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Chapter 14

From Caesar to Claudius

The period from Caesar’s expeditions to the Roman Conquest of AD43 is approximately a hundred years and during that time innovations appeared in south-eastern Britain as a result of the contacts that had been made with the Roman world.

By this time rulers, who are described as ‘kings’ by the Romans and so describe themselves on their coins, have arisen in Britain and rule over large areas of territory that have tribal identities. Boundaries of these ‘kingdoms’ cannot be defined very well on a map since it can only be done by plotting the coin distribution of each ruler and, outside the south of Britain, most rulers did not produce coins. The names of these tribes are known to us only in their Latin forms.

In the south-east was the territory of the Cantiaci who became the most Romanised of British tribes as a result of their geographical location in the part of Britain closest to the Continent. West of them were the Atrebates who inhabited the area in modern Dorset and Hampshire and produced an extensive coinage with the three-tailed celtic horse as their emblem on the reverse. Further north, in Gloucestershire and north Somerset, the Dobunni produced their first coin issues based, like the Atrebatic coins, on Gallo-Belgic issues, and owed nothing to Roman currency.

But, around 16BCE, a totally new Atrebatic coinage appeared. So Roman-looking was it that some archaeologists suggest that it was designed by a Roman engraver. It might indicate a political change, with a much closer relationship between the Atrebatic leader, Tincommius, and the Romans. This understanding could have been the result of the deep enmity that had developed between the Atrebates and their neighbours to the north, the Catuvellauni, who had been the leaders of the British resistance to Caesar.

Coins of Verica, the successor of Tincommius, are matched by those of the Kentish king, Epillus, suggesting perhaps similar attitudes to Rome. Certainly on their coins both rulers style themselves Rex and feature the vine-leaf, emblem of the trendy Roman drink that was extremely popular amongst the British aristocrats. However, the British horse continues to appear on the coins of the Dobunni. North of the Thames, the Catuvellaunian king, Tasciovanus, issued coins bearing the title Riconi, perhaps the British word for king. His successor, Cunobelin, featured on his coins an ear of barley, emblem of ale, the British drink.

Cunobelin became the most powerful ruler in Britain by following an expansionist policy. By the early years of the first century BCE he was issuing his coins from Camulodunum, the stronghold of the Trinovantian dynasty, the rulers of southern East Anglia, which suggests that their lands had been incorporated in his kingdom. A little later, during the third decade of the century, Kent was taken over and by the next decade the northern half of the Atrebatic territory with its stronghold at Silchester was being ruled by one of Cunobelin’s sons. At this time the Roman writer Suetonius refers to Cunobelin as the ‘British king’. He died just before the Roman Conquest and it was his sons, Togodumnus and Caractacus, who faced the legions of Claudius.

Outside this southern area, in Norfolk, were the Iceni who, judging by the extraordinary richness of the Snettisham Hoard, found  in a deposit made around about 50BCE, were  a wealthy tribe also producing coins. They continued to do so after the Roman Conquest, their rulers becoming client kings of the Roman emperor until the Boudiccan revolt of AD61. North-west of the Iceni were the Coritani (Corieltauvi) who started to issue coins during the first century AD. There are a number of fairly densely settled sites in Lincolnshire and a particularly large one at Dragonby which has been part-excavated and may have been in the nature of an undefended oppidum (see below). Wheel-made fineware pottery similar to that in contemporary Kent was found in the excavation.

The only other coin-issuing tribes in Britain were the Durotriges whose territory lay west of that of the Atrebates in a block from south Wiltshire to the River Exe in Devon and the Dobunni in north Somerset and Gloucestershire.

We are beginning to understand something of the nature of overseas trade in the Iron Age that was clearly expanding after the visit of Jullius Caesar. Recent exploration of areas of Poole Harbour have re-examined timbers that were first thought to have been part of a Roman jetty but now have been recognised by virtue of radiocarbon tests as dating to around 250BCE and therefore are part of an Iron Age structure. Two jetties have now been identified, one now 45 metres long but probably originally as long as the other one that has a length of 80 metres. Their platforms were eight metres wide and made of flagstones laid on top of a superstructure of perhaps 10,000 tonnes of rubble held in place with oak piles. Greek and Roman traders probably knew the place well before the Roman Conquest and the archaeologists suggest that exports of pottery, metal objects and shale trinkets could have been exchanged for amber, Roman samian ware, amphorae of wine and olive oil. From the harbour, access to the hinterland was probably by boat along the river Stour up into modern Somerset and the river Frome that flows down through Dorset from the Maiden Castle area where a major Iron Age settlement was located. It is likely that the trading-places of Mount Batten and Hengistbury Head, active in the Late Bronze Age, were still operating.

