by Mike Ashley
2
BEFORE ARTHUR – THE ROMAN BACKGROUND
1. The First Empire
When Julius Caesar took his first tentative and rather wet steps into Britain in 55BC, he learned that the native British were a challenging foe. He later wrote that there were separate tribal states in Britain between which there had been almost “continual warfare”, but in order to oppose the Roman forces most of the states had united behind one king, the powerful Cassivelaunos, or Caswallon. Caesar eventually got the measure of the Britons, but his incursion into Britain was little more than that, and by no means a conquest. It would be nearly a hundred years before the emperor Claudius headed a successful invasion of Britain in 43AD and brought the island into the Roman Empire.
Even so, Britain remained an outpost. No one from Rome wanted to go there. It had a cold and forbidding reputation even though, by the second and third centuries, it had become a prosperous part of the empire, supplying much of the grain for Rome. Those Romans who did live in Britain attained heights of luxury, although, in truth, they were Romans only by name. They were, for the most part, Britons, although continuing to aspire to the aristocratic lifestyle of the Romans, and remaining loyal to Rome. This siding with Rome was evident even in Caesar’s day. Mandubracius, son of the king of the Trinovantes, promised to give Caesar inside information to help the invasion. Likewise Cogidubnus, because of the aid he had given the Romans, became a client king and received the tribal territory of the Regnii in Hampshire, together with a magnificent palace at what is now Fishbourne, near Chichester. Cogidubnus was a shining example of the benefit of working with the Romans.
Other sympathetic tribal leaders included Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni, and Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes. Both retained their power and territory in return for aiding Rome. Cartimandua even turned over to Rome the rebel leader Caratacus, who had sustained a guerrilla-style opposition to the imperial forces for seven years.
Prasutagus may not be so well known today, but his wife certainly is. She was Boudicca (or Boadicea), who, because of her treatment by the Romans after her husband’s death, led a revolt, catching them unawares and destroying Colchester and London. But she was unable to defeat the might of the main Roman army under Suetonius Paulinus and died, probably by her own hand, in 61AD.
After Boudicca’s revolt the process of Roman colonization continued but it was never simple and never straightforward. For a start, the Romans never got a firm grip on Scotland, despite the defeat of the chieftain Calgacus of the Caledonii in 84AD. In 122AD, the emperor Hadrian commissioned the construction of a wall across northern Britain, from the Solway Firth in the west to what is now Wallsend in the east. It contained the northern frontier, and recognized that it was not worth the effort to try and defeat the tribes to the north – the tribes that came to be known collectively as the Picts.
Roman occupation of Wales was also rather limited, and there was not the same civic development as in England. The Roman towns were mostly in the south, and Wales was held under control by several powerful forts. Relationships were not helped by the attempts of Suetonius Paulinus to annihilate the Druids in their retreat on the island of Anglesey, only halted by Paulinus being called to deal with Boudicca’s revolt.
The rebellious nature of the British was one of the few facts known to the Romans at the core of the empire. Writing at the time that Claudius was planning his invasion, Pomponius Mela, who lived in southern Spain and probably knew the British, wrote in De Chorographia (43AD):
It has peoples and kings of peoples, but they are all uncivilised and the further they are from the continent the less they know of other kinds of wealth, being rich only in herds and lands . . . Nevertheless, they find occasions for wars and do fight them and often attack each other, mostly from a wish for domination and a desire to carry off what they possess.
Tacitus, writing in 98AD about the campaigns of his father-in-law Agricola, saw these internecine struggles as an advantage:
Once they paid obedience to kings, but now they are divided by warring factions among their leading men. Nothing has been more helpful to us in dealing with these powerful tribes than the fact that they do not co-operate. Seldom is there a combination of two or three states to repel a common danger; so, fighting separately, all are defeated.
This inability of tribes to live in harmony will re-emerge as a major factor in the Arthurian world. The number of hill forts throughout Britain is a testimony to how often the tribes fought each other, resulting in a need to build defences. Tacitus also recognised the impact upon the British of Roman civilization. Comparing the British to the Gauls in his Life of Agricola, he wrote:
. . . the Britanni display more fierceness, seeing that they have not been softened by protracted peace. For we know that the Gauls were once distinguished in warfare, but later sloth came in with ease and valour was lost with liberty. The same thing has happened to those [southern] Britanni who were conquered early; the rest remain what the Gauls once were.
