This entry was posted on 8/31/2010 11:47 PM and is filed under Footnotes.
So the war that lasted longer than World War Two ends in a quiet withdrawal. The President of the United States reported tonight to the American people that the last of the 100,000 combat troops have finally left Iraq.(1) Over recent evenings TV news reports have shown US troops in armoured cars and covered trucks arriving in Kuwait, whooping and hollaring at the prospect of going home.(2) It is a fitting arrival point given that the first Gulf War was fought to drive Saddam Hussein’s army from this small nation state. Many troops will not actually be home for long, but be rapidly redeployed to Afghanistan where a second even more vicious war continues to rage. Moreover some 50,000 non-combat troops will also remain in Iraq for another year to support the security forces.(3)
I won’t argue the rights and wrongs of the war – that is for historians better acquainted with the facts to deliberate upon – but the image of the soldiers driving cheerfully down dusty roads reminded me that this is also the 1,600th anniversary of the departure of Roman troops from Britannia’s shores. The date of AD 410 is etched into the nation’s chronological DNA as a key turning point. I recall as a child seeing a painting in a history book recreating that scene of evacuation. The last of the Roman legionaries boards a swift bireme, while in the distance, oars slice into the English Channel whisking away the Latin occupier’s army. British natives look on from the shoreline with a mixture of anxiety and fear as they realize they are on their own to face the onslaught of Angles and Saxon invaders. Others shrug their shoulders and say ‘good riddance’, asking ‘whatever did the Romans do for us?’ Thus the sun sets on four centuries of classical civilization and the isle of Albion slips inevitably into the primitive Dark Ages.
The significance of the date – AD 410 – is this was the year the Emperor Honorius replied to the Romano-British aristocracy’s plea for help against invasions from invaders from across the sea. ‘Defend yourselves - you are on your own’ (I paraphrase) was the message in his rescript.(4) The emperor of the West had quite a few problems of his own and needed all the manpower at his disposal. With an economy in crisis, illegal immigrants flooding into the country, a government struggling to ensure the security of its citizens – the parallels with our own time are seductive – the emperor needed all available able bodied soldiers to hold together what remained of the Western Roman Empire.
It is an emotive image – and largely fictional. Yes, Honorius did write that rescript and many Roman troops did leave Britain. Less clear is if it was a mass evacuation. Moreover the army of later Britannia that responded to Honorius' call and bade farewell to its island home of four hundred years was not the same army of 45,000 troops that had landed in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius’ general Aulus Plautius.
After three hundred and sixty seven years of direct Roman rule Britannia was not even a single province. The affairs of Romano-British society had become increasingly complex and a single civil administration in Londonium (London) could no longer cope so the province was split into smaller regions, first two, then four, with devolved powers.(5) The dioceses of the Christian church aligned with the civilian administrative boundaries.
Britannia had grown wealthy, thriving on trade in its native commodities – iron, lead, gold, wheat, leather and woollen goods. The aristocracy had invested their profits in villas with all mod cons – under floor heating, en suite baths, rose gardens and the finest silverware. Native Britons had learned to speak the Latin language and to wear the toga and use the bathhouse, unaware, as Tacitus wrote cynically in his Agricola, these were the trappings of their slavery.(6)
In retrospect the Romans pulled off a major transformation over just a few generations. Urbanisation was the cornerstone of Roman civilization. Soon after the invasion, the old Iron Age British tribal aristocracies and their retainers were relocated to market towns laid out in grid-iron pattern by military surveyors and given constitutions enabling them to run their own affairs. Never far away was the army. The Roman army played a central role in spreading Roman culture and values. It built the roads and bridges, laid out the towns, and generally showed how seductive the Roman way of life was. The men of the legions even provided the province’s police force and in the remoter areas centurions acted as judges and juries in disputes. Male Britons could enter service with the Roman army, first as auxiliary soldiers, and on completion of their term, would receive citizenship, which their sons could then inherit. As Roman citizens they could enter the legions and enjoy all the benefits of the far-flung empire.
The transformation was remarkably successful. Recent evidence from Caerleon, which I visited a couple of weeks ago, suggests that it was made a regional administrative capital in the third or fourth century. Just south west of the legionary fortress, close by the amphitheare, the remains of a massively large building have been identified.(7) The structure is truly huge. Geo-physical surveys of the area below Priory Field that sweeps down to the meandering river Usk have revealed that the amphitheatre alone could fit comfortably in the building’s open courtyard. Two trenches will be dug this summer to determine the age and attributes. My guess is that this was where the bureaucrats of Britannia Prima worked, scratching on slithers of wood or scrawling on pages of papyrus as they managed budgets, double-checked tax revenues, enforced the petty rules of officialdom, and exchanged endless communications with their counterparts in Corinium (Cirencester). Caerleon, then known as Isca, was no backwater, despite being a couple of days' ride from Londonium.