Such trading places are difficult to identity because the volume of trade with Europe was not enormous at this time and, apart from slaves, perhaps grain, possibly woollen textiles, and the tin and other minerals available on Dartmoor, it is not easy to suggest many goods/materials that could have been traded out of the country. These exports are not likely to have travelled far to reach their ports of embarkation so we should expect to find a number of small ports each dealing with its own locally produced material rather than expect to find multi-exports from the same port.

This probably explains why we have a port in Poole Harbour close to Hengistbury Head. Convenient harbours with access to the hinterland along rivers are not all that common along the south coast and one can understand why those that existed were used. Hengistbury Head is usually thought to be in Durotrigian territory as is Poole but this may not be so and the location would not a problem if Hengistbury was operated by the Atrebbates as a trading competitor even though its exports was the similar.

Kent was clearly the chief recipient of Roman trade goods from across the narrow Straits, a flow that must have started at about the same time as Caesar’s expeditions or even a bit before. Evidence comes from graves in south-eastern Britain in cemeteries like those at Aylesford and Swarling which together provide the name Aylsford-Swarling for the culture. Elements of this culture spread to the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes but it is best recognised amongst the Cantiaci.

At Aylesford the site consisted of cremation burials in small, cylindrical pits. The graves contained pots including a characteristic wheel-thrown pedestal urn. Ashes were contained, not in pottery vessels but in wooden and metal buckets. One grave contained a bronze jug, a bronze ladle and two bronze brooches of Etruscan type, indications perhaps of a taste for southern menus and fashions. At Swarling the cemetery included one grave with six pottery vessels, north Italian brooches and a wooden bucket

Away from Kent, in Prae Wood, near Verulamium, a typical cemetery has been almost completely excavated. No less than 463 individual cremations have been found, most in urns in small pits accompanied very often by a pot or pots and bronze brooches while the richest graves also contained bronze mirrors, keys, knives, bracelets, shears, gaming pieces, spoons and toilet sets. Some rich graves were located in the centres of rectangular ditched enclosures with poorer graves placed in a circle around - a noble and his family or entourage perhaps? Prae Wood cemetery perhaps dates from the first half of the first century AD before the Roman Conquest so is a little later than the Aylesford and Swarling cemeteries. 

It is thought that a similar cemetery existed at Welwyn Garden City that was destroyed when the site was developed during the twentieth century. An example of one of the few graves that was salvaged was contained in a rectangular grave-pit some 3m by over 2m containing the unurned ashes, five wine amphorae (containers), a bronze dish and strainer, a wooden vessel with bronze attachments, a set of gaming pieces, a wooden gaming board, glass beads, bracelets and a silver cup, of which other examples have been found in contemporary graves close by. Other graves at Welwyn contained amphorae, pedestal urns, bronze masks, bronze bowls, pairs of fire-dogs and a variety of other bronze vessels. None of them contained weapons.  These rich graves have been assigned to one of two groups, the first dating between c50BCE to c10BCE with the principal bronze vessels and the second between c10BCE to the Roman Conquest containing Gallo-Belgic pottery and Roman samian ware so that together they neatly span the century from Caesar to the Roman Conquest.

A Welwyn-type grave was discovered at Snailwell in Cambridgeshire where, apart from the cremation, the grave-pit contained an armlet, an iron plate, a buckle, remains of a couch, a bronze bowl, a possible shield, amphorae, a jug, a platter and a tazza (a saucer-shaped cup).

Probably, the most outstanding burial of the period is under the Lexden tumulus situated inside the oppidum at Camulodunum in Essex, (Hawkes). Set amongst a number of lesser graves, the Lexden tumulus was nearly three metres high and thirty metres in diameter. Beneath the mound was a central grave some nine metres by almost six. In it were a few small fragments of human bone, a bronze model cupid, the neck and head of a griffin, a small bronze bull and boar, a table and other furnishings, bits of iron wheel-rims and chain mail, silver ornaments, a silver buckle and studs, fragments of gold tissue and a silver medallion of Augustus which dates the burial to after 17BCE.