This was the first recognition of a North-South divide in Britain.
There were over twenty different tribes in Britain. The Romans used the tribal divisions as the bases for their civitates, mostly in what is now England, each of which had a capital town. There were sixteen in total, mostly established within a century of the invasion in 43AD. These towns remained throughout the Roman occupation and into the early post-Roman period, and because they are relevant to the Arthurian story, it’s worth noting them here. The following table lists them in sequence, from the southern coast of Britain rising north.
These civitas capitals were rather like present day county towns. They were essentially self-governing, run by elected magistrates. Although all too few of these magistrates’ names survive, it is entirely likely that they came from the ruling families of the tribes and that the pre-Roman mini-kingdoms effectively continued, now reconstituted in Roman form (see Map 2).
Table 2.1. The Roman Civitas
Tribe (Civitas)
Capital
Present-day name
Cantii (Cantiacorum)
Durovernum
Canterbury (Kent)
Regnii (Reginorum)
Noviomagus
Chichester (West Sussex)
Belgae (Belgarum)
Venta Belgarum
Winchester (Hampshire)
Atrebates (Atrebatum)
Calleva
Silchester (Hampshire)
Durotriges (Durotrigum)
Durnovaria
Dorchester (Dorset)
Dumnonii (Dumnoniorum)
Isca
Exeter (Devon)
Trinovantes (Trinovantium)
Caesaromagus
Chelmsford (Essex)
Catuvellauni (Catuvellaunorum)
Verulamium
St. Albans (Hertfordshire)
Dobunni (Dobunnorum)
Corinium
Cirencester (Gloucestershire)
Silures (Silurum)
Venta Silurum
Caerwent (Monmouth)
Demetae (Demetarum)
Moridunum
Carmarthen (Carmarthenshire)
Cornovii (Cornoviorum)
Viriconium
Wroxeter (Shropshire)
Iceni (Icenorum)
Venta Icenorum
Caistor St. Edmund (Norfolk)
Coritani (Coritanorum)
Ratae
Leicester (Leicestershire)
Parisii (Parisorum)
Petuaria
Brough-on-Humber (Yorkshire)
Brigantes (Brigantium)
Isurium
Aldborough (Yorkshire)
The capitals were not the only important towns in Roman Britain. Of more significance were the coloniae. Initially these were independent towns with their own surrounding territory (separate from the civitates) and city council, occupied only by Roman citizens, usually retired soldiers and administrators. There were originally three coloniae: Camulodunu
m (Colchester), Lindum (Lincoln) and Glevum (Gloucester). Eboracum (York), one of the most important cities in Roman Britain, was later granted the status of colonia by the emperor Septimius Severus, who used it as his imperial capital from 208 until his death in 211, while he was involved in campaigns against the northern tribes.
2. Fourth Century Britain
Main Roman Towns and Provinces
York had been one of the three legionary fortresses at the start of the Roman occupation. It was home first to the IX Hispana Legion and then, from around 122, to the VI Victrix Legion. The other two fortresses were Isca (Caerleon), the home of the II Augustan Legion, and Deva (Chester) home, from around 87AD onwards, of the XX Valeria Victrix. Each became known as the City of the Legion. Before becoming a colonia, Lincoln had also briefly been a legionary fort, as had Wroxeter before it was developed as a civitas capital, but their legionary days were over by around 87AD.
Some large towns also acquired the status of municipium, in which the ruling magistrates and their families were all granted Roman citizenship. Each colonia must have been a municipium before rising in status. It is known that Verulamium (St. Albans) was later granted this status, and it is likely that Londinium (London) and Venta Belgarum (Winchester) were similarly rewarded. There were other smaller towns and forts, but those listed above were the primary centres of Roman Britain. They gave their occupants a status in the Roman world, although not all freeborn Britons were automatically granted Roman citizenship (that did not happen until 212, during the reign of Caracalla).
