About 1200 B.C.. a branch of the Celts crossed over from Gaul and settled in England. They found there a mingled population of dark-haired people, possibly Iberian, and light-haired Scandinavians. They conquered these natives, married them, and spread through England and Wales. About 100 B.C.. (for so the egocentric foreshortening of history telescopes eventful centuries, and erases vital generations from a crowded memory) another branch of Celts came from the Continent and dispossessed their kinsmen of southern and eastern Britain. When Caesar came he found the island peopled by several independent tribes, each with its expansive king. He gave to all the population the name Britami, from a Gallic tribe, so called, just south of the Channel, in the belief that the same tribe inhabited both shores.
Celtic Britain was in customs, language, and religion essentially like Celtic Gaul, but its civilization was less advanced. It passed from bronze to iron some six centuries before Christ, three centuries after Gaul. Pytheas, the Massiliot explorer, sailing the Atlantic to England about 350 B.C., found the Cantii of Kent already prosperous with agriculture and trade. The soil was fertile from abundant rain and contained rich ores of copper, iron, tin, and lead. By Caesar’s time domestic industry was able to supply an active commerce among the tribes and with the Continent, and coins were minted in bronze and gold.45 His invasions were reconnaissance raids; he brought back the double assurance that the tribes were incapable of united resistance and that the crops were adequate to feed an invading army coming at the proper time. A century later (A.D. 43) Claudius crossed the Channel with 40,000 men whose discipline, armament, and skill proved too much for the natives; Britain in her turn became a Roman province. In 61 a British tribal queen, Boudicca or Boadicea, led a furious revolt, alleging that Roman officers had ravished both her daughters, plundered her realm, and sold many of its freemen into slavery. While the Roman governor Paulinus was busy conquering the Isle of Man, Boudicca’s army overcame the single legion that opposed it and marched upon Londinium—already, says Tacitus, “the chief residence of merchants, and a great mart of trade.”46 Every Roman found there or in Verulamium (St. Albans) was killed; 70,000 Romans and their allies were slain before Paulinus and his legions caught up with the rebel force. Boudicca, standing with her daughters in a chariot, fought heroically in defeat. She drank poison, and 80,000 Britons were put to the sword.
Tacitus tells how his father-in-law Agricola, as governor of Britain (A.D. 78-84), brought civilization to a “rude, scattered, and warlike people” by establishing schools, spreading the use of Latin, and encouraging cities and rich men to build temples, basilicas, and public baths. “By degrees,” says the caustic historian, “the charms of vice gained admission to British hearts; baths, porticoes, and elegant banquets grew into vogue; and the new manners, which in reality only served to sweeten slavery, were by the unsuspecting Britons called the arts of polished humanity.”47 In swift campaigns Agricola carried these arts, and Roman rule, to the Clyde and the Forth, defeated an army of 30,000 Scots, and wished to go farther when Domitian recalled him. Hadrian built a wall (122-27) seventy miles across the island from Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tyne as a defense against not-unsuspecting Scots; and twenty years later Lollius raised farther north the thirty-three-mile Wall of Antoninus between the firths of Clyde and Forth. For over two centuries these fortifications kept Britain safe for Rome.
As Rome’s rule achieved stability it became more lenient. The cities were managed by native senates, assemblies, and magistrates, and the countryside was left, as in Gaul, to tribal chieftains amenable to Roman surveillance. It was not so urban a civilization as Italy’s, nor so rich as Gaul’s; but it was under Roman stimulus and protection that most British cities now took form. Four of them were Roman “colonies,” whose freemen enjoyed Roman citizenship: Camulodunum (Colchester), the first Roman capital of Britain, and the seat of the provincial council; Lindum, whose modern name Lincoln declares its ancient privilege; Eboracum (York), an important military post; and Glevum, whose name Gloucester merges Glevum with Chester, the Anglo-Saxon word for town.II Chester, Winchester, Dorchester, Chichester, Leicester, Silchester, and Manchester appear to have had their beginnings in the first two centuries of Roman rule. These were small towns, each with some 6000 souls; but they had paved and drained streets, forums, basilicas, temples, and houses with stone foundations and tiled roofs. Viroconium (Wroxeter) had a basilica accommodating 6000 persons, and public baths where hundreds could bathe at once. The hot springs of Aquae Salis (“Salt Waters”), now Bath, made it a fashionable resort in ancient days, as its surviving thermae show. Londinium rose to economic and military importance because of its position on the Thames and its radiating roads. It grew to a population of 60,000 and soon replaced Camulodunum as Britain’s capital.49
Most of the homes in Roman London were of brick and stucco, in smaller towns, of wood. Climate determined their architecture: a gable roof to shed rain and snow, and many windows to let in whatever sun might shine; for even “on clear days,” said Strabo, “the sun is to be seen only for three or four hours.”50 But interiors followed the Roman style—mosaic floors, large bathrooms, muraled walls, and (far more than in Italian homes) central heating by hot-air conduits in walls and floors. Coal—mined from surface veins—was used not only for warming houses but for industrial processes like smelting lead. Apparently the mines of ancient Britain were owned by the state, but were leased to private entrepreneurs.51 There was a factory (fabrica) at Bath for the manufacture of iron weapons,52 and probably the making of pottery, bricks, and tiles had reached the factory stage; but most industries were carried on in homes, small shops, and villas. Five thousand miles of Roman roads, and innumerable waterways, were the arteries of a brisk internal trade. A modest foreign commerce, inverting the custom of Britain today, exported raw materials for manufactured goods.
How deeply did Roman civilization, in its four centuries of domination, penetrate the life and soul of Britain? Latin became the language of politics, law, literature, and the educated minority, but in the countryside and among many workers in the towns the Celtic tongue survived; even now, in Wales and the Isle of Man, it holds its own. Roman schools in Britain spread literacy and determined the Roman form of the English alphabet; and a stream of Latin words poured into English speech. Temples were built to Roman gods, but the common man cherished his Celtic deities and feasts. Even in the cities Rome sank no lasting roots. The people submitted apathetically to a rule that brought them a fructifying peace and such prosperity as the island would not experience again until the Industrial Revolution.