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The Romans came to this country in AD 43 and Britain stayed under their control until about AD 410. The emperor Claudius ordered the occupation of the island. The Romans brought with them a civilizations that was very different to the way of life lived by the Britons. Romans thought of themselves as civilised and thought of the native Britons as Barbarians. More
The Romans had originally founded the city of Rome from a group of villages, in about 750 BC. Since then, they had conquered a huge empire, stretching right across Europe and into western Asia and northern Africa.
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The Romans liked to live in large towns. This was the most striking thing about the Roman way of life. Up to this time, all the peoples of Britain had lived in smaller rural settlements. More
Roman towns were small by modern standards but, for the average Briton, they must have seemed enormous. Indeed, one or two, especially Londinium (London), grew to be large by any standards of the time.
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The towns were strongly built and offered a whole new way of life. For the Britons that lived in the towns, life was very different from anything they had known before. The towns were well designed with the forum (main square) at the centre. In the third and fourth centuries Britain came under attack from raiding 'Saxons'. At this time strong walls were built around the towns to ensure the business of the town could be carried out safely. More
These walls were pierced by gates – stout stone buildings with great doorways in them, through which people, animals and carts could pass. The towns were laid out according to a grid pattern, with the streets crossing one another at right angles. At the centre was the forum, a wide open space around which several large buildings stood. Here, all the public business of the town was carried on.
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However most of the population continued to live much as they had before the arrival of the Romans. During the three and a half centuries of Roman occupation the majority of the people continued to live in the countryside. However, even here they could not escape Roman influence. Roman fashions changed the way they farmed, travelled and even did business. Many important British families eventually built Roman style houses. More
The Romans never ruled most of the area that is now Scotland, which, at this time, was home to the Picts and Brythonic tribes, warlike people that the Roman legions could not subdue. The largest uprising in England came in AD60/61 after Prasutagus, king of the Iceni people, died. His kingdom was left jointly to Rome and to the care of his widow, Boudicca. However, the Romans confiscated the lands and plundered the kingdom. Boudicca was beaten and her daughters raped. Boudicca raised an army, burning Colchester, St Albans and Londinium. She was finally defeated by the Romans. From this time, there was relative stability and the Britons gave in to Roman rule.
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Religion was very important. Each town originally had a number of temples because, for most of the occupation, the Romans worshipped many gods, including those they discovered when they arrived in Briton. They also eventually introduced Christianity to the Britons. More
The spiritual centre of the community were the temples of the many Roman gods and goddesses. Each temple would have had its own set of priests – usually important people in the community who held other jobs as well. In pride of place, also, was often a temple to the Roman emperor, who was widely regarded as a living god. Those who did not worship here were frowned upon. After 380, Christianity was recognised as the Empire's official religion.
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Local government was provided by a council, and magistrates administered the law. Roman towns and their surrounding countryside were governed by a council of the richest men of the town. The day-to-day running was by elected magistrates, who also presided at public trials, where the crowd would vote on whether the person being tried was guilty or not. More
The councils were made up of the richest and most important men in the community. The council was responsible for maintaining law and order, for making sure the taxes were paid on time, and for the upkeep of the public buildings in the town. On a day-to-day basis, the town was run by several magistrates, who were elected by the citizens of the town for a period of a year. At a trial the ability to persuade crowds – or oratory - was a very important skill. Upper class Romans were trained in public speaking as well as law. Roman Law was famed for its fairness and is still the basis of much law around the world today.
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One of the main social centres in the town was the public baths. At the baths, people gathered to chat and bathe. Even the rich, who would have had their own private bath-houses, used the baths to keep in contact with their friends. The water was often carried in pipes and aqueducts from miles away. More
The public baths would have been in a large building near the central forum. Here, both men and women (sometimes on separate days) would bathe, in hot and cold pools. They could also sweat in hot rooms, have massages, do physical exercises, and chat. This was one of the main social centres of the town, and all citizens, high and low, mixed here on an equal basis. The water for these public baths and many fountains that dotted all Roman towns (from which the poorer people would gather their water), was often carried there from miles away. Stone pipes channelled water from fresh springs in the hills, carrying it for miles underground and over valleys by means of aqueducts. These were fine examples of Roman engineering, with their arches at different levels. Such structures would not be seen again in this country until Victorian times.
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Roman citizens enjoyed plays and watching spectacles based on combat. Theatres for plays and amphitheatres for combative spectacles, provided the main entertainment for rich and poor alike. More
Some towns would have an imposing theatre, where plays – often by Greek authors - were performed. Outside the walls of some towns would be an amphitheatre, where gladiators fought wild animals or each other, sometimes to the death.
