The Provinces of the Roman Empire 50

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 50

Hadrian’s Wall from Tyne to Solway (p. 186) has assumed a very

different historical appearance since Mommsen wrote his paragraphs on

it in 1885. Then, the theory of Hodgson and Bruce held the field--that

the stone wall which is still visible, and the double rampart and

ditch to the south of it (called by English antiquaries the “Vallum”),

were both Hadrian’s work, the wall for defence against Caledonia and

the “Vallum” for defence against stray foes from the south. This view

was accepted by Mommsen. But later excavation and observation have

shown that the “Vallum” cannot be regarded as a military work--though

it is certainly Roman and connected with the wall. Excavations have

also shown that the wall itself falls into two periods. At Birdoswald

(Amboglanna) there was first a wall of turf (_murus caespiticius_);

later, almost but not quite on the same line, came the wall of stone

and the fort of Amboglanna in its present form. Similarly at Chesters

(Cilurnum) two building periods are discernible; the character of the

first is obscure, but the stone wall and the fort of Cilurnum belong

unquestionably to the second (_Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 187, 415,

xv. 180, 347, xvi. 84; _Arch. Aeliana_, xxiii. 9). As our ancient

authorities persistently mention two wall-builders, Hadrian and

Severus, and as the earlier wall of turf can be assigned to no one but

Hadrian, it would seem that we may assume a first fortification of the

Tyne and Solway line in turf about A.D. 120, and a rebuilding in stone,

on almost exactly the same _tracé_, about A.D. 208 by Severus. The

“Vallum” seems to have been built in relation to one or the other--more

probably the earlier--of these stone walls, and may represent a civil

frontier contemporaneous with it (Mommsen, _Gesammelte Schriften_, v.

461; Pelham, _Trans. Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 175). The attempt

of Dr. E. Krueger (_Bonner Jahrbücher_, cx. 1-38) to show that the

“Vallum” is an earlier independent work, built by Hadrian, while the

turf and stone walls are post-Hadrianic, seems to me both unproven and

contradicted by recent excavations.

 

Mommsen’s account of the Wall of Pius between Forth and Clyde and of

the Roman occupation of Scotland also needs modification. Statistics

of coins found in Scotland (printed in _Antonine Wall Report_, 1899,

pp. 158 foll., confirmed by all later finds) show that the Romans

had retired south of Cheviot by about A.D. 180, and never reoccupied

the positions thus lost. The mass of inscriptions, to which Mommsen

alludes, also contains nothing later than the reign of Marcus. It

becomes, therefore, impossible to connect the Wall of Pius with the

literary evidence relating to wall-building by Severus. That evidence

must belong to the Tyne and Solway. The length which it assigns to the

wall, cxxxii. miles, suits the southern line best. The numeral in any

case needs emendation, but it is as easy to read lxxxii. as xxxii.,

and 82 Roman miles fit closer to the length of the southern line

(73-1/2 English miles) than do 32 Roman miles to the 36-1/2 English

miles of the northern wall. Our knowledge of the northern wall itself

and of forts either north of it, like Ardoch, or south, like Lyne and

Newstead, has been much widened by excavation, but the gain has been

rather to the archaeologist than to the pure historian.

 

In the later history of north Britain the chief recent addition has

been evidence of a serious rising about A.D. 158, which perhaps covered

all the land of the Brigantes from Derbyshire to Dumfriesshire.

Inscriptions found at Birrens, at Netherby between Birrens and

Carlisle, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and at Brough in north Derbyshire,

mention a governor Iulius Verus as then specially active, and special

reinforcements as then arriving from Germany (_Proc. Soc. Antiq.

Scot._ xxxviii. 454). It is natural to connect these with the words

of Pausanias (cited on p. 188, note 2), and the connection had the

approval of Mommsen. For the division of the province into two by

Severus see Domaszewski, _Rangordnung_, p. 173. The boundary between

the two provinces is unknown; perhaps a line from the Humber to the

Mersey is not altogether improbable. Nor is there evidence to show how

long the division lasted.

 

Of the civil life and Romanisation of Britain (pp. 191-4) I have

written somewhat fully in a paper on _The Romanisation of Roman

Britain_. Here I may indicate some points. Mommsen’s view that the

cantonal system adopted in Gaul was dropped in Britain is opposed by

an inscription found at Caerwent in 1903, which records the erection

of a monument by the canton of the Silures after a decree of the local

senate--_ex decreto ordinis respublica civitatis Silurum_ (_Athenaeum_,

Sept. 26, 1903; _Archaeologia_, lix. 290); other inscriptions, if less

decisive, suggest that the case of the Silures was not unique in the

province. Indeed, a list of the cantonal capitals, and therefore

of the cantons, seems to survive mutilated in the _Ravennas_ (ed.

Parthey and Pinder, pp. 425 foll.). There we meet, besides three

municipalities carefully so labelled, nine or ten towns with tribal

affixes--Isca Dumnoniorum, Exeter; Venta Belgarum, Winchester;

Venta Silurum, Caerwent; Corinium Dobunorum, Cirencester; Calleva

Atrebatum, Silchester; Durovernum Cantiacorum, Canterbury; Viroconium

Cornoviorum, Wroxeter; Ratae Coritanorum, Leicester; Venta Icenorum,

Caistor-by-Norwich--and perhaps Noviomagus Regentium, Chichester.

