Roman Britain

C

Mithraism

Some cults came to Roman Britain from the East. One such was that of the Egyptian goddess Isis, to whom a temple was erected in London. The orgiastic worship of Attis and Cybele is also attested in London, as well as at Gloucester and Verulamium. The Oriental deity best known to us today is Mithras, an Indo-Iranian god of light, who was popular among certain elements in the Roman army, as finds from the Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) at the forts at Carrawburgh and at Housesteads, on Hadrian's Wall, show. By far the richest Mithraeum found in Britain was that discovered beside the Walbrook, in London; finds from the site include slabs of imported marble, one of which bears a dedication by a veteran of the Second Legion, pointing to the possibility that the devotees here were also mainly soldiers. However, Mithraism, with its high moral demands, would also have appealed to the merchant class, which was very important in London.

D

Christianity

The earliest evidence of Christianity in Roman Britain dates from the 4th century ad. A collection of silver vessels and other pieces found at Water Newton, Cambridgeshire (and now in the British Museum), bear Christian dedications and appear to be church plate (items used in the celebration of the Eucharist). Other vestiges of Christianity include paintings featuring the Chi-Rho (a symbolic emblem of Christ made up of the first letters of his name in Greek) and orantes (figures with arms raised in the attitude of prayer), from the Roman villa at Lullingstone, Kent; a baptistery within the fort at Richborough, Kent; and a cemetery church excavated outside the walls at Colchester. In addition to this material evidence, St Patrick and Pelagius originated from Roman Britain, the former evangelizing Ireland and the latter leaving Britain to become the great adversary of St Augustine of Hippo in the great debate on the efficacy of Divine Grace. Recent study of St Patrick's writings has revealed a remarkably complex and erudite use of Latin—evidence of an unexpectedly high level of education in 4th-century Britain.

E

Art

In the matter of material culture, Britain before the Romans had been the home of a vigorous and refined native tradition in art which, in the Iron Age, produced such masterpieces of Celtic bronze metalwork as the Battersea shield (British Museum), the Torrs chamfrein (possibly a pony-cap; National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh), the Birdlip mirror (Gloucester Museum), and the gold torcs (heavy neck rings) from the hoard unearthed as Snettisham, Norfolk.

The Roman conquest did not destroy this tradition, as was once thought, but transformed it. Under the Romans, British metalworkers turned their attention to a wider range of items, including figures that combine Roman classicism with the Celts' delight in texture and sinuous forms. Among the notable achievements of British metalworkers during the Roman occupation are a small statue of a muse (Reading Museum), from Silchester, and an image of the Roman god Mars (British Museum) from Foss Dyke, Lincolnshire, with cascading hair and decoratively stylized musculature. According to an inscription at its base, it was made for the Colasuni brothers by Celatus, an aerarius (a bronzesmith or coppersmith). British artisans were probably involved in casting large statues. Even the head of Hadrian (British Museum), from London, appears to be local work; the convoluted hair certainly looks Celtic.

It is certain that many Britons more than mastered the carving of stone; fine examples include the celebrated male Gorgon from the pediment of the temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath and the great capital (for a free-standing column) carved with the figures of Bacchus and his companions (Cirencester Museum). The existence of a Cotswold school is also attested by fine representations of Mercury in relief (from Cirencester) and in the round (from Uley). Another, related school was located further north: high-quality sculptures are known from Ancaster and Lincoln. A striking female mask (British Museum) with curving S-scroll tresses from Towcester, Northamptonshire, may also be attributed to this school. A third school has been identified at Carlisle, where it produced a number of distinctive gravestones.

Of the arts of Roman Britain, perhaps the most celebrated today is that of the mosaicist. In the 2nd century, mosaic workshops were set up in several major towns, including Colchester, Verulamium, and Cirencester, where fairly simple but attractive designs were produced, mainly geometric but some showing figural work. The economic downturn suffered throughout the Roman Empire during the 3rd century was reflected by a dip in patronage but, in the 4th century, Romano-British mosaics really came into their own. Cirencester was again a major centre, with a brilliant series of floors featuring a concentric design in which Orpheus is depicted with animals and birds circling around him. The largest is in situ on the site of the palatial villa at Woodchester, near Cirencester; a smaller version from the Barton Farm villa, just outside Cirencester, is in the Corinium Museum, Cirencester. Other floors from the same school, one with a Bacchic theme, can be seen at Chedworth villa. Another workshop specializing in rather fleshy animals and plants was based at Dorchester, in Dorset. The great villa-like complex at Frampton included a large number of mythological scenes, such as Perseus and the sea monster, Aeneas plucking the golden bough, and Cadmus slaying the serpent of Mars.

The subjects of the Frampton mosaics have been thought to be derived from illustrations to the Metamorphoses of Ovid. It is certain that the story of Dido and Aeneas (Taunton Museum) from the floor of the bathhouse of a villa at Low Ham, Somerset, is based on an illuminated copy of The Aeneid of Virgil, while the triclinium (dining room) floor of Lullingstone villa, Kent (also probably laid by mosaicists from Dorset) shows Europa being abducted by Jupiter in the guise of a bull; it is accompanied by a verse alluding to the storm that wrecked Aeneas's fleet at Carthage but in a metre that imitates Ovid. Presumably the verse was written by the owner of the villa and, as such, attests to his education not only in the use of Latin, but in the enjoyment of literature.