In Hampshire there is a burial at Hurstbourne Tarrant under a nine-metre diameter barrow containing a wooden bucket, a pedestal urn, butt-beakers and platters together with a bronze brooch and bracelet and the remains of a glass vessel.  In the territory of the Dobunni is the burial of a  woman at Birdlip in Gloucestershire (Gloucester City Museum), an inhumation burial  provided with two bronze bowls, a silver brooch plated with gold, a bronze mirror, a necklace of amber, jet and stone, an animal-headed knife, a tubular bronze bracelet and four bronze rings.  Imported pottery that appears after about 15BCE is one of the best guides to dating. Terra rubra (red ware), terra nigra (black ware) platters, Gallo-Belgic butt beakers (tall beakers with narrow bases), Arretine ware (pottery based on metal prototypes produced at Arretium, modern Arezzo, in Tuscany in northern Italy), and samian ware (glossy red ware copied from Arretine ware and produced in Gaul) appeared in Britain in that order and from the middle of the first century BCE dateable amphorae from Italy are found in the graves. (Johns)

Apart from the wheel-turned pottery and the coinage, the people of the Aylesford-Swarling culture shared another characteristic with other developing societies in southern Britain and that was the emergence of proto-urban settlements within their areas. Such sites have been recognised at several locations including Canterbury, Verulamium, Camulodunum and Rochester. They seem to have functioned as both strongholds and centres of government and to have enclosed considerable areas of countryside. Sites at Rochester, Verulamium and Camulodunum contained mints. These sites are known to British archaeologists as oppida (sing. oppidum, Latin for town), (Collis) and the assumption is that the rulers were bringing together, albeit in a tentative way,  the various functions of their administrations.

The earliest site near Verulamium appears to have been at Wheathampstead where an area of some 36 to 40 hectares was intensively occupied. Before the end of the first century BCE, the site seems to have shifted the short distance to Verulamium which was situated above the River Lea and today is surrounded by slight earthworks although there are more impressive earthworks further out. Inside, the settlement was dispersed with several nuclei like the cemetery at Prae Wood mentioned above and a mint.

At Camulodunum a series of ditches define the area of settlement. However, they are not continuous but run in short straight stretches and the defence system must have incorporated natural features to fill the gaps. Like Verulamium a number of nuclear settlements existed in the 31 square kilometres covered by the site. One, at Sheepen, has been excavated and revealed a settlement of rectangular and sub-rectangular huts, the remains of a mint, pits, ditches and a great deal of imported pottery. At Gosbeck’s Farm traces of a shrine have been found while the Lexden tumulus lay within the parameters of the site.

Other centres of power that might be described as oppida can be found are in the territories of the southern tribes. In Atrebatic territory there was Selsey where earthworks north of Chichester appear to defend the peninsula. No settlement inside it has yet been identified. Further north was Venta that lay beneath the Roman town of Winchester. Earthworks have been identified together with the debris of a mint. Further north again was Calleva, now known as Silchester, again with earthworks and evidence of minting.

In the west, lying both sides of the Severn estuary that, together with the Bristol Avon and the Wye, provided good access to their territory from the sea, lay the territory of the Dobunni.  Two centres that could be described as oppida have been identified withn it. To the north of Cirencester is Bagendon with earthworks and evidence of minting and a good deal of imported pottery. Occupation on the 80-hectare site continued for some twenty years after the Roman Conquest and it was then abandoned for the new-style town of Cirencester. Further south, at Minchinhampton, over 240 hectares was protected by earthworks but little more is known about the site at the moment.

Although we have no evidence of an oppidum in Durotrigian territory which lay across Dorset, eastern Somerset and southern Wiltshire, there was the important trading station at Hengistbury Head on Christchurch Harbour that was defended by earthworks. There is a strong possibilty of a mint here as well as an advanced metallurgical industry using copper from which silver was extracted, presumably for the manufacture of coins. Instead of founding oppida the rulers of this region were still using hillforts. Maiden Castle, Hod Hill, Hambledon Hill, Spettisbury Rings and South Cadbury, all survived until the Roman Conquest and were attacked and captured by the Second Legion during the invasion.

Inside Maiden Castle 18.2 hectares was densely occupied with metalled streets and formidable defences and this can be readily understood as the Durotrigian equivalent of an oppida. It was captured by Roman soldiers in what seems to have been a fierce engagement and some of the dead were buried in a war cemetery outside the east gate of the fort. Another war cemetery was discovered at the defended site of Spettisbury Rings in 1857 in which over eighty bodies were found. Hod Hill encloses 21 hectares within its ramparts. Several streets have been identified together with circular huts, some enclosed in yards. Like Maiden Castle it has produced traces of Roman attack. Heads of numbers of Roman ballista bolts have been found embedded in the ground inside.

