THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.
With the departure of Agricola the literary history of Roman Britain
comes to an end. For three centuries longer the legions were to remain
in our island, and the buildings which they reared, the altars which
they inscribed, the roads which they constructed, tell us something of
the life which they led during that long space of time, as long as the
whole period that has elapsed from Elizabeth’s days to ours. Archæology
has much to tell us concerning it, but history is almost altogether
silent. A few sections of Dion Cassius, some confused notices in
the _Historia Augusta_, a page or two of Ammianus Marcellinus, are
practically all that is left to us of the written history of our
country from Agricola to Stilicho. We need not here discuss the causes
of a silence so tantalising and so irremediable; how far it may have
sprung from Roman contempt of a distant and mist-enveloped island, how
far from a decay of courage and hopefulness in the Romans themselves,
symptoms of the impending ruin of their empire; it is enough that the
pages are for us left blank and can now never be filled.
The greatest monument of Roman power in Britain and that which has
yielded the most fruitful results to archæology is the Roman Wall
between the two estuaries of Tyne and Solway. Almost all that we know
of Roman life in Britain during the second century centres round
this one great work. Towards the end of the first century a change
took place in the organisation of the defence of the empire on the
frontiers. Hitherto the republic, and after it the empire, had been
satisfied to keep a strong body of troops in all the imperfectly
conquered provinces, and to plant well-garrisoned castles near the
river or the range of mountains on the other side of which were the
barbarians of Europe or Africa, or the hostile monarchies of Asia. Soon
after the death of Nero a different system was adopted, involving the
formation of a definitely marked boundary which when not protected by
very strong natural barriers was guarded by an actual wall of stone
or earth upon which the garrisoned fortresses were strung, like beads
on a chain. Not only in Britain are traces of these limiting walls
to be found, but also in Germany, between the Lower Rhine and the
Danube, and in the Dobrudscha on the western shore of the Black Sea:
and there is reason to believe that a similar wall of defence shut out
the barbarians of Mount Aures who threatened the provincials of Roman
Africa.
“The real authors of the frontier system were the Flavian and Antonine
Emperors, and the period extending from the accession of Vespasian to
the death of Marcus Aurelius, or, roughly, from 70 A.D. to 180 A.D.,
witnessed its complete organisation. The interest of these emperors in
the matter was no doubt quickened by the growing anxiety, an anxiety
unknown to the Augustan age, but perceptible in Tacitus, as to the
increasing pressure from without upon the empire.... It is well for
students of the British frontier to remember that the emperor with
whose name the organisation of the imperial frontier system is most
closely connected is Hadrian.”[15]
There has been much discussion about this matter. As we shall see,
there is good reason for connecting the name of a later emperor,
Severus, with the building of the wall, but, on the whole, the
testimony of inscriptions and the labours of archæologists tend to
confirm the clear statement of the biographer Spartianus (writing,
it is true, a century and a half after the event): “Hadrian visited
Britain, in which island he corrected many things that were amiss,
and was the first to draw a wall across for eighty miles, in order to
divide the barbarians and the Romans”. In all the long list of Roman
emperors it would be hard to find a more fascinating figure than that
of this great wall-builder. By no means the best of his class, far
surpassed in moral excellence by Trajan, Antoninus and Marcus, but
removed by an immeasurable distance from the worst, from such men as
Nero, Domitian and Commodus; architect, artist, author, and, above
all things, indefatigable traveller, Publius Ælius Hadrianus united a
truly Greek versatility and brilliancy of intellect to all the Roman’s
strong sense of duty towards the great _Res Publica_, and willingness
for Rome’s sake to sacrifice many of the sensual gratifications in
which his soul only too clearly delighted. The traveller who wanders
for hours through the ruins of the vast collection of luxurious palaces
which is called the _Villa Hadriani_, or who, in sunny Athens, sees
the arch which bears the proud inscription, “On this side the city of
Theseus, on that the city of Hadrian,” can in some measure realise the
self-denial which must have been involved in Hadrian’s presence with
the legions during the setting out of eighty Roman miles of wall[16]
across the misty moors of Northumberland and Cumberland.
It was probably in the year 120, three years after his accession to
the empire, that Hadrian visited Britain. The journey may have been
only part of his pre-arranged tour through the western portion of his
dominions, but it is also possible that it was the result of some
recent and special disaster in Britain to the Roman arms. Some forty
or fifty years afterwards the orator Fronto alluded to “the great
number of soldiers slain by the Britons during the reign of Hadrian,”
and it is allowable at least as a matter of conjecture to couple these
words with the ominous disappearance of one of the legions stationed
in Britain from the army list of the empire. The unlucky Ninth legion,
once quartered at Lincoln, afterwards at York, had been, as we have
seen, nearly destroyed in the insurrection headed by Boadicea. It had
again suffered most severely, under Agricola, from a night attack made
by the Caledonians before the battle of Mons Graupius. And now, just
about this time, either in the later years of Trajan or the earlier
years of Hadrian, it vanishes clean out of the lists of the Roman
army and is replaced by the Sixth legion, surnamed the Victorious,
which was brought over to Britain and stationed at Eburacum. There is
some discussion as to the earlier cantonment of the legions, whether
four or three, that had been quartered in Britain, but as to the
general question of their allocation during, at least, the second
and third centuries of our era there can be no doubt. The Second
legion (_Augusta_) at Isca (Caerleon-upon-Usk); the Sixth (_Victrix_)
at Eburacum (York), and the Twentieth (_Valeria Victrix_) at Deva
(Chester), have left abundant tokens of their long-continued presence.