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Well-built roads helped support a wide-ranging trade network. These paved roads ran for hundreds of miles in more or less straight lines. The roads were not there primarily for the benefit of private travellers, or for traders, but for the army. More
This fact reminds us that Britain was a frontier province, with the need to be able to quickly transport large numbers of troops to any area where their might be trouble. Many modern roads, such as the A1, largely follow the routes of earlier Roman Roads.
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In British towns, goods would be on sale from all over the Empire. The central forum would be surrounded by shops, cafes and inns with goods from as far away as Asia Minor and Africa. More
Wines, cloths, pottery, metal cutlery, mirrors and a host of other items would be landed in our ports and distributed to the various towns for sale. In exchange Britain exported massive amounts of grain to the rest of the Roman empire and helped feed the people of Rome itself.
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For most of the occupation, Hadrian’s Wall was the northern outpost of the Roman Empire in Britain. At York, Chester and Lincoln were huge bases for Roman Legionnaires. The legions were made up of soldiers from all over the empire. Many of these stayed on in Britain after retiring from the army where they were rewarded with money and land.. More
Hadrian’s Wall stretched right across the country, from coast to coast, each of its seventy miles marked by a small fort where a patrol of soldiers would be stationed. At further intervals larger forts were located, in which whole regiments – five hundred to a thousand men - were based. Well behind the frontier, at York, was one of three huge bases in the province where a whole legion was stationed - some six thousand soldiers. The other two legionary bases were at Chester and Lincoln. Over time, these great military bases grew into some of the biggest towns in Roman Britain, complete with a large civilian population of traders and innkeepers. Regiments recruited amongst the people of Britain were sent all over the empire, while troops from as far afield as Syria, Spain and Africa were stationed in this country.
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Richer townspeople lived in large houses with shady central courtyards and pools. Large town houses often took up an entire block, or “island”, between the grid-patterned streets. Facing the streets would be shops, above which would live the shopkeepers and others who rented rooms from the owners. Inside would be the main house, with its many rooms surrounding a tranquil courtyard. More
In this courtyard might be a garden, a pool, a fountain and a walking area. Surrounding it would be the bedrooms, in which mats would be laid for sleeping, offices, kitchens, toilets, bath house, storerooms and large rooms in which the family could meet and eat. There would also be slave quarters, as wealthy families often had many slaves to look after them.
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The Romans kept many slaves to perform all the work of running the house. It would be slaves who cooked and cleaned, and did the many other duties that kept a large household running smoothly. Slaves also looked after and taught the children reading, writing and arithmetic. Then older boys and girls had separate education. More
An educated slave would teach the older children. Slaves were very valuable and were often well treated by their owners. The education of a wealthy Romano-Briton would consist first of reading, writing and arithmetic, followed (for boys) by such subjects as logic, public speaking, law and philosophy. Boys would also be taken to the public gymnasia (usually located in the public baths) for physical training, deemed very important for young Romans. Girls would also receive physical education, but the rest of their education would be spent on training them to be good household managers.
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Rich people also had a villa in the countryside, surrounded by farmland. Their farms would be run by trusted slaves, so that they themselves did none of the hard labour required to grow the crops and tend the animals. More
The villa was a luxurious house in the countryside, which also doubled as a farmstead, as most rich people were also farmers. The Roman Britons had some of the largest and most luxurious villas found anywhere in the northern empire. Many villas were like small villages, with several dozen people and slaves living there and farming the land. One of the later villas, at a place called Lullingstone, show signs that the people living there were probably members of a new religion sweeping the empire, Christianity.
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Roman houses had many advanced features. Some of these things would not be seen again in buildings in Britain for many years. One example was central heating. More
Large houses in Roman Britain were heated by an early but effective form of central heating. A fire would be located in one corner of the house, and the heat it produced would be channelled into the space under the floors, raised on columns for that purpose, warming the rooms above them. Many Roman villas also had their own bath houses, running water and toilet systems.
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Many of the things which made up Roman civilization fell into decay when they left. In the third and fourth centuries the Roman Empire came under threat from the 'barbarians' from the north. In Britain walls were built to defend the towns, and forts were built to defend the coast. The city of Rome was sacked and Britain was left to look after itself. Gradually the towns and villas fell into disrepair and people moved back to living in the countryside. The Roman way of life was gradually forgotten. More
New peoples from Germany came into these islands. The new arrivals were warriors and farmers who lived in small, simple villages, not in large and sophisticated towns. These people had never been ruled by the Romans and brought with them new ideas and ways of doing things. The great Roman cities and villas crumbled and were buried.
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