by starroute » Wed Dec 14, 2005 7:26 pm
<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba68/feat1.shtml">www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba68/feat1.shtml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The 'story' of Roman Britain, as told to generations of schoolchildren, is a very simple one - AD 43, the Roman legions march in; AD 410, they march out again. Barbarity beforehand, barbarity afterwards, civilisation in between.<br><br>In an earlier issue of this magazine (BA, September 1998 ) I suggested that the Roman 'conquest' of AD 43 was not all that it seemed to be, and that Britain's southern rulers - if not those in the north - were Romanised before the invasion, welcomed the invasion, and profited from it afterwards. It was not a case of 'barbarity beforehand'.<br><br>Some archaeologists are now beginning to see that it was not 'barbarity afterwards' either. The Roman cultural legacy survived far more profoundly, more extensively and for much longer in Britain than is usually realised. . . .<br><br>The famous date of 410 is provided by the text of an imperial edict of Honorius recorded by the late 5th century Greek writer Zosimus, which orders a number of places to defend themselves. One of these is 'Brettia', generally taken to be Britain, but as the other places in the list are towns in Italy, it seems much more likely that the name is a textual error which should be emended to Bruttium, a town in southern Italy.<br><br>That said, it is clear that some time in the 5th century the Britons broke away at last from Roman central authority. Zosimus declares that the Britons were at his time living under the rule of local kings.<br><br>But this breaking away did not mean that Britain had ceased to be culturally Roman. What had ended was an official connection of salaried officials and troops appointed from the centre, and with them the regular issues of coinage. As a general rule, no new coins were imported. This had serious consequences in that it was no longer easy to pay for buildings in stone, mosaics and luxury services. The lack of coins also means that it is hard to date 5th and 6th century activities in what used to be called the 'Dark Ages'.<br><br>But it is clear from documentary sources that such material considerations were not central to the way many Britons thought and behaved, or defined their identity. For example, St Patrick, writing in the 5th century, never mentions the lack of coinage. There were clearly other ways to continue economic life. The primary, defining features of Roman culture were not, after all, money but the Latin language coupled with Christianity; and it is clear from the work of the medieval Latinist David Howlett and others, using the evidence of both documents and inscriptions, that the élite preserved the language in a remarkably pure form (BA, April 1998 ).<br><br>A witness to surviving material culture is to be seen in an account of the visit of St Germanus of Auxerre to the shrine of Alban in 429 which found the magistrates and citizens splendidly apparelled. Later hints of Roman magnificence are apparent from documentary sources of Aurelius Ambrosianus, the southern British chieftain often equated with King Arthur, who claimed imperial ancestry around AD 500 - as did, later, the ruling house of Gwynedd in North Wales. . . .<br><br>The survival of Roman culture in western Britain, and of the Celtic church, is well known (BA, March 1998 ). Here was not only a society which spoke Latin and was Christian but where rulers - like the kings who ruled from Tintagel, Dinas Powys and South Cadbury - drank wine from Mediterranean pottery, paid for, no doubt, by valuable exports such as tin. . . .<br><br>If there was some continuity in population and religion, why, then, does Bede tell us that St Augustine had to reimport Roman culture to Britain in the late 6th century, and especially Christianity? As so often, the reason for Augustine's mission was political. Contemporary records make it clear that Pope Gregory I was not really worried about paganism; he was far more concerned about a flourishing Celtic church which appeared to take little heed of Rome - even if this liberty mainly manifested itself in a heretical tonsure and a wrong date for Easter! . . .<br><br>The so-called 'darkness' of the period between 400 and 600 in southern and eastern Britain is the result partly of archaeological neglect, partly of a long tradition of scholarship looking only for Germanic elements in the culture of the period. This is now changing. Metalwork, for example, is at long last being studied by scholars such as Ellen Swift and Helen Geake who appreciate the styles of the late Roman period as well as Germanic ornament. . . .<br><br>There is a tendency nowadays to want our history to be violent, presumably to accord with the pessimism and horrors of our news broadcasts. However, what is remarkable is the way in which Britons interacted with Irishmen from the 5th century, and both eventually converted Anglo-Saxon society, largely through the medium of Latin. The 7th and 8th centuries can still be regarded as culturally late Roman - seen, for example, in the Roman achitecture of churches such as All Saints, Brixworth in Northamptonshire, or in dress ornaments exhibiting Roman styles. And it was in these centuries that the art and culture of Britain came to impress itself even on the Continent.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>One of the unfortunate legacies of late 19th-early 20th century racism and fascism is the tendency to *want* Europe's past to appear barbaric, violent, and superstitious, either as some sort of proof of its Darwinian superiority or as a validation of our own fallen state. The sad truth is that most of history displays cultures that are far more peaceful, refined, and artistically creative than anything to be found in the present era. <p></p><i></i>