When we look to the north and west for evidence of influences from the Roman-occupied Continent we find none. The cross-Channel trade does not seem to have reached them and this suggests that there was little contact between the south and east and the north and west of Britain at this time. We know the names of some of the tribes, the Silures in south-east Wales, the Demetae further west, the Gangani in the north-west, the Decangli in the north and the Ordovices living in the central area. As far as we know, life-styles amongst these people were still those of the earlier Iron Age.

In the north of what we now call England were the Brigantes whose economy was based on cattle and whose countryside included a number of defended sites of which Stanwick in Yorkshire is the best known. Excavation has examined the 9.6km of massive earthworks that were built in three phases, the two later ones with stone-faced ramparts and wide, flat-bottomed ditches. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the excavator, suggested that all three phases date to after AD43 and belong to the time when the tribe was tributary to the Romans but still in control of its lands.

The Parisi, whom we have mentioned before, for it is in their territory that the Arras Culture was based, occupied an area to the east of the Brigantians. Like the Brigantians, they remained unoccupied by Roman forces until AD71/2, thirty years later than the south of Britain.

In the area we now call southern Scotland were a number of tribes that included the Votadini, the Novantae, the Selgovae and the Damnonii. The Votadini lived in the eastern coastal region between the Tyne and the Clyde, the Novantae in the area of Galloway and Dumfriesshire, the south-west, while the Selgovae occupied the area between them. Further north were the lands of the Damnonii. These people were to come into contact with the Romans during the period when the Antonine Wall was the northern Roman frontier and at other times when they traded and seemed to have some political understandings with the Romano-British government.

In the North of Scotland were some twelve tribes that are even more shadowy. After the Roman Conquest, the Roman general Agricola penetrated into these regions and defeated a confederation of them under the Caledonian leader Calgacus but this seems to have been their only contact with the Romans apart from a treaty that was concluded between the Orcadian chieftains and the Roman fleet and a small amount of trade in glass and pottery vessels.  In terms of political arrangements, these northern people were in a number of time-warps. In the north and western isles it has been calculated that there were some 500 local chieftains ruling small areas from their individial brochs.

Small hillforts existed in southern Scotland with some more advanced tribes having progressed to oppida like the stronghold of the Votadini at Trapain Law and the Selgovean centre at Eildon Hill in much the same as in Brigantia where society continued with a clan-like structure and hillforts until the presence of the Romans further south encouraged the anti-Roman elements to come together to build the oppidum of Stanwick.

Such was Iron Age Britain when the Romans launched their invasion. It was a prosperous place, rich in agricultural produce in the south and east and with mineral deposits in the west that were attractive to the entrepreneurs of the time.  Some indication of the location of the wealthier areas is given by the distribution of finds of horse equipment, for horses, whether for riding or for drawing chariots, were an expensive luxury still. The accompanying map, prepared and researched by Sally Worrell, Advisor to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, demonstrates that most linch-pins, terrets and strap unions have been found in the eastern counties rather than further west or south.  Strangely, a site where good evidence of manufacture of chariot and harness equipment is in the south in Dorset at the agricultural settlement of Gussage All Saints where clay moulds for making about fifty sets was discovered. Also, in the east, at Grimsby, in another excavation a smaller deposit of moulds for the same purpose has been found. (Foster)

Various suggestions have been put forward as reasons for the Roman Conquest. In southern Britain, the political situation was beginning to tilt against the Romans as the anti-Roman Catuvellaunian expansionist policy was being practised by the over-running of those tribes who were friendly to Rome. The arrival of Verica, the Atrebatan king, in Rome with the news that the northern half of his territory had been lost to him in this way may have been a trigger but the situation in Rome was certainly a factor as well. Claudius, the new Emperor, was looking for some bold stroke that would strengthen his rather shaky position on the throne. The triumph of adding a fresh province to the Empire would suit him very well.

