acted on a geographical, not on any native
or national idea. He was demanding individual life for a Roman section
of the Empire. He was anticipating, perhaps, the birth of new nations
out of the Romanized populations. He was not attempting to recall the
old pre-Roman system. Similarly, if his art or architecture embodies
native fashions or displays a local style, if special types of houses or
of tombstones or sculpture occur in special districts, that does not mar
the result. These are not efforts to regain an earlier native life. They
are not the enemies of Roman culture, but its children--sometimes,
indeed, its adopted children--and they signify the birth of new Roman
fashions.
It remains true, of course, that, till a language or a custom is wholly
dead and gone, it can always revive under special conditions. The rustic
poor of a country seldom affect the trend of its history. But they have
a curious persistent force. Superstitions, sentiments, even language and
the consciousness of nationality, linger dormant among them, till an
upheaval comes, till buried seeds are thrown out on the surface and
forgotten plants blossom once more. The world has seen many examples of
such resurrection--not least in modern Europe. The Roman Empire offers
us singularly few instances, but it would be untrue to say that there
were none.
But while it is true generally that Romanization spread rapidly in the
west, we must admit great differences between different districts even
of the same provincial areas. Some grew Romanized soon and thoroughly,
others slowly and imperfectly. For instance, Gallia Comata, that is,
Gaul north and west of the Cevennes, contrasted sharply in this respect
with Narbonensis, the province of the Mediterranean coast and the Rhone
Valley. This latter, even in the first century A.D., had become _Italia
verius quam provincia_. The other lagged behind. Neither the Latin
speech nor the Latin forms of municipal government became quickly
common. Yet even in northern Gaul Romanization strode forward. The
Gaulish monarchy of A.D. 258-73 shows us the position north of the
Cevennes just after the middle of the third century. In it Roman and
native elements were mixed. Its emperors were called not only Latinius
Postumus, but also Piavonius and Esuvius Tetricus. Its coins were
inscribed not only 'Romae Aeternae', but also 'Herculi Deusoniensi' and
'Herculi Magusano'. It not only claimed independence of Rome or perhaps
equality with it, but it aspired to be the Empire. It had its own
senate, copied from that of Rome; _tribunicia potestas_ was conferred on
its ruler and the title _princeps iuventutis_ on its heir apparent. At
that date it was still possible for a Gaulish ruler to bear a Gaulish
name and to appeal to some sort of native memories. But the appeal was
made without any sense that it was incompatible with a general
acceptance of Roman fashions, language, and constitution. Postumus, if
he had had the chance, would have made himself Emperor of Rome. Though
the native element in Gaul had not died out of mind, at any rate its
opposition to the Roman had become forgotten. It had become little more
than a picturesque and interesting contrast to the all-absorbing Roman
element. A hundred and thirty years later it had almost wholly vanished.
Such is the historical situation to which we must adjust our views of
any single province in the western Empire. Two main conclusions may here
be emphasized. First, Romanization in general extinguished the
distinction between Roman and provincial, alike in politics, in material
culture, and in language. Secondly, it did not everywhere and at once
destroy all traces of tribal or national sentiments or fashions. These
remained, at least for a while and in a few districts, not so much in
active opposition as in latent persistence, capable of resurrection
under the proper conditions. In such cases the provincial had become a
Roman. But he could still undergo an atavistic reversion to the ancient
ways of his forefathers.