From all these legions, however, considerable drafts were taken to
assist in the building of the wall from Tyne to Solway, the existing
remains of which must now be described. At the two ends of its course,
where it has had the ill-fortune either to meet with the fierce
industrial energy of the dwellers by the estuary of the Tyne, or to
attract the envious glances of the farmers of fertile Cumberland, the
wall has practically ceased to exist, though it has seldom passed that
way for more than two or three miles without leaving some traces,
however faint, of its presence to reward the quest of the earnest
antiquary. But in the central part of its course, where it has left
the busy haunts of men and climbed the bleak moorlands and the steep
basaltic cliffs of Western Northumberland and Eastern Cumberland, it
still exists in what its great historian, Dr. Bruce, used to call “an
encouraging state of preservation”. For twenty miles or more it goes
striding over mountain and moor, religiously climbing every cliff and
dipping down into every hollow of the sharply outlined, serrated,
whinstone range. Sometimes we see only the rough rubble-work which
formed the core of the wall, but more often the well-hewn square blocks
which faced its northern and southern sides are still visible. The
height attained by it is in one or two places as much as nine feet,
but its more usual altitude is four to five feet. It was probably
when perfect about seventeen feet high; and its width, as we know
from the existing remains, varied from six to eight feet. The line
of the wall once fixed, its builders seem to have pursued a nearly
uniform plan, regardless of the help which they might have derived
from natural defences. Thus in one place it crowns the heights of
some steep basaltic cliffs at whose feet lies a small Northumbrian
lake. No desperation of bravery would ever have caused a Brigantian
chief to dash across that lake and climb those pinnacles of columnar
basalt: still even here the wall pursues its undeviating course, and,
so far as we know, retained its undiminished height. It is possible,
however, that in such a case as this it was meant as a defence, not
against barbarians, but against the weather. Snowstorms sometimes sweep
violently across these bleak moorlands, and it may have been thought
desirable to provide the Roman sentinel, pacing backwards and forwards
between camp and camp, with some shelter from their fury.
Along the line of the wall are situated fortified enclosures of
three kinds which now go by the names of camps, mile-castles and
turrets. The _camps_, of which there were seventeen, between Tyne and
Solway, and which were probably called by the Romans _Prætenturæ_ or
_Stationes_, vary in size from three to six acres. They were destined
for the housing of one cohort--a body of men varying in size from 600
to 1,000--with, no doubt, a certain number of camp-followers, and in
some cases a considerable troop of horses. Public buildings, known by
antiquaries as the prætorium, the forum and the like, are to be found
generally in the centre of the camp, sometimes on the side most exposed
to the enemy’s attacks: and the quarters of the officers may generally
be distinguished from those of the common soldiers by the elaborate
arrangements for warming them, known as hypocausts. In these the floor
of the room is supported on ranges of short pillars (generally about
eight or nine inches high), between which the hot air circulated, being
brought by flues from the furnace at a corner of the camp, in which it
is evident that the fuel used was often the coal of Northumberland. The
great number of oyster-shells, the beef-bones and mutton-bones found
near many of the camps give us an indication of the food supplied to
the officers, perhaps also to some of the privates. Many interesting
illustrations of the immense length of time that the Roman occupation
of Britain endured may be derived from these _Prætenturæ_. Thus we have
several inscriptions recording the repair of a granary or a temple
ruined by age (_vetustate conlapsum_): and in the sacred well of the
nymph Coventina, just outside the camp of Procolitia, there were found
16,000 coins ranging over a period from A.D. 100 to 300 which had
been thrown into the well by generations of Roman soldiers as votive
offerings to the goddess.
Besides the larger camps, there were, as has been said, also smaller
forts, erected at regular intervals of a thousand Roman paces, which
are now known by the designation _mile-castles_; and other still
smaller enclosures, hardly more than sentry boxes, about three to the
mile, which are called, not very aptly, _turrets_, and of which very
few specimens still remain.
The soldiers by whom the line of the wall was defended did not
belong to the legions, though legionaries had been employed in its
construction. They belonged to various auxiliary corps recruited in
the outlying provinces of the empire, and they were theoretically less
Roman, less Italian, than their comrades enlisted in the legions,
though this distinction was practically to a large extent breaking down
in the second and third centuries of the empire. While Britons were
being enlisted for service abroad, Asturians from Spain, Frisians and
Batavians from Holland, Tungrians from Belgium, Lingones from Gaul,
even Dalmatians and Dacians from the distant provinces which bore their
names, were tramping from station to station along the mighty wall
of Hadrian, bathing in the chilly waters of the Tyne, or hunting the
deer on the misty slopes of Cross Fell. Most gladly would we learn how
these detachments of soldiers, which for something like three centuries
guarded the British _Limes Imperii_, were recruited; whether fresh
drafts came, for instance, from Spain and from Dalmatia to replace the
veterans who had earned their discharge, or whether the sons of the
barracks kept the barracks full, in which case there would be probably
an ever-increasing strain of British blood in the limitary garrisons.
But on this point we lack definite information, which may possibly be
supplied to us by the spade and the pick-axe of future excavators.
The total number of actual soldiers on the line of the wall has been
computed at 10,000. In addition to these there would undoubtedly be a
certain number of domestic servants, grooms, camp-followers of various
kinds, besides the wives and concubines of the soldiers, so that we
may probably conjecture the population of the _Limes_ at not less
than 20,000, a much larger number of persons than is to be found in
that beautiful but solitary region to-day. Not only the numbers but
the nationality of these vanished dwellers by the Tyne and Irthing
strike us by their strange contrast with the present. Besides the
Asturian and Dalmatian soldiers there must have been merchants and
money-lenders and camp-followers of all kinds, speaking many tongues,
upon these wind-swept moorlands. In the museum at South Shields is a
sepulchral monument representing a woman seated, holding in her right
hand a jewel-box, in her left implements of needlework. Underneath is a
bilingual inscription, telling us in Latin that the figure represents
“Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barate the Palmyrene, herself of the
[British] nation of the Catuallauni, who died at the age of thirty”.
In characters akin to Hebrew the Oriental part of the inscription
says simply, “Regina, the freedwoman of Barate. Alas!” The blended
nationality, the British girl bought, enfranchised, loved and too soon
lost by the Syrian,--merchant perchance or usurer,--who followed the
flight of the eagles of Rome, are all brought before us by these few
roughly carved lines, and they tell a story of world-wide empire, in
which, perhaps, the Britain of our own day could offer the closest
parallel to Rome.
Under the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161), the successor of Hadrian,
another wall was built, some fifty or sixty miles north of the first,
between the Firths of Forth and of Clyde. There were no stones in
this wall, which was made of layers of turf, and, moreover, it has
suffered cruelly (from an archæological point of view) through the
operations necessary first for the cutting of a canal and afterwards
for the building of a railroad between the two seas; but an abundance
of inscribed stones tell us much concerning the names and occupations
of the soldiers by whom it was garrisoned, and abundantly confirm the
testimony of historians who attribute its erection to Antoninus Pius
(138–161), one of the best and noblest of Roman emperors. Doubtless, at
the time of its building, the country between the two walls (comprising
the county of Northumberland and the whole south of Scotland) was
subject to Roman rule. The precise period when that district was
finally lost to the empire is still unknown to us. The philosopher
emperor, Marcus Aurelius (161–180), was closely occupied with the
defence of the empire against the barbarians of the Middle Danube,
and his name is scarcely mentioned in connexion with the history of
Britain. We are told, however, that “the Britannic war pressed heavily
on his mind,” and that he sent a second Agricola to settle it. This
general of Marcus, Calpurnius Agricola, was not, as far as we know,
descended from his great namesake, the general of Domitian.