Other factors have been suggested: that Britain was supposed to be rich in minerals; that occupation of Britain would provide a strong outpost beyond Gaul that would help to protect the mainland of the Empire but even if these arguments were valid, they would have remained subsidiary to Claudius’ ambition to win the glory of adding a new province to the Empire

Four legions were prepared to take part in the invasion. Legio II Augusta, Legio IX Hispana, Legio XIV Gemina and Legio XX Valeria together with auxiliary cavalry and infantry, all drawn from the Rhine and Danube frontiers where three of the legions had been based for forty years. This force sailed from Boulogne, as Caesar had done, under the command of Aulus Plautius, an experienced and successful soldier. They brought with them not only their military capability but also a language – English, the native tongue of the area where they had been based for so long which they had learnt for everyday use with the native people and which they could have continued to use with the native Britons.

Their main landing-place was at Richborough in North Kent where the militarty was later to builkd a fort.  A beach-head was first constructed and work was started on building a stores depot. It has been said that simultaneous landings took place elsewhere, particularly on the south coast in the neighbourhood of Chichester in the territory of the Atrbates and is a reasonable suggestion for it will be recalled that the northern half of their lands was now in the hands of the Catuvellauni and the southern half was under the regency of Cogidubnus who, of course, would have been ready to do all he could to assist the Roman army. So there is weight behind the idea and the landing of a detachment and the building of a storage depot near Fishbourne could provide an opportunity for fieldwork in the area unless the palatial villa (Cunliffe) later built by a British noble, perhaps Cogidubnus in his declining years, obliterated the site.)

Aulus Plautius advanced along the same north Kentish route as his predecessor, Caesar, and crossed the Thames but advanced on Camuludunum, not on Verulamium, the Catuvellaunian stronghold, for, after he had seized the territory of the Trinovantes, the Catuvellaunian leader had shifted his centre of power to Camulodunum. At this juncture, the Roman emperor Claudius arrived to be present at the crucial battle, took the surrender of a number of minor chieftains, and sped back to Roman to enjoy a triumph.

Then the Roman general had the hard work of subduing the country. It may be that it was easier than it would have been since the Catuvellauni had been behaving as tyrants and several British tribes had good reason to be glad of their defeat at the hands of the Roman army. Leaving the Legio XX to garrison the Colchester area, Aulus Paulus despatched Legio IX to the area of Lincoln, Legio XIV to the region between Cirencester and Leicester and the Legio II to the south-west.

This last was the sector where the hardest fighting was experienced in the earlier part of the Campaign. Vespasian, later to be Roman emperor, was in command of this legion and he had to attack and capture the hillforts belonging to the defiant Durotrigians. Actual attack can be demonstrated archaeologically at Hod’s Hill, Maiden Castle and Spettisbury as has already been described.

By AD47 the Romans had occupied south-eastern Britain up to a zone running across Iron Age Britain that stretched diagonally from the estuary of the Humber to Exeter. It is through this zone that the first military road was built to provide good communication from one legional region to the next. This is the road that we now call the Fosse Way.

Almost immediately this area had to be extended in the face of attacks from the north-west Midlands and from Wales where the defeated British leader, Caractacus, son of the old Catuvellaunian tyrant, Cunobelin, had taken refuge. During the period AD47 to AD51, the Roman pushed detachments forward into the north-west Midlands and established a fort at Wroxeter. At the same time units moved further west from Exeter to occupy the south-western peninsula of Devon and Cornwall. It was now that Caratacus chose to make his final stand and was defeated. He fled to the Brigantes whose queen handed him over to the Romans in AD51. The next step was to push into Wales under a new governor, Suetonius Paulinus.  It was during this advance that the most serious British rebellion took place.

There were several problems coming to a head in East Anglia. One concerned the Roman settlement at Camulodunum that was being rebuilt as a colonia, a settlement of retired legionaries.  As a colonia it required a large territory around it in which the retired soldiers would be allocated plots of land. This land was probably requisitioned from the local Trinovantes who were compensated by a site for a new major settlement at Chelmsford. However, this did not assuage the natives’ wounded feelings for one of their important religious centres lay in the confiscated land.

Another problem arose in the Iceni kingdom further to the north that so far had enjoyed the status of a client kingdom. The Icenian king, Prasutagus, died and the Romans decided to reduce the kingdom to the status of a civitas (pl. civitates), a tribal area under native civilian local authorities but ruled directly by the provincial governor. This reduction was resisted by the king’s widow, Boudicca, and her supporters and they broke out into active revolt, joined quickly by the Trinovantes. In the soldiers’ town of Camulodunum, blackened samian ware from a burnt-down pottery shop is graphic evidence of its destruction by her forces and the infant Roman settlement of Verulamium was similarly sacked and burnt.

