The Latin Language in Britain

Among the other evidences of Romanization must be included the rules of the Latin language. A great number of inscriptions have been found, all of them in Latin. The majority of these proceed no doubt from the military and official class and, being in the nature of public records, were therefore in the official language. They do not in themselves indicate a widespread use of Latin by the native population. Latin did not replace the Celtic language in Britain as it did in Gaul. Its use by native Britons was probably confined to members of the upper classes and the inhabitants of the cities and towns. Occasionally “graffiti” scratched on a tile or a piece of pottery, apparently by the workman who made it, suggest that in some localities Latin was familiar to the artisan classes. Outside the cities there were many fine country houses, some of which were probably occupied by well-to-do natives. The occupants of these also probably spoke Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the time of Agricola the Britons, who had hitherto shown only hostility to the language of their conquerors, now became eager to speak it. At the same time a Greek teacher from Asia Minor was teaching in Britain and by A.D. 96 the poet Martial was able to boast that his works were read even in this far-off island. On the whole, there were certainly many people in Roman Britain who habitually spoke Latin or upon occasion could use it. But its use was not sufficiently widespread to cause it to survive, as the Celtic language survived, the upheaval of the Germanic invasions. Its use probably began to decline after 410, the approximate date at which the last of the Roman troops were officially withdrawn from the island.

Britain’s Roman villas

Numerous monuments recall the 400 or so years (from A.D. 43 to the beginning of the fifth century) when Britain was part of the Roman Empire. Ancient city walls, including fragments to the ones that once defended London and Colchester, old roads like the Fosse Way and Watling Street. The frontier defenses of Hadrian’s Wall. The bastions at Portchester. An arched gateway at Lincoln. Bath’s great bath. The theatre at Verulamium, near St. Albans. But it is at the villas that one feels closest to the everyday life of Roman Britain.

Some of the villas were small farms. Others were great houses. They were well built, usually of one storey, and handsomely decorated. Often they had large courtyards and spacious outbuildings – barns for storage, stables, shelter for pigs and cattle, and living space for the laborers who worked on the estate.

The first villa was built here around A.D. 80 – 90. it was a house of flint and mortar with, beneath ground level, a deep room, used as grain store. The type of owner was a native farmer. Around A.D. 180, however, the villa became the home of a Roman of Mediterranean origin, a man of wealth who greatly extended the house, adding kitchens and baths and turning the deep room into a place of worship, decorated with a fresco painting of water goddesses, part of which survived.

The eventual fate of most of the Roman villas of Britain remains uncertain. But it is known that Lullingstone was destroyed by fire early in the fifth century. Afterwards the hill-wash crept in form the downs and covered the ruins, keeping them hidden for hundreds of years until the middle of the 18^th century, when excavations for a deer fence revealed part of a mosaic floor. No further investigation took place at the time, and it was not until 1949 that systematic excavation of the site began.

In a similarly accidental way clues to the presence of the villas at Rudston, Yorkshire, at Bignor, Sussex, and at Chedworth in Gloucestershire were discovered.

The Roman Twilight

The destruction of the Roman Empire was due to a unique combination of internal and external causes.

For long the Empire persisted rather because of the absence of any outside force powerful enough to attack it than from its own strength. In the fourth century A.D. a serious of westward migratory movements across the steppes of Asia and Europe forced the Germanic tribes nearest to the Roman frontiers into motion. At its heart we can trace the westward migration of the Huns, Mongol tribes from Central Asia. At first these Germanic tribes were allowed and even encouraged to enter the Empire, where they were absorbed and partially Romanized. Gradually the hold of the central government on outlying provinces was relinquished and one by one they were overrun by barbarian tribes who set up independent kingdoms of varying character – some largely Roman in culture and language, others almost wholly barbarian.

Britain, as the most remote and among the most exposed of the provinces, was among the earliest to fall away and lost most completely its Roman character.

In 407 two events ended the long period of Roman occupation. One was the departure of Constantine, with the bulk of the troops stationed in Britain, in an attempt to secure the Imperial purple. The other was the crossing of the Rhine into Gaul of a host of Germanic tribesmen who cut Britain off from the Roman world and prevented the return or replacement of the departed legions. The people of South and East Britain were left to improvise their own government and defense against their never conquered kinsmen of the more parts of the islands.