With the accession of Commodus (180–192), son of Marcus, the long
and glorious period of the patriot emperors came to an end, and the
ruin of the empire began. The foolish and headstrong boy, who was now
lord of the Roman world, sacrificed some of the best generals in
his service to his jealous and cowardly suspicions, and while he was
devoting himself to the bloody pastimes of the amphitheatre, allowed
the necessary work of the defence of the frontier to fall behind.
“The tribes in the island of Britain,” we are told by Dion Cassius,
“over-passed the wall which separated them from the Roman armies,
committed widespread ravages, and cut to pieces a Roman general with
the troops under his command.” Which of the two walls is here referred
to is not easy to say. It may be conjectured, however, that the wall
of Antoninus had been already broken down in the reign of Marcus,
during the “heavily pressing” Britannic war, and that we have here a
description of one of those barbaric demolitions of which we find such
abundant traces in the wall of Hadrian. To chastise the barbarians and
to restore the broken _Limes_ Commodus sent probably his best general,
the sturdy old soldier, Ulpius Marcellus. If discipline were relaxed
in the legions on the British frontier, here was certainly the man to
restore it. St. Paul himself was not more resolute to “buffet his body
and bring it into subjection” than this chief of many legions. A scanty
sleeper himself, he framed ingenious plans to keep his centurions
and officers at night harassed and awake. An old man with toothless
and tender gums, he would eat only the stale hard bread which he had
brought from Rome, in order that he might not fall into gluttony and
excess. Such was the man who restored for a time the honour of the
Roman arms, and who chastised the barbarians so thoroughly that all men
marvelled that he was not, on his return to Rome, condemned to death by
the jealous Commodus.
The assassination of Commodus (192), followed in less than three months
by the murder of his excellent successor, Pertinax, and by the sale
of the imperial dignity to the highest bidder, introduced a dreadful
period of civil war in which the whole empire had nearly fallen asunder
in ruin. Of the three candidates for the purple, Pescennius Niger
in Syria, Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus on the Middle
Danube, Severus, who had the advantage of being nearest to the capital
and was therefore first acclaimed as emperor, was also at last the
victorious one, but he had a hard fight, especially with Albinus, who
led the three legions which still composed the army of Britain to a
bloody battle in the plains of Lyons. The confusion of the times and
the absence of the Roman legions were undoubtedly favourable to the
restless barbarians. The wall of Hadrian was broken through; the Mæatæ,
who lived immediately to the north of it, burst into the province, and
the governor, Virius Lupus, purchased a precarious peace by paying a
large sum to the invaders. It may be easily imagined that the condition
of Britain after such an ignominious conclusion of a campaign, and even
after the return of the disaffected legions of Albinus, was far from
satisfactory, but it was apparently not till 208 that Septimius Severus
set forth from Rome to bring the affairs of the province into order.
He was already more than sixty years of age, his joints were racked by
gout and his heart was sore through the fierce dissensions of his two
sons, Caracalla and Geta, and the evils which these foreboded for the
empire. Yet even these dissensions urged him the more to undertake the
expedition, for he hoped that common labours and common dangers might
in some degree tend to draw the two hostile brothers together, and that
the necessary hardships of a camp life under our northern skies might
restore some of the moral tone which had been lost amid the vicious
indulgences of Rome. In this hope, it is true, he was completely
disappointed. The hatred of Caracalla, especially for his brother,
waxed fiercer and fiercer, and included also his father, for whose
death he longed with scarcely concealed eagerness. Borne in his litter,
on account of his sufferings from gout, the brave old soldier traversed
the greater part of Caledonia, hewing down forests and throwing
causeways across marshes; slaying, of course, multitudes of barbarians,
but losing also 50,000 of his own troops (so we are told, but the
estimate is probably exaggerated) by hostile ambuscades, severities of
weather, even by the swords of his own soldiers, who often killed their
own comrades to prevent their falling into the hands of the barbarians.
He had a mind, too, to explore the secrets of Nature, and compared with
wonder the all-but perpetual day of midsummer and the scanty measure of
light at midwinter in northern Scotland.
The dates of Severus’ campaign are only obscurely indicated, but it
seems probable that by the year 210 the subjection of the Caledonians
had been apparently completed. Severus, accompanied by Caracalla and
his staff, was riding on horseback, notwithstanding his physical
infirmity, towards a certain place of meeting which had been appointed
for the barbarians, that they might surrender their swords and swear
fidelity to the empire. Caracalla, riding behind him, drew his sword
and made his horse rear and prance, intending, apparently, to be
brought into collision with his father and thus to kill him by apparent
misadventure. A warning shout from some member of the staff caused the
emperor to look round and the parricidal design was foiled. Severus
said nothing, but rode calmly on, took his place on the tribunal and
went through the ceremony that had been arranged. He then sent for
his son and two of his chief ministers (one of them the great lawyer
Papinian), having ordered that a naked sword should be placed in the
middle of the tent. He sternly rebuked his son for the impious deed
which he had meditated in the sight of the allies and the enemies
of Rome, and then, changing his tone, said: “If you still desire to
slay me, here is the sword, draw it and destroy me. Or, since I have
associated you with me in the empire, give your orders to Papinian and
let him be my executioner. You are young and strong: I am old and shall
lay me down to rest without a sigh.” The invitation was not accepted,
for Caracalla shrank now from the guilt of manifest parricide. But the
father’s words revealed too plainly the bitterness of his soul. Many
cruelties and much needless bloodshed had marked his own ascent to
power, but they were surely all avenged by the misery of that day in
the land of the Caledonians.
