Constantine had his eyes on the eastern part of the empire and forged temporary alliances and fought civil wars against his rivals until, finally, in 324, he reigned supreme after successfully taking the port of Byzantium. The following year he decided that this was to be his new capital and had it consecrated under the name Constantinople in 330. It was to remain the seat of the eastern emperors until it was taken over by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. It is now the site of the modern city of Istanbul.
Constantine the Great, as he was subsequently known, certainly earned his name. His domination of the empire, his role as the first Christian emperor, his building of St Peter's basilica and his setting up of a new capital mark him out as a truly exceptional emperor. Yet his lust for power and worldly gain made him little different from his pagan counterparts. Despite his acceptance of Christianity, he hardly strikes us as compassionate, ruthlessly ordering the killing of his wife, eldest son and father-in-law on separate occasions both before and after his conversion.
All roads did not lead to the city of Rome in the time of Constantine – he changed the seat of power, moving it far away from its ancient site. This was not the first time that Rome was overlooked in favour of other cities: Ravenna, Milan, Thessalonica and Trier had been centres of administration for the empire and official residences for the emperors. Rome as an idea and as a civilisation could certainly be said to have had all roads leading to it, but the city itself was far from being the sole centre of power and influence.
At the time of Constantine's death in 337, we can still make out a fairly straightforward division between two worlds – the stable and settled world of the Romans and the volatile and restless world of the myriad barbarian tribes. But times were changing. The barbarians grew in strength as the Romans relied more and more on their military aid in defending the empire against other tribal groups. Increasingly, the destinies of the two were merging. The historian Norman Davies cites the early fifth century writings of a priest from Marseilles named Silvian, who tells us how some Romans sought refuge with two barbarian peoples, the Goths and the Franks: 'seeking a Roman humanity among the barbarians, because they could no longer support Barbarian inhumanity among the Romans'.
This blurring of the line between Roman and barbarian cultures was having a profound effect on the destiny of the continent. Roman civilisation offered opportunities for the ambitious barbarian – power, wealth, and prestige opened up new worlds of experience. While the nouveaux riches among the barbarians sought to emulate Roman values, it would be wrong to think of the cultural interaction as just one-way traffic. In clothing, for example, the Romans succumbed to a new fashion already established among the Germans – the wearing of trousers. Despite being outlawed by the emperor Honorius in 397 they became an integral part of the civilised wardrobe, a place they still hold today. This is just one of the many instances of barbarian cultural influences that make up our modern European culture.
The barbarian Germanic tribes were becoming an increasing threat and inflation was rampant. The economy was falling further into a steady and irreversible decline as the fourth century wore on. It was withering at the very roots with agricultural production dropping across the length and breadth of the empire. A plethora of barbarian tribes were growing like vigorous weeds in the orderly fields of the Roman world. The integrity of the language was also under threat as the major provinces of Italy, Spain and Gaul were growing into separate linguistic branches. As the historian Wallace-Hadrill put it: 'Men were thinking and feeling as Europeans; but they still called themselves by the old name – Romans.'
The individual histories of the barbarian peoples are inevitably intertwined not just with Rome but with the ever-changing skein of alliances, disputes and migrations that typify this dramatic, restless and energetic cluster of cultures. Rome itself faced two problems – the enemy within, that is to say the barbarians inside the empire, and the enemy from without, most notoriously the Huns from the east. The comparatively stable map of modern Europe was very different to that which delineated this period of great migration and displaced peoples. Yet the outcome of all this movement was the eventual settlement of peoples and the roots of the modern states of Europe. Before plunging back into the churning core of the struggle for the mainland, we must pick up one of the other strands of the story – the Roman intervention in a place once thought to be beyond the pale of the civilised world: the island of Britain, which was to become another building block in the edifice of Roman civilisation.
Chapter Two
THE EDGE OF EMPIRE
To separate the Romans from the barbarians.
Aurelius Victor, fourth-century biographer of Hadrian, on the reason for the building of Hadrian's Wall
Britain was a Roman province with a difference. The separation of the island from the European mainland made it difficult to incorporate into the empire in the first place, and this continued to be a key factor in the following four centuries of Roman rule. The Roman interest in and eventual occupation of Britain made a major impact on the indigenous people, and heralds the beginning of detailed historical information about the island. Before this time, most of what is known about Britain and its inhabitants comes from archaeological rather than written evidence.
History and writing go hand in hand. Under Roman rule, there were more people who could read and write than there would be for a few hundred years after the end of the occupation. One of the main reasons for this was the fact that literacy was a prerequisite of army life. The Celtic inhabitants of Britain found themselves taking part in a very different social world in the towns that began to grow under the influence of the colonial power of Rome. It seems that the population grew rapidly.