The population of Roman Britain was very diverse. Recent work by Carol van Driel-Murray suggests that auxiliaries transferred from other parts of the Empire – Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, the Balkans among them – brought their families with them.(8) These military communities retained their ethnic identities for much longer than is commonly thought. The forts along Hadrian’s Wall probably had quite distinct 'feels', despite the outward similarity of their buildings. Many of those much-maligned barbarians who arrived in the fourth century from over the North Sea – Saxonici – were actually in the employ of the Roman army as mercenaries serving alongside Roman units. The Roman army of the fourth and fifth centuries was a multi-national, multi-ethnic defensive force, something like today's blue-helmeted UN soldiers.
Remarkably Roman civilization in Britain did not end suddenly when Honorius’ reply was delivered. There was no ‘Fall of Saigon’ moment. In many cases, the towns and their civil administrations muddled on for several decades. Some towns were abandoned. Intriguing evidence from Silchester, Hampshire, uncovered by the University of Reading, suggests that townsfolk decided as a community to quit Calleva, their fortified city with its roots stretching back to the old Iron Age nation of Atrebates.(9) The working hypothesis suggests that when the going got tough, this city of traders decided it was time to relocate further west or south. But other places like Camulodununm (Colchester), Londonium and Viroconium (Wroxeter) saw occupation into the later fifth and sixth centuries.
Since its arrival the Roman army had been a powerful dynamo in the British economy. The army needed supplies, some levied, others paid for. These salaried troops also spent their pocket money in the local economy. Sutlers always followed the army wherever went, almost regardless of the danger, but as forts were built, civilian communities rapidly gathered outside the walls providing goods and services for profit to off-duty soldiers. Many came from far afield, including Africa as remains from York show.(10) The withdrawal of military units was as devastating to the local economy as decisions to close army bases are today.(11)
Just as there are still some 50,000 non-combat troops remaining in Iraq to train local police and army, in Roman Britain armed militias continued to defend the long circuits of walls that surrounded many towns. For several decades after some semblance of Roman life continued. Crucially, when the main Roman administrations fractured and finally failed, the mints ceased to produce coins, which were needed to pay for the militias or hired mercenaries. Where cash was in short supply the economy reverted once again to one based on barter. Yet, Roger White argues in Britannia Prima: The Romans in the West of Britain that life continued much as before in parts of Wales and the West of England where a bastion of Roman culture endured for another century.
What was once popularly called the 'Dark Ages' historians increasingly call ‘Late Antiquity’.(12) In parts of the British Isles, the Germanic hosts were not so much invaders as immigrants. In other parts, such as Scotland and North Wales, Roman culture had never completely replaced the aboriginal Iron Age British. Old ways persisted and the passing of Rome was not so much missed as went almost unnoticed.
But Britain was forever changed. Even as ruins, many of the towns and cities founded to promote Roman civilization continued as seats of government for the new ruling warlords. Roads built by the back-breaking toil of legionaries still connected the scattered communities. Latin continued to be a lingua franca even where the Celtic tongue was spoken, not least as the language of the church. No longer pagan, its people were now largely Christian.
When allied troops were ordered to invade Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein and seize his weapons of mass destruction, the country was ruled by a minority led by a brutal tyrant. In war the allies were successful. Tragically, unlike the Romans who arrived uninvited in Britain but had a paradigm for post-war development, modern leaders had no plan for peace in Iraq. The land that had been the cradle of civilisation was thrust back to a time closer to the Stone Age. The ensuing years were tragic for the liberators, moreso for the liberated.
So to the present day. American and British troops leave Iraq a changed place. Its future as a sovereign secular democratic nation is uncertain; but as President Obama reminded us, the responsibility for Iraq’s security is now in their own hands. We must hope that they will be up to the challenges that face them, and that the sacrifices in blood (3,000 American and 200 British lives) and treasure ($3 trillion) made to re-establish a free Iraq, were not in vain.(13) The descendants of the great civilisation of Mesopotamia might find hope in the example of Britannia in Late Antiquity. The descendants of those Romano-Britons who witnessed the withdrawal of the legions 1,600 years ago lived through great changes, much of it violent and harsh, but in time they created a strong and vibrant nation that went on to change the world.
"Defence of the West: a Late Roman Command in Western Britain Re-instated" is the subject of the 2010 Annual Caerleon Lecture presented by Dr Roger White of Birmingham University. The Lecture will be held at the Junior School Hall, Endowed School,Caerleon, on Thursday 23 September 2010 at 7.00pm. Afterwards ticket-holders will be invited to drink the legion’s health with a glass of wine in the National Roman Legion Museum. Members of the Ermine Street Guard will parade the vexillum, the legionary flag. For information go to http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/whatson/?event_id=4542 .
Lindsay Powell is a historian and the author of the groundbreaking book, Eager for Glory: The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania. He divides his time between Austin, Texas and Wokingham, England. See his website at http://www.Lindsay-Powell.com
References
Roger White, Britannia Prima: The Romans in the West of Britain, The History Press, 2007
