Roman Domination

Withdrawal of the Romans

with the continent; London and other towns sprang into prominence as commercial centers; and under Cymbeline, the father of the noted chief Caractacus, the whole island arrived at something like a centralized government. Civilization was increasing rapidly, and the natives were becoming, as Shakespeare declares,

Men more order'd than when Julius Cæsar
Smiled at their lack of skill, but found their courage
Worthy his frowning at.

43. Roman Invasion of Britain.

50. Defeat of Caracta

cus.

In 43 A.D., the Emperor Claudius determined upon the conquest of the island toward which the Romans had cast longing eyes for nearly a century. Forty years of stubborn warfare followed, during which one tribe after another was crushed by the Roman legions, until the 61. Destruction of the final battle with the Caledonians left Britain so thoroughly conquered that it 78-84. Administration remained in comparative peace during 84. Complete Submisthe next three centuries.

Druids. Revolt of
Boadicea.

of Agricola.

sion of Britain.

The same methods that had made France and Spain so thoroughly Roman were at once applied to the conquered province. Military roads were constructed in every direction, making it easy to mass troops at short notice in any quarter of the island. Towns were fortified and garrisoned, and within the protected area there sprang up temples and baths, palaces and other splendid structures, filled with all the appliances and luxuries of Roman civilization. Harbors were dredged, marshes drained, and the soil tilled by scientific 376. Invasion of Visi methods. Thus passed three hundred years. At the opening of the fifth cen

goths.

395. Final Division of

the Empire,

Failure of Latin Civilization

Alaric.

The Barbarian Age

410. Sack of Rome by tury the Teutonic tribes of Western 451. Invasion of the Europe began to press upon Rome until Huns under Attila. the city was forced to battle for mere existence. The more distant provinces 476. Fall of the Em- of the Empire began to be abandoned;

455. Sack of Rome by

the Vandals.

pire of the West.

Beginning of the Mid- little by little the army was called from dle Ages. Britain. By 409, according to the AngloSaxon Chronicle, the greater part of the Roman population had left the island.

Aside from purely physical changes, the Roman occupation of Britain left few permanent marks. Notwithstanding the fact that during three centuries, a period longer than that since the settlement of America, Romans and Britons lived side by side, that every effort was made to force the natives into the towns and to teach them the Latin language and literature, at the close of the period the territory outside the fortified cities was almost as Celtic as before the conquest. The Latin language was spoken in the island much as English is spoken at the present time in India,-to some extent in the cities, but scarcely at all in the country. As the Angles and Saxons fell with peculiar ferocity upon Roman towns and in most cases utterly destroyed them with their inhabitants, they thus took the most effective means possible for stamping out the last vestiges of Latin civilization. The period of the Roman domination, therefore, need not detain us, since it affected very little the subsequent history of Britain.

REQUIRED READING.

Shakespeare's Cymbeline, III., 1. The Barbarian Age. During her whole history Rome, with her outlying provinces, was an area of civilization

The Saxon Pirates

Heroic Defense of the Britons

surrounded by an unbroken circle of barbarism.

It was

like an artificial province rescued by dykes from the sea. The waters are kept at bay only by ceaseless toil and vigilance; they never sleep, but are constantly gnawing at the embankments, ready at any moment to rush in at the weakest point and engulf the whole. While Rome was in her strength there was no danger, but when, weakened by excesses and political corruption, she lost her power, the whole barbarian world began to close in upon her. It was so in Britain. During the Roman supremacy the wild tribes of Scotland and the North of Ireland had been held back. Time and again had it taken the whole force of the army to drive them over the border. So persistent were these attacks that the Romans in self-defense built at two different points massive walls across the entire frontier. The eastern coast,

also, had been rendered safe only by constant vigilance. Bands of Saxon pirates, even as early as the middle of the third century, had poured from the lowlands of North Germany, and had kept the entire coast-line in terror. So serious did this danger become that the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appointed a "Count of the Saxon Shore," whose whole duty it was to fortify the coast and to ward off the attacks of these marauders.

No sooner had the Roman legions departed from the island than the barbarians began to close in upon it. First came the fierce tribes from Ireland and Scotland, and shortly afterwards came the Saxon pirates so long kept at bay. Well might they look with eager eyes upon Britain. It had been rich enough to tempt the Romans, and to keep them for five centuries, and it had grown constantly richer with every year since the con

A Study of

the Saxon Tribes

quest of Agricola. Nor was it plunder alone that tempted these wild seamen. The island was a natural fortress, such as their own land, open on the south, could never be. It was made by nature as the home of sea kings; whoever ruled it would be ruler of the North Sea and of the Eastern Atlantic.

The Britons fought desperately, but they lacked unity and leadership. It is a mistaken idea that they had lost their old spirit and that they were without arms. It took a century and a half of almost constant fighting for the English to gain even the eastern side of the island. Every foot of ground was heroically contested, sometimes several times over. No more stubborn resistance was ever made by an invaded people.

As these pirates from the North of Europe became the founders of the modern English nation, we will stop at this point to make a careful study of their early environment, their habits, their institutions, their temper, and their view of life.

CHAPTER III

THE PRIMITIVE ENGLISHMAN

The Land. If one examine a map of the Danish peninsula (see Century Dictionary Atlas), he will note that it lies like a long finger slightly curved and pointing at the coast of Sweden. It is comparatively narrow, averaging not over fifty miles in width; it is jagged everywhere with bays and studded with islands. It has three divisions: Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein, which correspond roughly with the territories once occupied by the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons. The little province between the towns of Flensburg and Schleswig still bears the name of Angeln, or England. The land of the Jutes was a fen country with vast swamps and dense forests; the southern half of the peninsula, although bordered by wide seamarshes, rose into low, heath-clad hills well fitted for flocks and herds; while the Saxon territory, which extended along the coast as far as the Rhine, was as low as Jutland and shagged everywhere with forests." On the whole, it was a gloomy, foggy land; a land of fens, wide moors-the haunt of water-fowl-dense woods full of wild boars, stags, and wolves; a land dominated by the sea, whose winter roar penetrated every part, whose salt spray drifted over all things; a land bathed for a few months in almost incessant rain and mist, and swept for the rest of the year by icy blasts.

66

The Germania of Tacitus. The earliest picture that we have of the inhabitants of these lowlands of Europe is