Add to these Isurium Brigantum, known otherwise by this title, and

Dorchester in Dorset, and there emerges a fairly complete list of

just those towns which are declared by their remains to have been the

chief “country towns” of Roman Britain. The reasons why so little is

heard of the cantons are, I think, plain. They were smaller, poorer,

and less important than those of Gaul--as, indeed, a comparison of

the town-remains shows; there was, further, no British literature to

mention them; and, lastly, they quickly fell before the barbarians in

the fifth century.

 

The town-life of Roman Britain (p. 192) was somewhat more extensive

than Mommsen allows. There were four _coloniae_--Colchester or

_Camulodunum_, founded about A.D. 48 (Tac. _Ann._ xii. 32); Lincoln,

_Lindum_, established after the transference of the Ninth Legion to

York, probably in the late first century; Gloucester or _Glevum_,

founded A.D. 96-98 (_C. I. L._ vi. 3346); York or _Eburacum_, planted

at an unknown date, on the opposite bank of the Ouse to the legionary

fortress; and one _municipium_, Verulamium, outside St. Albans,

founded before A.D. 60. There were also about a dozen “country towns,”

already enumerated in the last paragraph. These were for the most

part not large villages, but actual towns, furnished with temples,

_fora_, houses, and street plans of Roman fashion, and inhabited, so

far as our scanty evidence goes, by populations of which both upper

and lower classes spoke and wrote Latin. At Bath, _Aquae Sulis_, were

well-built baths, and a stately temple of the goddess of the waters.

At London, _Londinium_ (later _Augusta_), was a prosperous and wealthy

trading-centre. But London was the only town of real size or splendour.

The rest, like the cantons mentioned above, were small and unimportant

as compared with similar towns elsewhere, and though it is not strictly

true that Gloucester and Verulam have produced no inscriptions (p. 193;

_Eph. Epigr._ iv. p. 195), the epigraphic yield has been scanty in

every town except perhaps York.

 

The roads of the province (p. 192) are numerous, though fewer than our

English antiquaries sometimes suppose. Those in the south, as Mommsen

rightly saw, radiate from London: see p. 192 above. The northern

military district is traversed by three main routes. One runs up the

west coast to the Solway and Carlisle. A second runs through the east

of the island, from York to Corbridge and to various points on the

eastern part of Hadrian’s Wall. The third, diverging from the second,

crossed the Yorkshire and Westmorland hills and thus reached Carlisle.

From Corbridge and Carlisle roads ran on northwards, and the eastern,

if not the western, of these gave access to the Wall of Pius. The Roman

roads of Wales are still imperfectly known, but there was a road from

Chester to Carnarvon, another from Caerleon past Neath to Carmarthen,

and a third joined the western parts of these two, while others

connected the forts in the interior.

 

More doubt surrounds the Romanisation of the province. Vinogradoff

(_Growth of the Manor_, p. 83) thinks that the Roman civilisation

spread like a river with many channels which traverse a wide area,

but only affect the immediate neighbourhood of their banks. I agree

rather with Mommsen’s conclusion (pp. 193, 194)--though the real

difference between the two writers is not so very great. The towns,

both municipalities and “country towns,” seem to have been thoroughly

Romanised. The numerous farms and country-houses (often styled

“villas”) are also in nearly every respect Roman, and the very scanty

evidence which we possess as to the language used in them favours

the idea that it was Latin. Even the villages, such as Pitt-Rivers

excavated (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, etc., 1887-98), show

little survival of native culture. It is to be noted, too, that Celtic

inscriptions of Roman date, such as occur occasionally in Gaul (Rhys,

_Proc. British Acad._ ii. 275 foll.), are wholly wanting in Britain.

Probably, therefore, Roman civilisation came to predominate throughout

the lowlands, though not in its more elaborate and splendid forms.

There were, however, thinly populated areas where we can trace hardly

any population of any sort, Romanised or other, as, for example, the

Weald of Kent and Sussex, and a large part of the Midlands (_Vict.

Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 228), while the Cornish, Welsh, and northern

hills seem never to have admitted very much Romanisation outside the

forts which garrisoned parts of them. The analogies of other western

provinces, of Gaul (above, vol. i. p. 101) and Africa (ii. 328),

suggest that Celtic speech may have lingered on in such districts for

centuries, though not as an element hostile to the Roman; it is also

quite probable that Celtic private law and custom survived beside the

Roman (L. Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 8). But we have no

distinct evidence of either fact.

 

The spellings Ordovici (p. 182 and map) and Cartimandus (pp. 182, 183)

are Mommsen’s own choice.

 

 

[Illustration: SYRIEN UND MESOPOTAMIEN.]

 

[Illustration: AEGYPTEN.

 

_Moderne Namen in_ rückliegender Schrift

 

Mommsen Röm. Gesch. V. X.

 

H.K. 1884.]

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

[1] The conception that the Roman and the Parthian empires were

two great states standing side by side, and indeed the only ones

in existence, dominated the whole Roman East, particularly the

frontier-provinces. It meets us palpably in the Apocalypse of John, in

which there is a juxtaposition as well of the rider on the white horse

with the bow and of the rider on the red horse with the sword (vi. 2,

3) as of the Megistanes and the Chiliarchs (vi. 15, comp. xviii. 23,

xix. 18). The closing catastrophe, too, is conceived as a subduing of

the Romans by the Parthians bringing back the emperor Nero (ix. 14,

xvi. 12) and Armageddon, whatever may be meant by it, as the rendezvous

of the Orientals for the collective attack on the West. Certainly the

author, writing in the Roman empire, hints these far from patriotic hopes more than he expresses them.