There were also countless villas dotted around the countryside. The majority were in the south, with concentrations around Gloucester and Cirencester, between Silchester and Winchester, and around London. Their number rapidly thinned to the north, and there were no substantial villas north of Vinovium, a fort near what is now Binchester, in County Durham. These villas, the Roman equivalent of stately homes, were also working farms, more suited to the soils of the southern lowlands.
North of Vinovia was essentially a military zone, running up to Hadrian’s Wall and beyond to the Antonine Wall, an earth rampart with a series of forts built between the Forth and the Clyde. An advance under emperor Antoninus Pius in 139 was maintained for barely twenty years, and after Pius’s death in 161 there was an effective withdrawal to Hadrian’s Wall.
Between the walls lay the Scottish lowlands, inhabited by three major tribes (four if you count the Damnonii who lived in the area of what is now Glasgow). To the east were the Votadini, whose territory stretched from what is now Edinburgh down as far as Newcastle. To the west, in the area of Galloway, were the Novantae. In the centre, inhabiting the vast wooded uplands, were the Selgovae. The Romans never conquered these tribes, but did reach a peace with the more amenable Votadini. The largest forts that the Romans established in the Scottish lowlands, at Bremenium (High Rochester) and Trimontium (Galashiels) were in the territory of the Votadini, and were as much to protect the Votadini as to serve the Roman advance.
Further north, beyond the Antonine Wall, was the heartland of the peoples who were to become known as the Picts. Writing at the start of the third century, the Roman historian and governor Cassius Dio recognised two main groupings of tribes: the Caledonii, far to the north, and the Mæatae, or Miathi, a confederation of Pictish tribes who lived just north of the Antonine Wall, near Stirling. In fact, both the Caledonii and Mæatae were confederations of tribes who united against the Romans, and in time they came to be ruled by separate Pictish kings.
There were many fortresses along Hadrian’s Wall, and at the western end was the fortress town of Luguvalium (Carlisle). In later years this was raised to the status of a capital of the civitas of Carvetiorum, the homeland of the Carvetii tribe, an offshoot of the Brigantes. Luguvalium remained a military town, and was the largest of any administrative significance in northern Britain.
All of these towns, fortresses and villas were linked by a system of roads that remains the basis for the country’s existing network, fourteen centuries later (see Map 3). The roads were kept in good repair by the army, certainly into the fourth century, and would still have been in good condition in Arthur’s day. They were essential for Arthur’s forces (and those of other war leaders) in moving quickly across country. The Romans regarded a day’s steady march as twenty miles and as a consequence staging posts and refreshment establishments appeared at roughly twenty-mile intervals along all of the major routes. These did not vanish overnight at the end of the Roman era. As archaeology is still rediscovering, Britain was a thriving society throughout the Roman period and it was not until some time afterwards that the major towns were abandoned and the native Britons returned to their hill forts and encampments.
3. Principal Roman Roads
2. The first Arthur?
Despite the Romans having stamped their authority on Britain, the undercurrent of rebellion was always there. After the Boudiccan revolt, the southern tribes learned to adapt to the Roman way of life, recognising the benefits, though that did not mean that they lost their individual identity. The creation of the civitas perpetuated the original tribal structure, and this remained throughout the Roman occupation.
The northern tribes were less compliant. Hadrian’s Wall was built as much to separate the north’s two main troublemakers, the Brigantes and the Selgovae, as it was to contain the Empire. It was almost certainly at this time that the Brigantian civitas was created, with the capital at Isurium. At the same time a more extensive network of forts was developed in the west, suggesting that although the eastern Brigantes were calming down, the western Brigantes remained less trustworthy. Amongst these forts was Bremetennacum, modern-day Ribchester, which was significantly developed at the start of the second century. Over the next hundred years or so a large civilian settlement developed around the fort, making it a town of some note.
When the Roman forces moved north to man the Antonine Wall, with the inevitable reduction in troops along Hadrian’s Wall, the equally inevitable rebellion happened. Although evidence is thin, it looks as if the western Brigantes, perhaps in a concerted action with the Selgovae, rose up against the Romans in 154AD, with widespread destruction, so that troops came back from the Antonine Wall and a new governor, Julius Verus, was brought in with additional troops. Verus regained control by 158AD, and the Brigantes were deprived of their civitas. It was probably at this time that the civitas at Carlisle was created.