Further north, another mosaic workshop was located at Brough-on-Humber, or perhaps at Aldborough, Yorkshire. To that workshop is attributed a remarkable series of floors at Horkstow, Lincolnshire, including a local interpretation of the concentric Orpheus design and a spirited chariot race. In eastern England, a mosaic school with its office perhaps at Water Newton, Cambridgeshire, attempted only geometric designs.

IX

Inscriptions and Literacy

As might be expected, the fullest evidence for literacy in Britain comes from the forts and fortresses of the Roman army, which have not only yielded many official dedications of buildings, altars recording vows made to the gods, and the inscribed tombstones of soldiers, but even (at Vindolanda, in Northumberland, just south of Hadrian's Wall) files of correspondence written on wooden tablets.

However, reading and writing were also widespread among the civilian population of Britain, as is proved by graffiti scratched on walls, and on pieces of pottery and tiles. Very occasionally (in waterlogged deposits of London) archaeologists have discovered a letter written in ink or scratched too deeply through the wax of a wooden writing tablet. All are in the Latin language. It is easy to imagine that the Roman teacher (grammaticus), who perhaps taught under the shelter of the colonnade of the forum, would have had no difficulty in finding pupils. Tiles on which alphabets have been scratched are known from Cirencester and Wroxeter, and another including a phrase from Virgil's Aeneid from Silchester. Some of the evidence for a much wider appreciation of Classical literature among the leisured classes in their villas has been mentioned above.

Towns have yielded a few formal inscriptions, some of them very grand, such as the dedications of the forums at Verulamium and Wroxeter set up respectively by the civitates of the Catuvellauni and the Cornovii. There was also the statue which, as the inscription on its base indicates, was erected by the ordo or senate of the Silures at Caerwent in honour of the one-time legate of the Second Augusta legion which was based at Caerleon near by, probably because he was their patron representing the interests of the civitas to the far-away imperial government. Other inscriptions are religious in nature: among them are the dedication of the Temple of Neptune and Minerva at Chichester and various altars, including one to the genius (spirit) of the city of Cirencester and another to the mother goddesses at Winchester. Funerary inscriptions range from the grand lettering on the tomb of the procurator, Classicianus, from London to the touching epitaph of a little girl called Corellia Optata at York.

X

The Legacy of Roman Britain

By the early 5th century, with the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire already under way, Rome lost direct control of Britain, as well as its other provinces in western Europe. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries heralded the next stage in the history of Britain.

The continuity of towns in post-Roman Britain has been the subject of debate. Some, such as Dorchester (Dorset), Dorchester (Oxfordshire), and Lincoln, probably maintained some sort of urban cohesion through the early Middle Ages. In others, for instance Canterbury, there may have been a short break in the later 5th century before occupation was resumed. Tellingly, the sites of most Roman towns lie directly beneath their medieval and modern successors. This was not only because the sites themselves were well chosen but because they continued to be regarded as seats of government and of ecclesiastical power. The short list of bishops attending the Council of Arles in 314 gives the names of the bishops of York, London, and Lincoln, then the capitals of three of the four late Roman provinces and the seat of bishops today.

As to the countryside, it is clear that it continued to be farmed. (Pollen analysis demonstrates that the wildwood cleared to make the villa estates did not regenerate.) Moreover, it is likely that many Anglo-Saxon estates, especially the villae regales (estates which were held by the king), were descended from Roman estates.

It was in eastern Britain, where the Anglo-Saxon presence was strongest, that cultural continuity from Roman times was correspondingly weakest, even though the population of eastern Britain was made up largely of the descendants of Romano-Britons. In western Britain, continuity was much stronger, even though the Celtic tongue (rather than Latin, apart from a few loan-words) survived. Nevertheless, in upper-class and Christian circles, Latin continued to be read and spoken, and was spread to Ireland. The standard of Latin which was written by St Patrick, his forebears, and successors was remarkable. The tradition of literacy and learning in Ireland and in western Britain, even if it was augmented by influence from Gaul and elsewhere, can be seen in part as the legacy of Roman Britain.

Evidence for the persistence of Christianity is harder to identify in south-eastern Britain. It certainly survived in Christian enclaves such as that which centred around Verulamium, and which shifted to the hill near by where Alban was martyred in 304; it was evidently a place of pilgrimage through the Dark Ages.

Nevertheless, many of the inhabitants of post-Roman Britain were still pagan. They held beliefs not so very different from those of the newcomers from north-western Europe with whom they were to merge, adopting new styles of ornament but perhaps retaining their own traditions in other respects, such as metalworking and enamelling, and in burial rites. In one such rite, the head was removed from the body after death: this had been a common tradition in late Roman Britain (found, for instance, in the Roman cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester) and was still being practised in the 7th century at Winnall, near by.