Foundation (History of England Vol 1) by Peter Ackroyd Read Free Book Online Page A

military power into a landscape of farmsteads and villas, fields and settlements, drove-ways and enclosures. It was not unlike the vista of the Iron Age; yet it was more coherent.
    This was not necessarily a benign process. One tribal chief is reported by Tacitus to have complained that ‘our goods and money are consumed by taxation; our land is stripped of its harvest to filltheir granaries; our hands and limbs are crippled by building roads through forests and swamps under the lash of our oppressors’. The military zone, including Wales and the north of England, required a standing force of 125,000 men. It would be wrong to think of the legionnaires as Romans; in the first century of occupation 40,000 soldiers were recruited from Gaul, Spain and Germany. The English also joined the army of occupation. The troops mixed and mingled with the indigenous population so that, within two or three generations, it had indeed become a native army.
    One other pertinent development took place. A great wall, dividing Romanized England from the tribes of Scotland, was built on the orders of the emperor Hadrian. Twenty years later another wall was constructed, effectively separating south from north Scotland. The Romans had no intention of venturing into the Highlands, just as they dropped any plans for the invasion of Ireland. The Roman Empire had ceased to expand, and it became necessary to protect its borders so that it might enjoy the pleasures of peace. The territory just south of the wall was intensively cultivated. A great agricultural regime was established on the Cumbrian Plain. England was no longer a province easily shaken by tribal rebellion. It became prosperous once again, as rich and as productive as it had been during the Iron Age.
    The process of Romanization was gradual and local. The conditions of the Iron Age still prevailed in the countryside, where the people largely remained faithful to old customs and habitual practice. The evidence of change comes from the towns, and from the administrative elite of English leaders who worked in them. These were the men who had welcomed, or at least exploited, the ascendancy of the Roman officials in their country. With the advice of these officials they began to erect temples, public squares and public buildings; they learned the Latin language, and took to wearing togas as an indication of their new identities. They put down their weapons and attended more to the abacus. The children of the leading English families were educated in the ‘civilized arts’ and some were sent to Rome. Bathing establishments and assembly rooms were built and, according to Tacitus, the natives began to attend ‘smart dinner parties’. There were many more plates, dishes, drinking vessels and bowls than in the Iron Age. Amphorae orstorage vessels were imported; they contained wine and olive oil, olives and fish sauce. Tacitus went on to write, cuttingly enough, that ‘they called it civilization when in fact it was part of their servitude’.
    The old hierarchies were still in existence, but now they were wearing Roman brooches and rings. The landowner had tenants, known as coloni , who were tied to the land. At the top of the scale were the tribal leaders who owned extensive territory and property; at the bottom was the large community of slaves. The word for slave, servus , eventually became serf. So the old bonds were perpetuated through the centuries. The social patterns of the Bronze Age and Iron Age were strengthened and deepened by the rule of a strong central power.
    As part of the organization of the country, the Romans converted the old tribal regions into government districts or civitates . Each district had its own central town which, in many cases, was the old tribal capital or oppidum re-dressed in stone rather than in wood. A forum ‘complex’ of civic buildings represented the centre where all the affairs of the town were administered. The colonial power imposed its own forms of