The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (11 page)

separate provinces (Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior).

Given their limited reach, Roman administrators needed local

elites if they were to govern effectively. Following the template

developed under the republic, they sought to tribalize preconquest

polities and communities by transforming them into
civitates
. The

new administrative units had fi xed boundaries, urban capitals, and

ruling magistrates that fi tted neatly into the larger provincial bureaucracy. Although it is now lost, the Egyptian geographer Ptolemy’s

tribal map of Britain apparently documented the spatial dimensions

of these new imperial identities. Based on the fragmentary data that

survive, the preconquest Atrebatian and Catuvellaunian confederacies appear to have become the
civitates
Atrebatum, Belgarium, and

Regni (or Regini) under Roman rule. These new units could have

refl ected existing clan or lineage divisions, but in the less centralized

regions of southwest England and Wales they seem to have been pure

invention.

As noted earlier, the establishment of new towns, which many

scholars refer to as tribal capitals, was central to the
civitates
process.

Most of the preconquest fortifi ed settlements fell into disuse under

the Romans, and only the Atrebatian and Catuvellaunian
oppida
at

Calleva and Verulamium appear to have survived. The new urban

sites were close to the imperial road network, and there is considerable debate over whether
civitas
leaders voluntarily built them from

scratch or did so under Roman pressure. Regardless, most followed a

similar metropolitan Roman template that included streets on a grid

pattern, public squares, town halls, court buildings, theaters, public

baths, and piped water.

Contemporary Roman apologists emphasize how these institutions “encouraged the development of a more civilised way of life,”

but they also gave the imperial regime greater control over local

politics, commerce, and social life.37 The provincial administration

turned preconquest chiefs and kings who abandoned their arms and

armor into
decurions
(councilmen) and tutored them in the art of

municipal government. Roman rule thus gave British tribal identities new spatial, geographical, and urban form, and the
civitates

most likely became standardized administrative units by the second

century a.d.

Roman

Britain 53

Although the conquerors and romanized Britons built comfortable villas in the countryside, the Roman heart of the province lay in

its towns and cities, where the line between citizen and subject was

the most blurred. Urban populations originally consisted primarily

of imperial administrators, military men, merchants, and settlers, but

a prosperous Romano-British municipal gentry emerged by the end

of the fi rst century a.d. Evidence is scanty, but it seems likely that

this was due at least in part to Roman relations with local women.

Londinium, neither a
civitas
town nor a veterans’ colony, was the

seat of government and commerce. The
colonia
of Camulodunum,

Lindum (Lincoln), Glevum (Gloucester), and Eburacum (York) and

select privileged British settlements such as Verulamium held charters as
municipia
, which meant that their respectable classes enjoyed

Roman citizenship. The
civitas
towns generally came next in terms

of infl uence, followed by small towns that grew up alongside commercially important roads.

These urban sites anchored the extractive machinery of imperial rule and drew in agricultural surpluses from their hinterlands.

Legionary fortresses and smaller garrisons also created markets for

local crafts and produce, and military wages helped introduce a cashbased economy to Britain. While this was not by design, the monetization of the rural economy made it easier to tap the wealth of

the countryside through taxation. The increasingly common usage of

coins, which were primarily for hoarding wealth in Iron Age Briton,

must have had a profound impact on rural economies. While a regularized currency stimulated craft production and encouraged agricultural specialization by creating new markets for surpluses, the cash

economy also enabled outsiders to acquire land at the expense of local

communities by giving rise to a commercial land market.

The cultural impact of romanization on the subject British majority was decidedly mixed. To be sure, Latin was the language of government, law, commerce, military service, and elite urban society. The

comfortable, often luxurious villas clustered in southeastern England

further indicate that a measure of the aristocratic imperial culture

extended into the countryside. Nevertheless, the discovery of less

romanized prosperous farmsteads with rectangular stone buildings

and tiled roofs suggests the continued infl uence of a preconquest

nonimperial rural elite.

54 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Indeed, if elements of preconquest culture survived under the

Roman occupation, they did so in the countryside. Indigenous religious cults remained popular with rural peoples, who sometimes

combined them with imported Roman forms. The giant chalk fi gure

of a white horse on the Berkshire downs, already roughly a thousand

years old at the time of the occupation, was maintained regularly

during the imperial era. Rural archaeological sites also suggest that

country folk drank domestically produced beer instead of imported

wine, ate sheep and goats instead of cattle and seafood, and used relatively few foreign implements. Latin graffi ti is relatively common in

urban and villa sites, but there are few examples of it in the villages.

Common Britons may or may not have spoken a form of vulgar Latin,

but few were literate. Taken together, the evidence suggests that rural

localities were insulated from the full force of Roman imperial rule.

However, most Britons eventually had to come to terms with the

imperial regime. Rome never withdrew its military garrison, but the

absence of walls and fortifi cations around most urban centers before

the late second century a.d. suggests that Roman rule became relatively secure once the spectacular violence of the Icenian revolt had

passed. Prosperity stemming from increased long-distance imperial

trade, improved agricultural technology, and urbanization most likely

enriched the respectable classes of the later generations of Britons,

who did not have to endure the violence and trauma of the initial

imperial conquest. As a result, southern England was largely stable

until the third century a.d.