An uneasy peace remained. A generation later, around 183, there was another rebellion, this time from the tribes north of the wall. Archaeological evidence suggests that they broke through the wall near the fort of Onnum (Halton) and attacked the forts at Cilurnum (Chesters) and Vindobala (Rudchester), their army probably marching down the Roman road of Dere Street, attacking Coriosopitum (Corbridge). Just how far south they reached is not clear. There’s some suggestion they may have reached York. Cassius Dio reported that they “did a great amount of damage, even cutting down a general together with his troops.” David Breeze, in The Northern Frontiers of Roman Britain, has suggested that the officer killed may have been a legate from York, or a provincial governor. It may be pertinent that the term of office of the governor, Quintus Antistius Adventus, ceased in 183, suggesting that he was either recalled to face the wrath of the emperor Commodus or was killed.
A new governor, Lucius Ulpius Marcellus, who had served in Britain ten years earlier, was despatched to Britain. Commodus must have felt it was important to have a man who knew the territory and was noted for his discipline and severity. According to Cassius Dio, Marcellus was “a temperate and frugal man and when on active service lived like a soldier . . . but he was becoming haughty and arrogant.” Apparently Marcellus needed little sleep and was forever issuing commands and orders, ensuring that his soldiers also slept little. So although he might have endeared himself to some, he must have made many enemies. He inflicted major defeats on the Picts, but the soldiers were in disarray, and Marcellus was recalled. A new governor, Publiu
s Helvius Pertinax, was sent to Britain in 185 to sort out the mess.
The army may not have rebelled solely against Marcellus. In Rome, Commodus, alarmed by an assassination attempt, had withdrawn into his palace, leaving the government of the Empire to one of his favourites, Perennis, who instituted a number of unfavourable changes. The last straw seems to have been his meddling with the command structure of the legionary forces, replacing the senatorial command with one of lesser rank, called equestrians, similar to senior civil servants. This was so unpopular that the British army took the unprecedented measure of sending a deputation of 1,500 men to Rome in 185. Their ploy was to warn Commodus of another assassination attempt, this time by Perennis. It worked. Perennis was executed and it was then that Pertinax was sent to Britain to satisfy the troops.
Pertinax could be as severe as Marcellus, and the army mutinied against him, leaving him for dead. He recovered, however, and dealt with the army “with signal severity”, as one chronicler recorded. Although he quelled the mutiny, Pertinax never gained the full respect of the army, even though they wanted him as their next candidate for emperor. Pertinax refused and after two or three years of an uneasy relationship between him and the army, he asked to be relieved of his duties, and became governor of Africa. When Pertinax was governor of Britain, a conflict erupted in Armorica (Brittany). Pertinax turned to a soldier who has since been swept into the debate as a possible candidate for Arthur: Lucius Artorius Castus.
Lucius Artorius Castus (140–197) was prefect of four legions. When the Sarmatian tribes from Hungary invaded the empire in 170, a five-year war, in which Castus would have been involved, ensued. In 175, as part of the peace deal, 8,000 Sarmatian cavalry were handed over to serve in the Roman army. 5,500 of these were sent to Britain, and settled at Bremetennacum (Ribchester). Castus oversaw the transfer and returned to Rome, but returned to Britain in 181 as prefect of the VI Victrix Legion, based at York. Linda Malcor and C. Scott Littleton have suggested that it was Castus who led his legion, perhaps including the Sarmatian contingent, against the Caledonii in 183, chasing them back north of the border. These battles, they suggest, could equate to the series later attributed to Arthur by Nennius (see Chapter 7). Castus was promoted to the rank of dux in about 185, almost certainly as a reward for his service in Britain. After being sent back to Armorica by Pertinax in the same year for another campaign, Castus retired from the army and spent his last days as a procurator of the province of Liburnia, in Dalmatia. Malcor has speculated that Castus may have been called back from retirement by the new emperor Septimius Severus at the time of the revolt by Clodius Albinus, and may have died in battle at Lugdunum (Lyon) in 197. He would then have been about 57 years old. Castus’s sarcophagus has been found at Stobrec, near Split, on the Adriatic coast.