Roman Invasion
Celtic Britain was, despite the Channel that divided it from mainland Europe, a very active trader with the rest of the continent even before its incorporation into the empire. Particularly close links existed between the south of the country and the northern part of Gaul (present-day northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands). Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul brought him into conflict not just with the Gauls themselves but also with the British barbarians who fought alongside them against the Roman invaders. His conquest of Gaul was followed swiftly by a concerted campaign against Britain. Whether the two expeditions he mounted to Britain in 55 and 54 BC were simply punitive campaigns to teach the Britons a lesson for interfering in the Roman invasion of Gaul, or whether he had something more ambitious in mind, remains a moot point.
The first invasion was not a success. The legions fought their way into Kent but within a matter of weeks had returned to Gaul, perhaps to deal with more pressing problems. But Caesar did not want such an ineffectual campaign to be repeated. The second time around he brought a force of 32,000 men over the Channel in a fleet of 800 ships. The military might of the Romans made itself felt and allies and enemies were made in the patchwork of small kingdoms that made up the south of the country. Caesar left with an agreement from a number of defeated kings that they should pay an annual tribute to Rome. Britain was no longer quite at the edge of beyond – it was now within the Roman sphere of influence and would not last much longer outside the empire.
When Claudius succeeded the murdered Caligula as emperor, he was not considered highly in many quarters. He was a rather eccentric character who had somehow found himself centre stage, much to the surprise of even his own family. He soon proved himself to be much more intelligent and determined than his detractors thought him to be. He needed a feather in his cap in order to consolidate his position and to assert his authority; adding Britain to the provinces of the empire would certainly do the trick. A formidable army was dispatched to do just that in AD 43.
Four Roman legions (each consisting of about 5,000 troops) were augmented by an equally large force of auxiliaries, making the invading army 40,000 strong. Auxiliary troops were not only important from a military point of view; they also did much for the process of barbarian integration. Aux
iliaries were guaranteed Roman citizenship on their retirement and their sons were able to sign up in the legions. As the expert on Roman Britain, Peter Salway, put it, such auxiliary units 'provided a continuous process of turning unlettered barbarians into literate Roman citizens and were a major element in the assimilation of new peoples into the empire'.
Such was the force that confronted the Britons. A full-scale professional army like that of the Romans was simply beyond the economic means of the natives to equal. The chariot-driving warrior class among the tribes of Britons was effectual but small. Most of their compatriots were farmers called up for army duty. They had neither the training nor the equipment that the invading army took for granted. Furthermore, they could not continue fighting all year round without their own communities starving as a result of neglecting their crops and livestock.
Despite the Romans' advantages, it was not easy going and they suffered heavy casualties. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that the campaign was going to succeed. Once victory was assured, Claudius himself arrived on British soil, with a troop of elephants, in time to lead the army in its triumphal entrance into Colchester. Eleven British kings formally surrendered to the new order. Power was consolidated over the next few years, at least in southern and central England. The west and the north posed more difficult problems.
Druid Destruction and Iceni Uprising
In AD 59 and 60 the appointed governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, decided to launch an all-out assault on Wales. The Druids, the ancient priesthood of the Celts, had seen their religion and authority collapse before the onslaught of the legions. It was on the island known to the Romans as Mona and to us as Anglesey that they made their last stand. If we are to believe the Roman accounts, the Druids practised human sacrifice in a number of forms. They are reported to have built colossal figures out of wood and straw and put live animals and people inside them before setting the whole thing alight. (This ancient story was the basis for the sacrifice of a policeman in the 1970s film The Wicker Man.) But this time the blood of the slaughtered was to be on Roman hands.
Paulinus knew that the Druids were not only priests but also the leaders of the opposition to Roman rule. The combined force of his cavalry and infantry stormed the island, and the mass slaughter of the Druids and the desecration of their sacred groves was the result. Wales looked to be on the verge of being successfully assimilated into the Roman province when an uprising among the Iceni tribe of Britons (inhabiting parts of what is now Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire) forced Roman attention back to the east.
The fairly peaceful co-existence of the Romans and those Britons with whom they had reached terms seems to have turned sour due to overbearing arrogance and downright corruption on the part of the colonisers. In AD 60 Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni, died, leaving the emperor Nero as one of his heirs. Prasutagus thought by doing so that the alliance he had nurtured with Rome would remain in place after his death. The Romans, however, simply saw this as capitulation on his part and took away the hereditary estates of the Iceni upper class.
The account of what happened next comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, who no doubt heard it from his father-in-law, Julius Agricola, who was in Britain at the time. The Iceni king's widow Boudicca protested at the injustice of the Roman decision to remove all power from her people. As a result, she was flogged and her daughters dragged off and raped. The Romans, through their own barbaric behaviour, brought upon themselves a ferocious wave of barbarian revenge. Boudicca roused the Iceni and began a campaign of total destruction against Roman interests in the region. Colchester was burnt to the ground and its Roman citizens and sympathisers slaughtered in the environs of the half-built temple of Claudius. London was the next destination on the bloody trail of revenge.