There is considerable debate as to whether the peoples of northern

Britain and Scotland constituted a threat to Roman Britain. Caches

of Roman coins found in lowland Scotland suggest that the Romans

bought their cooperation with subsidies and cross-border trade. On

the other hand, Emperor Hadrian invested enormous resources in a

monumental eighty-mile-long stone wall along the frontier from the

North Sea to the Irish Sea. Begun in a.d. 122, the wall was approximately fi fteen feet high and was dotted with small forts garrisoned by

auxiliary units. Twenty years later, Emperor Antonius Pius pushed

the imperial frontier further north with a less impressive timber and

earthen barricade that ran from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of

Clyde at the narrowest point in the Scottish lowlands. This fortifi cation apparently had marginal value, for the Romans abandoned it and

Roman

Britain 55

reestablished the imperial frontier at Hadrian’s Wall sometime after

a.d. 160.

At fi rst glance, these extensive fortifi cations indicate the presence

of a formidable military presence in Scotland, a threat that may have

spread behind the wall to include the peoples of northern England.

Some scholars think that Scottish pressure and a rebellion by the

Brigante federation forced the Romans to abandon the Antonine

Wall, but alternatively the construction and maintenance of both

walls could have been make-work exercises to keep the British garrison busy and out of metropolitan Roman politics.

It is impossible to know for certain because the great classical historians of Rome made very little mention of Roman Britain once the

conquest phase was over. This historical silence creates an impression that the island was an outpost of stability and prosperity during

the third century a.d., when the wider empire suffered from foreign

attack and internal instability. Material fragments of Roman culture

that appear in archaeological excavations suggest that the urban

classes fl ourished under the empire, but this perspective ignores

the rural majority that produced most of wealth consumed by the

Romano-British elite. The dearth of information on the common

experience invites imperial nostalgists to view the Roman Empire as

benign and civilizing.

To be sure, Britain’s outsized garrison kept the settled areas of the

province relatively secure in an era when the rest of the empire was

under threat. Resurgent Persian power in the east from the Sassanid

Empire and pressure by Germanic peoples on the Rhine and Danube frontiers placed heavy demands on the Roman military, while

ambitious governors and generals again looked inward with an eye to

seizing the imperial throne. Echoing the turmoil of the late republic,

the empire had twenty-one rulers between a.d. 235 and 284, most

of whom came to power with military backing. Mutinies, coup plots,

and poor leadership sapped the strength of the army, and the empire

experienced its fi rst major barbarian invasions in the middle of the

fourth century a.d.

This was also at a time when civil wars and the end of plunder from

imperial conquests created a severe economic crisis in the Roman

Empire. Scholars tend to attribute these problems to dynastic infi ghting or structural weaknesses, but it may have been that accelerated

56 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

assimilation and mass enfranchisement contributed to the revenue

shortfall by making the empire’s lower orders less exploitable. Faced

with rising military costs and reduced tribute and tax fl ows, the

emperors resorted to currency debasement. Coins that were 97 percent silver in the fi rst century a.d. were only 40 percent silver in a.d.

250 and just 4 percent in a.d. 270.38 The resulting hyperinfl ation disrupted the cash economy and forced imperial tax collectors to demand

payment in goods.

Emperor Diocletian tried to arrest this infl ationary spiral in a.d.

301 with an unenforceable decree fi xing wages and basic commodity prices. Faced with signifi cant shortfalls in the western half of the

empire, tax collectors concentrated on the cities and towns, where

magistrates faced fi nes and confi scations if they failed to produce suffi cient revenues. Not surprisingly, the wealthy and privileged fl ed to

the countryside, where the reach of imperial authority was inherently shorter. Many invested in feudalistic large estates worked by

tenant farmers who became bound to the land by law and heredity.

Lacking the means to tap into this rural wealth, the imperial government came to rely on the wealthier eastern provinces for two-thirds

of its revenue.

These disparities ultimately led Diocletian to split the empire in

a.d. 286. Acknowledging the economic and cultural divide between

the Greek-and Latin-speaking provinces, he shifted his base of power

to the east and appointed an ally, Maximian, coemperor in the west.

As “Augusti,” Diocletian and Maximian both adopted junior partners as heirs and deputy emperors or “Caesars,” thereby creating a

theoretical tetrarchy (rule by four). Further reforms reorganized the

entire empire into prefectures and dioceses to improve revenue collection and security. Roman Britain, which consisted of four separate

provinces in the fourth century, was part of the prefecture of Gaul.

These pragmatic steps acknowledged the reality that the empire

had grown too large and complex for a single central government.

More radically, they also suggest that the early principate’s conventional institutions of imperial extraction were less viable in an

era when most of the subject population were now technically citizens. They were of course still servile, but enfranchisement probably

made them less exploitable. Either way, the tetrarchy was supposed

to bring stability by ensuring an orderly political succession, but it

Roman

Britain 57

soon broke down when the oversized British military garrison raised

Constantine, the son of one of the original junior emperors, to the

throne in a.d. 306. Attributing his victory to divine Christian intervention, Constantine made Christianity the imperial state religion.

He also continued the eastern power shift by founding Constantinople as an alternative and rival imperial capital to Rome in a.d. 324.

These administrative realignments failed to arrest the Roman

decline. Dynastic infi ghting continued, and the military, which Constantine reorganized into mobile fi eld armies, was hard pressed to

defend the imperial frontiers. Shrinking revenues, urban fl ight, and

the transformation of citizens into servile tenants forced commanders