Roman Britain

V

The Countryside

In Roman Britain, at least 3 million people lived in the countryside in dwellings that ranged from wattle-and-daub huts to substantial stone-built Roman farmsteads (villas). The former were identical to those in which the Iron Age peasant had lived and were especially common in northern and western areas of Britain, where towns were not to be found. Well-appointed farms, even those with only a few rooms and perhaps a living-room with mosaic floor (as at Sparsholt, in Hampshire), mark considerable investment. The famous villas with many mosaics are exceptional in every way and should be compared with great houses of more recent times, such as Audley End, in Essex, or Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire. The villa at Fishbourne, in West Sussex, dating from the 1st century, was possibly the palace of a local “client” king called Cogidubnus (or, more probably, Togidubnus). Those at Bignor, also in West Sussex, and at Woodchester, in Gloucestershire, were the centres in the 4th century of great country estates belonging to magnates whose funds surely came from more than several square kilometres of land. Other richly appointed courtyard buildings in the countryside may not, in fact, have been villas but hostelries associated with religious cults. Such is certainly the case with the guest-house beside the temple of Nodens at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, and it has recently and most plausibly been proposed that Chedworth Roman villa, further east in the same county, is no such thing as a villa but also a hostelry.

Most villas were farms. The central house was fairly compact, with five or six rooms. Sometimes the rooms were fronted by short wings, and a veranda providing an open corridor between them. Like modern farms, with which they can be compared, Roman villas also included barns and other outbuildings for farm servants, livestock, and the storage of grain, as well as paddocks and fields. Some villas may have been owned by small farmers, but others were occupied by bailiffs and formed part of larger estates whose owners may have lived abroad. Sometimes, an estate would be farmed by a resident owner with the help of dependent clients, as an inscription on a mosaic from the villa at Thruxton, in Hampshire, laid out by “Quintus Natalius Natalinus and the Bodeni” seems to attest. Although slavery undoubtedly existed, most farm labour was probably provided by free peasants and perhaps by serfs tied to the land. The villas at Barnsley Park, near Cirencester, may have been engaged in fattening livestock for market in its surrounding paddocks. Other villas too could have had a special function, such as that at Hambleden, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been industrial. Others, such as that at Combe Down, near Bath, and Kingscote, in Gloucestershire, appear to have been the official residences of minor officials.

Many houses in the countryside remained simple. In western and northern Britain, but also sometimes in the more settled parts of the province, circular houses, characteristic of the pre-Roman Iron Age, continued to be used into the 4th century. Most Roman houses were rectangular, some quite small but others barn-like and containing accommodation for both people and animals. A number of such buildings are known to have existed in Hampshire, at North Warnborough and Meonstoke, for instance; an example from Meonstoke had a very impressive façade of patterned brickwork, part of which is now in the British Museum. However modest the villa, its proprietor was anxious to impress his neighbours.

VI

Trade and Industry

One of the reasons why the Romans invaded Britain was the country's richness in mineral resources. The most important were lead and silver, often found together and extracted from mines in the Mendips, in Derbyshire, and in Flintshire. The lead was cast into large ingots, sometimes bearing the name of the emperor and sometimes those of private lessees (owners of mines on a leasehold basis). Such ingots have been found not only in Britain but in France as well, indicating a substantial export. Tin was much less widespread in the Roman Empire, but it was a vital component of bronze, and Cornish tin was thus of some importance. In Britain itself, tin was often alloyed with lead to make pewter; moulds have been found in various places, including Lansdown and Camerton, near Bath, and in Silchester. Services of pewter, like the large one from Appleford, near Oxford (now in the Ashmolean Museum), were used as convenient substitutes for silver and were especially popular in the 4th century. Iron was required in great quantities for everything from nails and tools to attractive wrought-iron chains with which to suspend cauldrons; it was mined on the Weald (in Kent and Sussex) and also in the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire). Copper was mined in North Wales and gold at Dolaucothi, near Llandovery, Dyfed, and perhaps elsewhere.