The governor Paulinus, hearing news of the rebellion, rushed back to London but although he arrived before Boudicca he and his cavalry could not stop the town burning. The governor retreated to the Midlands, where he could combine his force with that of two other legions and their auxiliaries. This was the force that Boudicca's army met in the Midlands in the battle for Britain. It was a resounding victory for the Romans: the rebellion was crushed with perhaps as many as 80,000 Britons killed. The devastated Boudicca is believed to have poisoned herself in the aftermath.
The peripheral regions of Roman Britain – Wales, northern England, Scotland and the tin-rich Cornish peninsula – all continued to pose problems for the colonial administration. But within the heartland of the province, urban development flourished during the first and second centuries. Urban expansion with all its trappings created a network of towns and cities organised by centralised authorities. It was a Britain very different to the one that greeted the first Roman visitors: amphitheatres, law-courts, public baths – all clear signs that Mediterranean civilisation had made its indelible mark on the physical and social landscape of Britain.
A Wondrous Wall
Hadrian (who reigned from 117 to 138) was an emperor with a difference. He flew in the face of the established policy of constantly seeking to expand the limits of empire. Maintaining and strengthening the existing empire seemed a much more sensible course of action to him and, however unpopular it made him, he was determined to put his beliefs into practice. He spent much of his time visiting the various provinces and playing an active role in their reorganisation. Among the provinces for which he had big plans was Britain. He initiated a bold scheme for reclaiming the fens of East Anglia and turning them into useful agricultural land. London too went through a major facelift under his guidance. But he is best known for the great wall that bears his name and still dominates the landscape of northern England.
Winding across country for 73 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne to Bowness-on-Stow, it is the single most impressive legacy of the Roman occupation of Britain: the most dramatic realisation of Hadrian's goals for his empire. It was designed to draw a line between the civilised world and those outside its borders – as the quote at the start of this chapter makes clear. Inscriptions tell us that the building of the wall was undertaken by a number of different legions, and also give us the name of the governor who was in Britain at this time. Other sources tell us that he held this office between 122 and 125. From this, we know that the wall was started in one of these years.
In Britain, Hadrian's Wall is the obvious place to start in trying to understand the mosaic of cultures that made up the Roman empire. Even the Roman emperor Hadrian was not actually Italian but belonged to a prominent Spanish family. The three legions that built the wall – the II, VI and XX – were all composed of Roman citizens, but this did not mean that they had to be Italians. Very few were, and there were troops from Romanised barbarian tribes throughout Europe, including Germanic people and Gauls, in these legions. Later, the auxiliary units that were actually posted to man the wall were, if anything, even more ethnically mixed – their ranks being drawn from as far afield as Africa and Syria. The Roman military machine played a key role in moving diverse peoples from Europe and beyond all over the empire. Multi-cultural Britain existed long before the modern era and these movements of people, which were echoed throughout the empire, must have had a marked influence in the spread of ideas across the continent.
Living on the other side of the wall were a number of barbarian tribes who were probably less dangerous than the Romans thought they were. Most of the time they were too preoccupied with their own feuds and protecting their own territories to pose a serious threat to Roman interests. According to Lindsay Allason-Jones, a specialist in Roman Britain, the Romans found it hard to put themselves in the position of these barbarians who, unlike themselves, had no desire to forge themselves an empire. Perhaps because they did not understand the mind-set of the northern barbarians, they judged them falsely by their own Roman standards. There is no evidence that the wall was ever seriously damaged by barbarian attacks.
It has been suggested that the building of Hadrian's Wall was not so much a reaction to
any real threat but more of a training exercise to keep the otherwise unoccupied troops busy. A constant anxiety of the Romans was the potential problem that foreign soldiers within the army might rebel. Typically, such troops were posted a long way both from Rome itself and their own homelands to minimise such risks. Keeping them busy building roads and, in this case, a mighty wall kept them out of trouble.
The wall was also a powerful statement in itself: a monument to Roman might. Not only was it a considerable feat of engineering; it also demanded impressive organisational skills. To simply feed the legions while they were constructing it was a major achievement in itself. The wall stands as a testimony to the Romans largely because it was built of stone, whereas most other frontiers of the empire were fortified by earthworks and ditches that have not survived so completely as Hadrian's monumental labours.
Archaeologists have found a great deal of Roman weaponry in sites scattered along the length of the wall. Such artefacts show quite clearly that, contrary to what one might think, they were not always at the cutting edge of military technology themselves but relied heavily on foreign weapon systems. A special kind of curved sword invented by barbarians in Bulgaria was used at the wall. Parts of Syrian bows have been found, showing that this kind of weapon had also been appropriated by the Roman military. The bow is of a special type known as a composite bow, so named because it was made up of various materials – different kinds of wood and bone. Each part was specially selected for its particular properties: strength, flexibility and so on.
Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages Page 3