It was possibly in this same year 210, at any rate during his stay in
Britain, that Severus completed a great and necessary work--the repair
of the wall of Hadrian. So grievously had this long barrier suffered at
the hands of the barbarians that reconstruction seemed to the soldiers
engaged in it like an actual fresh construction. It is only thus that
we can explain the language of the careless, inaccurate authors of the
_Historia Augusta_, who, forgetful apparently of the fact that they
have already assigned the credit of the work to Hadrian, now say of
Severus: “The greatest glory of his reign is that he fortified Britain
by a wall drawn across the island and ending on both sides with the
ocean, for which achievement he received the name of Britannicus”.
Attempts have been made to explain the apparent discrepancy between
the two accounts by assigning part of the fortification to Hadrian and
part to Severus--for instance, the earthen mounds to the former and
the stone wall to the latter; but a careful study of the existing
remains does not favour these theories. It seems better to admit that
the writer was careless and forgetful, and that British affairs and the
story of the Roman wall were of infinitely less importance to him than
they are now to us, dwellers in Britain.
Severus was doomed to discover, like Edward Plantagenet a thousand
years later, how deceptive were victories over the Northern
mountaineers. Next year (211) the Mæatæ were again up in arms and were
joined by the Caledonians. Filled with wrath he ordered his troops
again to invade their land, repeating often the lines of Homer:--
Let not one of the race escape the steepness of ruin,
None, your avenging hands, not e’en the babe at the bosom.
He was preparing himself once more to set forth in his litter in the
short dark winter days for the northern moorlands, when sickness
attacked him, aided, some men thought, by Caracalla and the physicians,
and on February 4, 211, the old man died at Eburacum. He had lived
sixty-five years and reigned seventeen, and he was the last Roman
emperor of whose doings in our land we have any detailed description.
Scarcely had Severus died when his sons, renouncing apparently all
thoughts of vengeance on the Caledonians, left the wintry north and
returned to the delights of Rome. The hardly suppressed enmity of the
brothers now broke out into open flame; and after various ineffectual
attempts, always foiled by the younger man’s vigilance, Caracalla’s
centurions slew Geta in his mother’s arms. Wheresoever the name of
his victim occurred on the monuments, it was erased by order of the
murderer. This strange manifestation of posthumous vindictiveness has
left traces in our own country (for instance on a monument in the
abbey-church of Hexham) as well as on the Arch of Severus in Rome, and
in an inscription near the Second Cataract of the Nile.
Caracalla himself was assassinated in 217, but emperors of his kindred
wore the imperial purple down to the year 235, and thus the dynasty
of Severus may be said to have lasted for more than forty years.
Both in coins and inscriptions the princes of this house have left
an exceptionally full record in the British province. From 235, the
date of the murder of Severus Alexander (an excellent young emperor,
last of his line), down to 284, a period of almost half a century, the
Roman empire was in a state of absolute disintegration. The barbarians
were pressing fiercely on its frontiers. This was the era of the
first and terrible invasion of the Goths (244–270), an invasion which
after awful losses on both sides, and the death of a Roman emperor
from the pestilence caused by the war, ended in the abandonment to
the barbarians of the great province of Dacia, won for the empire by
the victories of Trajan. It was the era, too, of a most humiliating
defeat by the Persians, and the conversion of a Roman emperor into a
footstool for the Persian king. But more dangerous, if possible, than
the external foes of the empire, was its internal disorganisation. In
these forty-nine years no fewer than fifteen emperors were recognised
at Rome, besides a multitude of obscure competitors (commonly known as
the thirty tyrants) in the provinces. It is needless to say that the
reigns, which thus lasted on an average little more than three years,
were generally terminated by mutiny and murder; needless to dilate on
the miserable collapse of law and order which inevitably followed from
such continual changes in the depositary of supreme power in the state.
Of this dismal period there is, naturally enough, no written record
in the annals of Britain. Undoubtedly the wave of Roman influence
ebbed; we can hardly be wrong in thinking that now, at any rate, if not
before, the country between the two walls was permanently abandoned to
the barbarians. The Northumbrian camps were probably also sacked, and
we may, if we will, read some pages of that long unwritten chapter in
the ruined walls of the camps erected by Hadrian and Severus, in the
places where fire has evidently passed upon the corridors of a Roman
villa, destroying the elaborate bathing arrangements of tribune or
centurion.
For the empire as a whole this interregnum of anarchy came to an end in
the year 284 when Diocletian, the second Augustus, ascended the throne.
This man, of obscure, even of servile origin, showed statesmanship of a
rare order, rescuing the water-logged and all-but foundering vessel of
the state from destruction, and steering it into a harbour in which it
rode safely for a hundred years. His chief expedient was the division
of the imperial power, in recognition of the fact that the vast fabric
of the empire could no longer be upheld by a single ruler, and that
if the supreme Augustus would not have rivals he must have partners.
Dividing the empire into four great sections called prefectures, he
chose for himself the prefecture of the East, including Egypt, Syria,
Asia Minor and Thrace. His contemporary and colleague, the stout old
soldier Maximian, who, like himself, bore the title of Augustus, ruled
Italy, southern Germany and the greater part of Roman Africa. After
Diocletian had reigned seven years he associated with himself in
addition two junior partners, not Augusti but merely Cæsars; Galerius
who governed the Illyrian lands, which in the meaning then given to
the name stretched from Cape Matapan to the Danube. To the youngest
of all, Constantius Chlorus, was assigned the prefecture of the west,
stretching from Tangier to Hexham, and including three great “Dioceses”
as the divisions intermediate between prefectures and provinces were
called: Western Africa and Spain, Gaul and Britain. A noble portion
was this, for the junior partner of the imperial firm, and one which
might have satisfied the ambition even of a Napoleon. But there was
one annoying drawback to the greatness of the western Cæsar. After all
the rest of the empire had been restored to tranquillity the island of
Britain still remained outside the imperial orbit, and what made this
circumstance the more exasperating was the remembrance that it was
due to the treachery of an officer chosen by the emperors themselves.
Desiring to check the piratical expeditions of the Franks and Saxons
who were already beginning to infest both coasts of the British
channel, Maximian, who was at that time ruling and warring in Gaul,
had entrusted the command of a naval squadron to a certain Carausius,
a man of mean extraction, born either in Flanders or Ireland,[17] who
had already distinguished himself by his bravery and his skill in
naval warfare. From his strong place of arms at Gesoriacum (Boulogne),
Carausius soon made his power felt by the barbarians, but before
long Maximian had reason to suspect that the officer of the empire
was himself in secret league with at least some of the pirates and
shared their plunder. He summoned Carausius to appear before him, but
that astute personage, suspecting the motive for the summons, hastily
quitted Boulogne and sailed for Britain, which in the disorganised
condition of Roman affairs he had not much difficulty in making his own.