Paulinus, the new Roman governor, was in Wales with the army. He marched post-haste back to the east, entered London, where he learnt that the rebels were on their way to the city and moved out to consolidate his forces. London suffered the same fate as the other places attacked by the rebels. Burnt layers uncovered in excavations demonstrate the ferocity of the attacks. Paulinus eventually was able to bring the rebels to battle in the Midlands and defeat them.  Boudicca is supposed to have taken poison.

This rebellion was a grave setback to the Romans who thought that with the Brigantes as a client kingdom on the northern boundary of the province and the tribes within the province organised into civitates, they had only Wales to worry about. It was a disaster for the Iceni, too, for the royal family had lost their independent client status and their kingdom was reduced to the rank of a provincial region. However, the Trinovantes seem to have regained control of their religious centre outside Camulodunum.  

Civitates were simply administrative divisions of the provinces, based on the tribal territories and ruled by local authorities who were basically the old ruling tribal aristocracies and in this way the Romans established a continuity that endured throughout the Roman period and into the period beyond.

Wales was to remain a problem for the Roman authorities for the next thirty years. From AD74 to AD77 Julius Frontinus campaigned backwards and forwards across Wales and the final settlement was by Agricola when he became governor and commander-in-chief in AD78.

Meanwhile, problems arose in the north with the Brigantians. A quarrel had developed between the ruler Venutius and his wife, Queen Cartimandua. Venutius took up the posture of a British patriot while Cartimandua called on the help of the Romans who rescued her in AD70 but this left the kingdom to Venutius who raised the banner of revolt in the north which provoked the Romans to launch a three-year hard-fought campaign to subdue the Brigantians. Their territory was covered by a network of roads and forts. Clearly, in view of these continuing problems, policy had to be changed and a decision was taken by Rome to occupy the greater part of Britain.

It was Julius Agricola who was responsible for this conquest. We know a good deal about the period because his son-in-law was to be Tacitus, the Roman historian, who must have used first-hand information for his account of the events in his book Agricola. Agricola spent the campaigning season of AD79 consolidating the occupation of Brigantia and building a military road across the country at the Tyne-Solway line. At each end of this military road a fort was built and it provided a springboard for further advance in AD80.

Then the general marched as far north as the River Tay where he built another line consisting of a road and a couple of forts. Tacitus says ‘This neck was now secured by garrisons, and the whole sweep of country to the south was safe in our hands. The enemy had been pushed into what was virtually another island.’

So far the Romans had met with slight resistance but when they moved forward again in AD82 along the eastern coastal plain beyond the Tay with the Roman fleet carrying supplies and reinforcements and keeping pace along the coast, they encountered stiffer resistance. They found it necessary to build an earth-and-timber legionary fortress at Inchtuthil in Perthshire. This advance culminated in a battle fought against the Caledonians, as the Romans called the inhabitants of the Highlands, at Mons Graupius in AD84. We are told that there were 10,000 casualties on the British side.

Tacitus has this to say ‘The Britons wandered all over the countryside, men and women together, wailing, carrying off their wounded and calling out to survivors. They would leave their homes and set fire to them....sometimes they would try to organise plans....sometimes the sight of their dear ones broke their hearts.....The next day revealed the quality of the vistory more clearly. A grim silence reigned on every hand; the hills were deserted, only here and there was smoke seen rising from chimneys in the distance and our scouts found no one to encounter them’.

This seems to have been as far as the Romans were prepared to go. Conquest of the Highlands had been necessary but occupation of them was deemed unnecessary so the Romans withdrew to the Forth-Clyde line. This proved to be a sensible move since the victory in Scotland allowed the authorities in Rome to reduce the British garrison by a legion.

It made re-organisation of the military arrangements in Britain essential so the legion at Inchtuthil was withdrawn and new legionary fortresses at York, Chester and Caerleon built. In southern Scotland a new fort was constructed at Newstead on the Tweed occupied by a quick-response force of legionaries and cavalry. Here, incidentally, a collection of military gear was unearthed which is now in the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh and includes helmets, swords, spears, pioneers’ axes and picks, cavalry harness and smiths’ tools. (Richmond)

The army that occupied Britain until the early years of the fifth century swiftly took on a different complexion. A soldier served for twenty-five years so the soldiers who took part in the invasion retired within a few years and the authorities had to recruit young men to take their place. It was not likely that they recruited a great many abroad so those that joined the Roman army must have been mostly Britons. Some 40-50,000 soldiers had been in the invading force but the one legion, perhaps a quarter of this number, that was posted back across the Channel, left behind some 30,000 odd as the permanent garrion. To keep up the numbers, the Roman authorities would have required several thousand young British recruits each year, a substantial drain on the British agricultural labour force.  So, perhaps, it is more correct to refer to the army as Romano-British rather than Roman.

