The romans

The name "Britain" comes from the word "Pretani", the Greco-Roman word for the inhabitants of Britain. The Romans mispronounced the word and called the island "Britannia". The Romans brought the skills of reading and writing to Britain. The written word was important for spreading ideas and also for establishing power. While the Celtic peasantry remained illiterate and only Celtic-speaking, a number of town dwellers spoke Latin and Greek with ease, and the richer landowners in the country almost certainly used Latin. But Latin completely disappeared both in its spoken and written forms when the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the fifth century AD. Britain was probably more literate under the Romans than it was to be again until the fifteenth century. Julius Caesar first came to Britain in 55 BC, but it was not until almost a century later, in AD 43, that a Roman army actually occupied Britain. The Romans were determined to conquer the whole island. The Romans established a Romano-British culture across the southern half or Britain, from the River Humber to the River Severn. The total Roman army in Britain was about 40,000 men. The Romans could not conquer "Caledonia", as they called Scotland, although they spent over a century trying to do so. In AD 409 Rome pulled its last soldiers out of Britain and the Romano-British, the Romanised Celts, were left to fight alone against the Scots, the Irish and Saxon raiders from Germany. The most obvious characteristic its towns- the basis of Roman administration and civilisation. Many grew out of Celtic settlements, military camps or market centres. the coloniae, towns peopled by Roman settlers, and the municipia, large cities in which the whole population was given Roman citizenship. The third kind, the civitas, included the old Celtic tribal capitals, through which the Romans administered Celtic population in the countryside. almost every town was given walls. by AD 300 all towns had thick stone walls. The Romans left about twenty large towns of about 5,000 inhabitants, and almost one hundred smaller ones. Many of these towns were at first army camps, and the Latin word for camp, castra, has remained part of many town names to this day - Gloucester, Leicester, Doncaster, Winchester, Chester, Lancaster. were built with stone as well as wood, and had planned streets, markets and shops. They were connected by roads which were so well built that they survived when later roads broke up. Outside the towns- the growth of large farms, called "villas". Each villa had many workers. The villas were usually close to towns so that the crops could be sold easily. In some ways life in Roman Britain seems very civilised, but it was also hard for all except the richest. lifeexpectancy was low.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Celtic invasion	\|	The anglo-saxon conquest

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