Having declared himself emperor and having even constrained the
two legitimate Augusti to recognise him as a quasi-partner of their
dignity, Carausius actually succeeded in maintaining his position
for six years (287–293), perhaps the only time in the history of our
island when there has been a veritable “Emperor of Britain”. Of the
character of his government we have unfortunately no information
except some sentences of invective from professional rhetoricians; but
at least the numismatist has reason to remember his reign which has
supplied our museums with a multitude of coins. In these, while the
obverse represents the head of the self-made emperor, a middle-aged
common-place man who looks like a self-made manufacturer, the reverse
bears sometimes the well-known Roman emblems of the wolf and the
twins; or a lion with a thunderbolt in his mouth symbolises the valour
of Augustus; or a female milking a cow the fertility of his kingdom;
while in some of them the association with Jovius and Herculius (the
titles of the two legitimate Augusti) attests his share in the imperial
partnership.
Notwithstanding this interchange of compliments it was felt at
headquarters that it was time that this separatist empire should
come to an end, and it was in fact chiefly to accomplish this that
Constantius had been created Cæsar of the west. The history of the
campaign has to be gathered with difficulty from the rhetoric of
Mamertinus and Eumenius, two professional panegyrists of the conqueror,
but we seem to perceive that Carausius or his pirate allies still held
the harbour of Boulogne, and that it was necessary to seal up the
channel with beams of timber and cargoes of stone to prevent their
exit. Stormy weather then delayed for some time the operations of
Constantius, and meanwhile Carausius had been assassinated by one of
his officers named Allectus, who at once assumed the purple and struck
coins describing himself as Pious, Fortunate and August.
For nearly three years Allectus reigned. At last, in 296, Constantius
set forth for the overthrow of this new usurper. “Other emperors,”
cries his flatterer, “have received the credit of victories won
under their auspices though they themselves were tarrying in Rome.
You, unconquered Cæsar! put yourself at the head of your troops;
you gave the signal to start, when sea and sky were alike turbid,
notwithstanding the hesitation of the other leaders. The wind struck
obliquely on your sail: you made your vessel tack. All the soldiers,
enraptured, cried: ‘Let us follow Cæsar wherever he leads us’. Fortune
did indeed favour you. We have heard from the companions of your voyage
how the mists hung low over the back of the sea so that the hostile
fleet stationed in ambush round the Isle of Wight never saw you pass.
As soon as they touched the shore of Britain your unconquered army
set fire to all their ships, urged surely, by some warning voice of
your divinity, to seek their safety only in fight and victory.” And
so, with more of these pompous periods, the orator describes how
the usurper Allectus fled as soon as he saw the imperial fleet, and
fleeing fell into the hands of the soldiers of Constantius, how half
dead with terror he thus hastened to his death, and by his neglect of
all military precautions handed over an easy victory to the imperial
troops. “Scarcely one Roman was killed while all the hills and plains
around were covered with the ugly bodies of the slain. Those dresses
worn in barbarian fashion, those locks of bright red hue were now all
defiled with dust and gore. That standard bearer of rebellion himself
[Allectus], having in the hope of concealment stripped off the purple
robe which he had degraded by wearing it, now lay with scarce a rag
to cover his nakedness.”[18] The orator then goes on to describe in
words of turgid obscurity how some of the soldiers of Constantius,
parted from the main body of the fleet in the fog which had baffled the
look-out of Allectus, wandered to the “oppidum Londiniense,” and there
were fortunate enough to meet and defeat the remains of the “mercenary
multitude” of the usurper’s forces which had taken refuge in that town.
We thank even the bombastic orator for some slight indication of what
was passing in the streets of the little Roman London at the end of the
third century.
It was, as we have seen, in the year 296 that Britain was recovered
for the empire by Constantius. Ten years afterwards that emperor, in
failing health and knowing that he had not long to live, was looking
anxiously eastwards for the arrival of his favourite son, the offspring
of his concubine Helena, the brave and brilliant soldier Constantine.
Diocletian and Maximian had both abdicated the empire. Constantius
Chlorus was now raised from the rank of Cæsar to the higher rank
of Augustus, but he shared that dignity with a jealous colleague,
Galerius, who had been allowed to name the two new Cæsars. Of those
two junior partners Constantine was not one. Worse than that, he was
retained as a kind of hostage at the Bithynian palace of Galerius, and
it was doubtful whether father and son would ever be allowed to meet
again. But in a moment of irresolution or of alarm Galerius gave the
desired permission, and Constantine, not risking the chance of its
withdrawal, departed from the court without formal leave-taking and
hurried across Europe to Boulogne where his father was then residing.
It was currently reported two centuries later that in order to prevent
the possibility of pursuit he ordered the post-horses at each imperial
_mutatio_, which he did not himself require, to be either killed or so
mutilated as to make them unfit for travel. Gibbon derides this “very
foolish story,” but it is not easy to understand why, if untrue, it
should have obtained such general acceptance.
However this may be, it is certain that Constantine arrived safely at
his father’s headquarters at Boulogne, shared with him the labours of
a short campaign against the Picts, and was present in his chamber,
in the Prætorian palace at Eburacum, when, worn out with toil and
disease, Constantius Chlorus breathed his last (July 25, 306). His own
elevation to the imperial dignity by the soldiers, who enthusiastically
hailed him as Augustus, followed immediately after, and we may fairly
suppose that the same place which had witnessed the death of the father
witnessed also the accession of the son. He speedily quitted Britain
in order to take part in that desperate game of empire, with partners
constantly changing and occasionally putting one another to death,
from which after eighteen years he finally arose sole emperor. With
all this later life of his, with his adoption of Christianity, with
his choice of a new capital by the Bosphorus, with his convocation of
the Nicene council, we have here no concern; but it is worth while to
emphasise the fact that a reign so immensely important for all the
after-history of Europe and of the world began in our island by the
slow, wide-wandering river Ouse. Thus in a certain sense York is the
mother-city of Constantinople.