A change of plan took place during the early second century and the garrisons were withdrawn from the forts in southern Scotland behind a frontier established along Stanegate, the military road built by Agricola between Corbidge on a road that led north to Carlisle on a similar road on the west coast and it was reinforced with extra forts. At the same time the three legionary fortresses at York, Chester and Caerleon were rebuilt in stone. Not long after there was an uprising in the north that resulted in yet another change of plan. This was authorised by the Emperor Hadrian on a visit to the province and it involved the construction of the frontier work that we know as Hadrian’s Wall (Barri Jones).  

It was constructed just north of Stanegate behind a ditch that was dug where natural slopes were inadequate to bar access to the wall. Along the Wall were set vexillation forts (forts housing units less in size than a legion), mile-castles (every Roman mile) and turrets (two between each milecastle). Milecastles served as controlled gateways through the Wall. South of the Wall was a military zone through which a service road ran and south of that was the vallum which consisted of two continuous banks, either side of a continuous ditch across which there were causeway crossings. These were placed opposite the milecastles where controlled access was allowed. To the west, to prevent the Wall being outflanked, a series of milecastles and, later towers extended down the Cumberland coast and appear to have been associated with a palisade and a double-ditched road.

Each milecastle contained a small garrison of soldiers accommodated in one or two barracks erected beside a passage that ran through the small fort from the back gate to a front one in the Wall itself. A patrol walk ran round the wall of the milecastle and over the Wall gate was a tower that allowed uninterrupted passage through it along the Wall walk. The turrets consisted of a tower through which the patrol walk passed and beneath which was a rest room for the half a dozen soldiers who spent their picket duty there.

Hadrian’s Wall was built about three and a half metres high with a breastwork on its northern side and was constructed in the main of local stone that varied according to the geology. Where a ditch could be dug in front of the Wall, the stone came from there. The stones were roughly shaped into small blocks and used to build the Wall in the normal masonry fashion and a suggestion has been made that the result was whitewashed. Over 112.5 kilometres long, the Wall was a tremendous achievement and must have placed a great strain on the resources of the military in Britain. Many army units had a hand in building it and one can imagine that a lot of the talk in the barrack rooms and around the camp fires during the years it was a-building, between AD122 and AD126, would have been gossip about it. Clearly, a Roman soldier was expected to do a great many things besides fighting. He was a jack-of-all-trades who learnt a good many skills in his years in the service and building work was just one of them.

Forts that had been built along a military road, Stanegate, some 3.2 kilometres south of  the Wall, were abandoned with the exception of Corspitium (Corbridge) which lay on the junction of Stanegate and the Roman road now called Deere Street that ran northwards from York and through the Wall into Scotland. Corbridge became the main supply base for the Wall, housing the stores that were held in the large granaries and storerooms whose foundations can be seen on the site today.

One other fort on Stanegate (all Roman road names are later, we have no idea whether they had names or not in Roman times) was Vindolanda whose vicus, the civilian site that grew up outside its main gate, has been extensively excavated and is the best preserved example in Britain. The most outstanding find was a collection of some 300 letters, the Vindolanda letters, which cover the last thirty or forty years of the fort’s life, and give us a unique insight into life on the Romano-British frontier before Hadrian’s Wall was built. (Birley)

Hadrian’s Wall seems to have fulfilled a number of functions: acting as a police post to monitor passage of traders and their goods from the north; with its forts providing secure bases from which forces could operate north or south of the Wall; and providing a barrier in time of uprising. The senior officer of the Wall garrison was stationed at Stanwix, just outside Carlisle and he was commander of the only regiment of cavalry in Britain. Cavalry were usually stationed where need for both speed and mobility was greatest. Three forts were built forward of the Wall in this area. This suggests that the Romans thought that the western end needed to be the section of the Wall requiring special security, perhaps because of the threat of predatory piratical raids from Ireland.