The industry that has left most traces was the manufacture of terracotta for tiles and pottery. While some tileworks were official concerns that, for example, served the needs of the procurators in London or the colonia in Cirencester, most were private concerns that might have supplied roofing tiles for villas. Some pottery, such as the black-burnished ware of Dorset, was produced in vast quantities and taken as far as Hadrian's Wall. Other areas of pottery manufacture were Brockley Hill, near Stanmore, Middlesex, notable for producing mortaria (mixing bowls), the New Forest, and Nene Valley, and, especially in the 4th century, the immediate vicinity of modern Oxford.

Excavations of the Roman waterfront in London have confirmed Tacitus in showing the significance of this port as a centre for import and export in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Jet seems to have reached the Rhineland, while pewter vessels and certain products of British kilns (especially late Roman Oxford ware) are recorded in Gaul. More important exports were corn, wool, and textiles, including a special kind of coat known as the birrus Britannicus. Trade doubtless existed on the western side of Roman Britain, way beyond the frontier into Scotland and into Ireland; a trading port was recently discovered at Drumanagh, about 25 km (15 mi) north of Dublin. Doubtless various trinkets and other manufactured goods were exported to the barbarians in exchange for slaves and other products such as skins.

VII

Social Status

The granting of Roman citizenship to any non-Roman was at first a rare distinction, and in the decade of the Roman conquest the only Britons who possessed it were probably a few favoured pro-Roman aristocrats like Togidubnus. Increasingly, however, Britons acquired it by serving on town councils or through service in the auxiliary regiments of the army where, on retirement after 25 years' service, a veteran would receive a diploma on a bronze tablet awarding him citizenship and bestowing the same status on his wife and children. By the early 3rd century, a very high proportion of the free population probably had Roman citizenship. In 212, Caracalla extended it to all free men in the Roman Empire; the motive was not so much altruistic as driven by the desire to increase revenue from the taxes which all Roman citizens were called on to pay.

Socially, at any rate, the distinction was maintained between honestiores (the upper class of the Roman citizens) and humiliores (their inferiors). The former would have comprised high officials, villa owners, and rich merchants; the latter, farm servants (often in a position of serfdom) and artisans. Slavery is little mentioned, although it certainly existed. (A letter found in London mentioned the sale of a slave girl, and iron shackles are sometimes found.) Apart from service in the mines, where conditions, in Britain as elsewhere, were probably very poor, the lot of slaves was not necessarily very different from that of free but poor men and women.

VIII

Religion and Culture

A

The Imperial Cult

Until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Romans did not attempt to impose Roman religion on their subject peoples. The only exception was the imperial cult, whereby Augustus and other deceased and deified emperors were venerated in special temples erected in major towns. The construction of a major temple set up in ad 54 by order of the Roman Senate to honour the recently deceased Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, became a flashpoint for rebellion. This was less for religious reasons than because native tribes and their leaders were expected to spend lavishly on building and embellishing the sanctuary. Once major grievances had been settled, the cult seems to have continued in Colchester, London, and elsewhere, while at native temples, even in the deep countryside, the numen (spirit) of the reigning emperor was worshipped alongside the true gods.

B

Celtic and Roman Gods

Roman Britain illustrates the success that the Romans achieved in adapting native cults to their own. Celtic deities were merged with their Roman equivalents (seeRoman Mythology). At the great healing sanctuary of Bath (Aquae Sulis, “the waters of Sulis”), a temple of Roman form was erected to the goddess Sulis Minerva; at Nettleton Shrub, near by, Apollo was venerated as Cunomaglos (“hound-prince”), while at Lydney Park, in Gloucestershire, there was a healing shrine to Mars Nodens. Even where the Celtic names of deities have not been preserved (as at Uley, in Gloucestershire, where, in Roman times, a temple was dedicated to Mercury), it seems that native Britons still brought their problems to be solved by the god. Here, as at Bath, tablets of lead inscribed in Latin bear inscriptions asking for redress against thieves, while altars and the bones of animals attest to sacrifices made as thanks-offerings for favours granted.

Right down to the end of Roman rule, belief in Roman gods remained vigorous among the native Britons. A cache of gold jewellery and silver spoons buried near Thetford (and now in the British Museum) was dedicated to the Italian god Faunus, here given several strange local epithets such as Ausecus (“prick-eared”) and Medigenus (“mead-begotten”).