We come now to another blank half century in the history of Roman
Britain. Save for an obscure hint of the presence of the Emperor
Constans, son of Constantine, at some time between 337 and 350, we have
scarcely any information as to British affairs from the proclamation of
Constantine in 306 to the despatch of the elder Theodosius to Britain
in 367. This general, father of the more celebrated emperor of the
same name, was sent by the Emperor Valentinian to restore some degree
of order in the unhappy island, which had suffered from rapacious
governors, from accusations of disloyalty cruelly avenged, and more
recently from bloody inroads of the Picts and Scots with whom were
now joined a tribe who are called “the most valiant nation of the
Attacotti,” but who, if we may believe the extraordinary statement of
St. Jerome, were actually addicted to the practice of cannibalism. In
the three years of Theodosius’ command, the northern invaders were
driven back to their mountains, the inhabitants of “that ancient town
which was formerly called Londinium but which (in the fourth century)
“more often bore the name Augusta” were relieved from their terrors: a
new province, the geographical position of which is not made known to
us, was staked out and received the name Valentia, in compliment to the
emperor. For the time, but probably not for a long time, the blessings
of “the Roman peace” were restored to Britain. The general who had
achieved this result was shortly after executed at Carthage, a victim
to the cowardly suspicion and jealousy of the Emperor Valens, brother
of Valentinian. Soon, however, the whirligig of Time brought about a
strange revenge. Valens himself perished in the awful catastrophe of
Hadrianople, the battle in which the Visigoths utterly routed a great
Roman army, the battle which first brought home to the minds of men
the possibility of the collapse of the Roman empire. The nephew of
Valens, the young and generous Gratian, looking round for some man who
as partner of his throne might avert the menaced ruin, found none more
suitable than the son and namesake of the murdered pacifier of Britain,
and accordingly, in the year 379, Theodosius (whom historians have
surnamed the Great) was hailed as Augustus at Constantinople.
But now did Britain begin to rear that crop of rival emperors who were
the curse of Europe during some of the dying days of the western
empire. In 383 a general named Maximus, of whom an unfavourable
witness, the ecclesiastic Orosius, testifies that he was “vigorous
and honest and would have been worthy of the diadem if he had not, to
obtain it, broken his oath of loyalty” was almost against his will
declared emperor by the army. He crossed over into Gaul, carrying
with him no doubt the bulk of his army. He skilfully played on the
disaffection of Gratian’s legions, offended at the partiality which
he had showed for his barbarian auxiliaries; a general mutiny was
organised; Gratian fled for his life, was pursued and murdered near the
city of Vienne. For five years Theodosius had to endure the enforced
partnership in the empire of his benefactor’s murderer: then in 388 the
smouldering hatred broke out into a flame, and after a hard struggle
Maximus was defeated and slain at Aquileia, on the northern shore of
the Adriatic (388). According to traditions current two centuries
later, this usurpation of Maximus and his consequent withdrawal of the
British legions in order to vindicate his claims to the empire, were
most important factors in the overthrow of Roman power in Britain.
A large army, on paper, still existed in the island. It was probably
about the year 402 that the last edition of the _Notitia Imperii_,
that edition which has been handed down to posterity, was issued from
the imperial chancery. In this most valuable document--an army list
and official directory of both the eastern and western portions of
the empire--we still find cohorts of infantry and wings of cavalry
stationed _per lineam valli_ (along the line of the Wall) as they had
been for three centuries. We may, however, doubt whether any Roman
soldiers were actually keeping the line of the Wall so late as 402. It
is remarkable that very few coins have been found in the ruins of the
camps of a later date than the reign of Gratian (375–83). If there were
any such military units still there, they were probably but the ghosts
of their former selves.
To understand the political condition of our island at this time we
must have recourse to the pages of the _Notitia_, which elaborately
sets forth the various degrees of the civil and military hierarchy of
the empire. On one page we find:--
THE ILLUSTRIOUS PRÆTORIAN PREFECT OF THE GAULS.
“Under his disposition are the Vicarii of Spain, of the Seven
Provinces of Gaul and of Britain.”
On a later page:--
“The Spectabilis VICARIUS BRITANNIARUM.”
Under his disposition were five (civil) governors:--
The Consularis of Maxima Cæsariensis.
„ Valentia.
The Præses of Britannia Prima.
„ Britannia Secunda.
„ Flavia Cæsariensis.
The limits and geographical position of these five districts (we are
not entitled to call them provinces) have not yet been ascertained,
though they have been often conjectured. It may be hoped that
the discovery of further inscriptions may enable us to fix them
decisively.[19]
Besides these civil officers there were, according to the rearrangement
of offices made by Diocletian, certain military commandants, called
_comites_ and _duces_, of whom the count was, contrary to medieval
usage, generally of higher rank than the duke.
The _Notitia_ introduces us to three of these officers:--
1. The Comes Britanniæ.
2. The Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam.
3. The Dux Britanniarum.
As to the first it gives us no information beyond the simple fact
that the Provincia Britannia was “under his disposition”. The obvious
conjecture is that numbers 2 and 3 were subject to him, but this is
not asserted, and it perhaps militates against this theory that they,
like him, belonged to the second grade in the official hierarchy, the
_spectabiles_. It is possible that his special duty was the defence
of Mid-Britain against the imperfectly subdued tribes of the Welsh
mountains, and that the Second legion at Caerleon and the Twentieth at
Chester were for a time under his orders for this purpose. The more
interesting title for us is that of “The Count of the Saxon Shore in
Britain”. He had under his command the garrisons of seven fortified
places dotted around the eastern and south-eastern coast of England,
from the Wash to Beachy Head.[20] He had also at his bidding the
prefect of the Second “Augustan” legion, which had been moved from
the quarters it had so long occupied at Caerleon-upon-Usk to Rutupiæ,
or Richborough, close to the Isle of Thanet. The meaning of this
arrangement is obvious. Like the Martello towers, which were reared
along the same coasts last century, these fortresses were raised and
garrisoned in order to defend that part of the projecting coast of
Britain which was most exposed to the attacks of the Saxon pirates,
already no doubt swarming in these seas in the fourth century, and
to become far more formidable in the fifth century. The words, “per
Britanniam,” added to the title of the _spectabilis comes_, are used
because, as the _Notitia_ informs us, there was another Saxon shore
which needed to be guarded on the other side of the channel; and, taken
in this connexion, there is a special interest for us in the words of
Apollinaris Sidonius, bishop of Clermont,[21] which show that in the
succeeding century the coasts of Gaul, as well as of Britain, were kept
in constant alarm by the Saxon sea-rovers.
