III.

The Army

After the 1st century, the army was for the most part stationed well away from civilian centres. London, however, had a fort manned by detachments from all three units stationed in Britain, doubtless providing a guard for the governor. A major town also grew up just south of the River Ouse, opposite the fortress of the Sixth Legion at Eboracum (York). From the early 3rd century, a line of forts was established along the south-eastern coast of Britain to serve as protection against attack from the sea. Otherwise, civilian areas of ancient Britain saw only a few soldiers seconded from the legions to serve, for instance, as policing officers for the Cursus Publicus (imperial communications system).

Forts in northern Britain and in Wales provided military control. Commanders also found themselves maintaining order in the wild countryside of Wales, the Pennines, along the frontier line of Hadrian's Wall, and in southern Scotland. In addition, the army was a focus for Romanization, as the civilian settlements outside such forts as that at Vindolanda show. There is evidence that native Britons around such outposts adopted a Romanized lifestyle and learnt how to speak Latin. For most of the time, Roman soldiers were not fighting but simply keeping the Pax Romana (peace under Roman rule) in distant outposts and by their presence discouraging incursions southward. Their duties included observance of the Roman religious calendar of festivals and sacrifices, maintaining their own forts, establishing customs controls on the frontier, and even farming, although taxes in kind were doubtless levied on the native inhabitants of these regions. Along Hadrian's Wall, the Romans left the most tangible traces of their presence in Britain; recent excavation, for example at Burdoswald, in Cumbria, has confirmed that when, at the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th, Roman political control crumbled, the forts continued to be occupied, perhaps by the descendants of the very men who had patrolled it, though they were now in truth no more than farmers.