In the reign of Antonius, the Antonine Wall was built around AD140 when a consolidation of the northern frontier was carried out. It ran between the Firth of Forth (Bridgeness) and the Firth of Clyde (Old Kilpatrick) and was constructed of turf laid on a cobbled foundation behind a large ditch. An indeterminate number of forts were built along its length and outpost forts were placed in front of it. When this was done, Hadrian’s Wall was opened for free passage, gates were removed from the milecastles and small detachments only were stationed in the forts to act as caretakers.

This situation continued until AD154 when a serious rebellion broke out in Brigantia. The Antonine Wall was abandoned and reinforcements brought from Germany. We have an inscription from the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall that records the arrival of these legionaries to recommission the Wall. When the rebellion was put down, the forts in Brigantia were rebuilt to hold garrisons and the northern border was established at Hadrian’s Wall for the rest of the Roman period apart from a year or two from AD159 when the army once more advanced into Scotland.

Known as the Classis Britannica, the British Fleet was based in the English Channel with headquarters at Dover and Boulogne. It was part of the army, not a separate service, and was principally concerned with the supply and carriage of stores and reinforcements. As a consequence we find it involved in making iron and other products and working on the repair of Hadrian’s Wall. It was only later that it came to play a part in the defence of the province when sea-borne raiders began to be a problem.  

The Roman military was divided into two main categories. First, there were the legions, manned by Roman citizens who served for twenty-five years. Each legion was a fully self-contained unit and included specialists like surveyors, clerks, armourers, medical orderlies, carpenters, stone-masons, glaziers, hydraulic engineers, shipwrights, river pilots and probably numbered some 6000 men. Each legion was divided into ten cohorts; each cohort containing ten centuries commanded by a centurian. There were never more than thirty-five legions.

They were supplemented by auxiliary units of native troops who were usually granted Roman citizenship on discharge. They included cavalry units, infantry regiments and more specialised troops like archers or boatmen who were recruited from peoples who had these special skills.

Marching camps were camps built by Roman troops while on campaigns when they entrenched every night, building a playing-card earthwork with entrances in each of the four sides and reinforcing it with a palisade of stakes.  Outlines of these can be seen at Blaen-cwm-bach in South Wales and at Reycross, North Yorkshire.

Vexillation forts housed units smaller than a legion and could be of any size. Perhaps the best-preserved examples are the forts on Hadrian’s Wall. These, like all those that survive, were built in stone with buildings sometimes in stone and sometimes in timber. In the centre was the Headquarter’s Building, alongside the Commandant’s House, and behind and in front of them were rows of barrack blocks, granaries, stores buildings, workshops and a hospital. Apart from the four gates, there were bastions at the corners and sometimes mural towers along the walls. The gateways consisted of two towers with the gateway slung between them and a patrol walk above linking the patrol walks on the walls. They were well-equipped for the rigours of service in the bleak winters of the north.  At Wallsend the military bath house has been simulated as a fully working establishment with hypocausts and plunge baths and it is clear that it would have offered a relaxing and pleasurable experience that the soldiers would undoubtedly have looked forward to after a spell on duty. As well as the plunge pools and saunas, they would have found snacks and drinks and other services offered for sale in the baths.

Excavations on the three forts built by the Romans in Luguvalium (Carlisle) have revealed that the first two (AD 72 and AD105) were built of timber and the third of stone around AD 400. Finds include large quantities of timber drainpipe, leather, armour, women’s jewellery, gaming counters and food debris including hundreds of sheep, cattle, pig, deer and bird bones along with dill and coriander seeds. A broken container contained fish sauce known as garum from Cadiz where there was a large fish processing industry using tuna was labelled ‘Tunny fish fromTangiers’), ‘old (mature?), for the larder, excellent’ and ‘top quality’, demonstrating that the Romans had little to learn from us as far as advertising goes. Coins range in date from AD70 to the fourth century. A vicus grew up outside the main gate, a civilian settlement inhabited by the soldiers’ unofficial dependants, for the soldiers were not allowed to marry while in service. These relationships could have been permanant since the soldiers seem to have spent their whole army careers in the same spot. The vici also housed shops, pubs and brothels and were, to all intents and purposes, small towns offering services to off-duty soldiers in the same way as garrison towns did in a later age. (McCarthy)

Fortress is the name given to a fort big enough to house a legion. Three of them were built in stone. At York, Chester and Caerleon they were reconstructed in this material during the early years of the second century AD and this consolidation might well be taken as marking the end of the Conquest period.
 

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