3. Of the Duke of the Britains we have only here to remark that he
appears to have had under his disposition the Sixth legion, stationed
at York, and numerous detachments of auxiliary troops in Yorkshire,
Westmorland and Lancashire, and _item per lineam valli_ (also along
the line of the wall) the various auxiliary cohorts raised in Spain,
Gaul and Germany, to whom reference has already been made, and who are
to all students of the literature of the Roman wall among the most
interesting elements of the army of the empire.
Meanwhile events were rapidly ripening towards the catastrophe which
was to make the solemn _Notitia Imperii_ a mere hunting-ground for the
archæologist. In 395 died the great Emperor Theodosius, who had for a
generation staved off the ruin which seemed inevitable at the death
of Valens. He was succeeded by his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius,
who, with about equal incapacity, presided over the collapse of the
eastern and the western half of the empire. For the first thirteen
years, however, of the reign of Honorius his incapacity was somewhat
veiled by the courage and ability of the Vandal soldier Stilicho,
whom Theodosius had left as the guardian of his son. When in the year
400 Alaric, the far-famed King of the Goths, entered Italy, Stilicho
undertook the long and wearisome campaigns, partly, as it would seem,
north of the Alps, but chiefly in what we now call Piedmont and
Lombardy, by which Alaric’s designs on Rome were foiled, and at last in
the year 403 the Goths were driven forth from Italy. But in order to
avert the danger which thus threatened the heart of the empire, it was
necessary seriously to weaken the defence of its extremities. One of
the three Roman legions quartered in Britain (probably the Twentieth)
was recalled to Italy and apparently never returned. Three years after
the repulse of Alaric came in 406 the great cataclysm of the irruption
of barbarian hordes, Vandals, Sueves, Burgundians and Alans into Gaul,
which led, though not immediately, to the severance of Gaul and Spain
from the empire. The inrush of the barbarians spread terror even into
Britain, and caused the soldiers, weary of the inept government which
was manifestly ruining the empire, to elect an emperor on their own
account, and set up, as it were, a “government of national defence”.
But revolutionary rulers of this kind are more easily proclaimed than
established. First a certain Marcus was proclaimed: then as they found
that “he did not suit their tempers” he was slain, and a British
citizen named Gratian was invested with the purple, crowned with the
diadem and surrounded with a bodyguard. After four months Gratian
also was deposed and murdered, and thereupon a private soldier of
the meanest rank, named Constantine, who had nothing but that great
historic name to recommend him, was robed in the imperial purple. He at
once crossed over into Gaul, where he maintained himself with varying
fortune for three or four years, being even once, in 409, for a short
time recognised as a legitimate partner in the empire by Honorius. With
his later fortunes, however, and with the whole story of the fall of
the Roman empire in the west we have no further concern. We have heard
of the exit of the legions, but we never hear of their return, and we
are probably justified in fixing on the date 407, the period of the
usurper Constantine’s departure from our island, as the end of the
Roman occupation of Britain.
Writers and readers must alike lament the extremely jejune character of
the history of that occupation. Since we lost the guidance of Tacitus,
we have had scarcely anything that could be called a continuous and
intelligible narrative of events; nor, unless some happy fortune could
restore to us the lost books of Ammianus, is such literary assistance
now to be expected. We are thus thrown back on such information as
inscriptions, buried ruins, finds of coins may afford to the patient
archæologist. And these have done something for us, though we may
reasonably hope that the judicious use of the spade and pickaxe, guided
by science and not by mere capricious quest for curiosities, may do
much more.
We may here notice very briefly some of the chief contributions which
archæological research has thus made to history.
1. Of all the marks made by our imperial conquerors in this island, the
most distinct and ineffaceable was that made by them as road-makers.
Often indeed their works survive only as boundaries between parishes
or counties, but sometimes we can see the track still going straight
to its mark over hill and dale, and we say instinctively, “That must
be a Roman road”. It was certainly not mere unskilfulness or ignorance
of the science of road-making which led the _stratores viarum_ to draw
their lines across the country with this uncompromising directness.
The prime object of the officer charged with the work was essentially
military, and for watching the movements of barbarian insurgents
or preventing the ravages of marauders, the crests of the hills
successively surmounted by the marching legions were invaluable posts
of observation.
The chief highways of the Romans, known to us for the most part by the
names given to them by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, converging, as most
of them do, towards “the town anciently named Londinium,” coincide
in a remarkable manner with the main lines of our modern railroad
communication. The Watling Street, running from the neighbourhood of
London to Etocetum (a little north of Birmingham) and thence to Deva
(Chester) and so on into Lancashire, corresponds with the London and
North-Western Railway; while another road which generally bears the
same name and which traverses Yorkshire and Northumberland is less
accurately represented by the North-Eastern. Erming Street, from London
to Doncaster, is often not far from the line of the Great Northern;
and Abona (on the Avon near Bristol) and Isca Damnoniorum (Exeter)
were reached by roads bearing now no special names, but imitating in
their general course the Great Western and South-Western Railways.
One great artery, the Fosse Way, may be clearly traced between
Axminster (in Devonshire) and the great colony which now bears the
name of Lincoln; but this road has no representative in our railway
system. The imperfect character of the Roman conquest of the district
which we now call Wales is evidenced by the feeble and fragmentary
traces of Roman roads now to be found in the principality. There was,
however, a road traversing the country from north to south, from
Carnarvon to Carmarthen, and thence by a somewhat circuitous course to
Caerleon-upon-Usk, and part of this road is still known by the name of
Sarn Helen. Is it possible that there is in this name some vague and
inaccurate remembrance of the mother of Constantine?
2. The sepulchral inscriptions which have been discovered in large
numbers in various parts of the island give us a little insight
into the domestic relations of the Roman garrison, as the votive
altars do into their sentiments concerning religion. The former
class of inscriptions always begin in the usual Roman style with a
dedication to the _Dii Manes_, the shade-gods, or, as we should say,
the spirit of the departed one, and often add some endearing epithet
to the name, such as “a well-deserving husband,” “a most religious
wife who lived for thirty-three years an unspotted life”. Where the
age is mentioned it is most frequently that either of a child or a
person in middle life, the numbers between thirty and forty being of
frequent occurrence. This is probably accounted for by the fact that
veterans, whether officers or privates, would generally return to their
native land to spend the last years of their lives. The religious
inscriptions bring before us some interesting phenomena, but are so
far characterised by one memorable omission, that of the new religion
which was destined to supplant the old. The ordinary Olympian deities,
Jupiter, Mars, Bellona, Neptune, are of course commemorated, though
in a somewhat perfunctory fashion; and the official divinity of the
emperors, living and dead, is duly recognised. But we have also a
number of altars to gods bearing uncouth Celtic names: Belatucader,
Anociticus, Cocidius and the like, plainly showing that the Roman
soldiers, like the Assyrian settlers in Palestine,[22] wished to keep
on good terms with the gods of the land. Even more conspicuous is
the devotion of the Roman soldiers to “the unconquered Mithras”. The
strange Oriental cult called Mithraism, probably a form of sun-worship,
spread rapidly through the Roman empire in the second and third
centuries, and seemed likely at one time to be a successful rival
to Christianity. It is marvellous to see in the palace of the Roman
emperors at Ostia a chapel with all the emblems of Mithraic worship,
and then to find the remains of a similar chapel with precisely
similar emblems, though broken and mutilated, on the bare hillside of
Housesteads in Northumberland. The favourite symbol of this strange
dead religion is a young man, crowned with a tiara, bestriding a bull,
into whose side he is driving deep a short sword or dagger. Whatever
this curious bas-relief may represent--and some have seen in it a
symbol of the sun, the unconquered hero entering the constellation
Taurus--it was no doubt faithfully reproduced in that little chapel on
our northern moorlands, and it is perfectly figured on a small marble
tablet lately discovered under the pavement of a London street while
the workmen were repairing a sewer.
Thus, of so many strange pagan superstitions we have abundant vestiges,
but of Christianity in Roman Britain we have singularly few traces.
It is true that here and there among undoubtedly Roman remains the
Christian monogram (X P) or Christian formulæ such as _Vivas in Deo_
or _Spes in Deo_ have been met with.[23] In the recent excavations
at Silchester a small building which is almost certainly a Christian
basilica has also been discovered, but these are slight evidences for
the existence of a faith which was certainly professed by multitudes
ere the legions quitted Britain. As to the actual date of the
introduction of Christianity into our island we must be contented
to confess our ignorance. The story contained in the book of Papal
Lives, which was reproduced by Bede, that a certain King Lucius of
Britain, about the year 180, sent over to Pope Eleutherus, asking
for missionaries to instruct his people in the Christian faith, must
be dismissed as the fable of a later age; nor can we speak with much
certainty concerning the so-called proto-martyr, St. Alban, who is said
to have suffered for the faith in the persecution of Diocletian. There
can be no doubt, however, that there were some converts to Christianity
in Britain during the second century, and in the third century it
must have become the dominant religion here as in the rest of the
empire. Towards the end of that century our island, which produced so
many rival Cæsars, produced also one of the most famous of heretics,
Pelagius, and, of course, the existence of his heterodoxy implies also
the existence of the orthodoxy out of which it sprang. Thus, though
we cannot help sometimes relying on the “argument from silence,” the
present condition of our archæological information concerning the
existence of Christianity in Roman Britain shows us how untrustworthy
may sometimes be that very argument.
3. It is, however, partly in reliance on such negative evidence that we
venture to assert that the Roman occupation of Britain was before all
things a military occupation, and that they either did not attempt, or
did not succeed in the attempt, largely to win over the inhabitants to
their own ways and to accustom them to that civic life which had been
the cradle of their own civilisation. In Italy itself, in Gaul and in
most of the provinces of western Europe we find abundant evidence of
the municipalisation of the conquered tribes. “Decurio” and “Duumvir,”
which we may represent by town councillor and mayor, are indications of
rank which we meet with continually on provincial tombstones in those
countries; but in Britain amid the crowd of inscriptions to centurions,
tribunes and other military officers who served here we meet with only
one here and there to civic dignitaries. “The highest form of town life
known to the Romans was naturally rare in Britain. The _coloniæ_ and
_municipia_, the privileged municipalities, with institutions on the
Italian model, which mark the supreme development of Roman political
civilisation in the provinces, were not common in Britain. We know only
of five: Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, and York were _coloniæ_,
Verulam probably a _municipium_, and despite their legal rank none of
these could count among the greater cities of the empire. Four of them,
indeed, probably owed their existence not to any development of Britain
but to the need of providing for time-expired soldiers discharged from
the army.”[24] There was, of course, a certain number of towns such as
Londinium which had sprung out of pre-Roman settlements, some of which
no doubt grew and prospered exceedingly with the growth of commerce due
to the prevalence of “the Roman peace,” but these towns were apparently
not modelled on the Roman pattern, and what may have been the nature of
their institutions can only be a matter of conjecture.
It seems probable that the prevailing type of social organisation
during the Roman period was the _villa_ or great estate owned by a
Roman proprietor and dotted over with the cottages of British serfs
or slaves, whose labour was directed for his lord’s benefit by a
_villicus_ or farm bailiff, sometimes himself a slave. Whether or no
this system lasted on to any great extent after the Saxon invasion (the
barbarian invader seating himself in the place of power and claiming
all his ousted predecessor’s rights), and whether it thus passed in
the course of centuries into the feudal manor, is one of the most
interesting questions now debated by our archæologists. Mr. Seebohm
is the most conspicuous advocate of this Roman-villa theory, which
cuts right across the theories of Kemble and Freeman, who held that
the Teutonic invaders brought with them to our island and everywhere
established a system of free but co-operative land-ownership,
resembling that described in the _Germania_ of Tacitus. The discussion,
as has been said, is one of great interest to all who desire to get
below the surface in the history of the past ages of Britain, but many
positions will probably be won and lost before the battle is finally
decided.
The same may be said of the larger question, how far the influence
exerted by our Roman conquerors during the four centuries of their
stay lasted on after the departure of the legions. That Britain was
not assimilated as Gaul was, is admitted by all, the mere fact that
Welsh is not, like French, an offshoot from Latin, being in itself a
sufficient proof of the difference between the two conquests; but why
the Romanisation of Britain was so much less thorough; how far it did
after all extend; and what influences modified or destroyed it; these
are all questions still unsolved, to which, however, we may, perhaps,
some day get an answer from a more thorough and scientific study of
Celtic literature, and of Romano-British antiquities.