Having said that the population of Roman Britain as far as can be assumed was between 3 and 4 hundred thousand. To grow food for these, under the agricultural methods, would have required on the land perhaps double their number. We may therefore assume a population of at least a million in the Romanised area. There may well have been more but there are no signs of any large increase of population accompanied the Roman system. In more than two centuries of peace and order the inhabitants remained at about the same numbers as in the days of Cassivellaunus.

This falure to foster and support a more numerous life spread disappoinment and contraction throughout Roman Britain. The conquerers who so easily subdued and rallied the Britons to their method of social life brought with them no means, apart from stopping tribal war, of increasing the annual income derived from the productvity of the soil.

This new society, with all its grace of structure, with its spice of elegance and luxury --baths banquets, togas, schools, literature and oritory-- stood on no more sumptious foundation than the agriculture of prehistoric times. The rude plenty in which the ancient Britons had dwelt was capable of supporting only to a moderate extent the imposing facade of Roman life.

The cultivated ground was still for the most part confined to the lighter and more easily cultivated uplands soils, which had for thousands of years been worked ina primitive fashion. The powerful Gallic plough on wheels was known in Britain, but did not supplant the native implememt, which could only nose along inshallow furrows. With a few exceptions, there was no large-sale attempt to clear the forests, drain the marshes, and cultivate the heavy soils of the valleys, in which so much fertility had been deposited. The idea of supplying the organic material to the soil was not understood, most was done by the grazing of meadows by the creatures that occupied them.

Such mining of lead and tin, such smelting, as had existed from times immemorial may have gained somrthing from orderly administration; but there were no new sciences, no new thrust of power and knowledge in the material sphere. Thus the econonomic basis remained constant, and Britain became more genteel than more wealthy. The life of Britain continued upon a small scale, and in the main was stationary. The new ediface, so stately and admirable, was light and frail.

We owe London to Rome and the military engineers of Claudius. Trade followed the development of their road system and the extensive, well planned city that followed with its mighty walls eventually took the place of of the original wooden trading settlement of A.D.61, and soon achieved a leading place of life of the Roman province of Britain, superceding the old Belgic capital, Colchester, as the commercial centre. The mighty Thames was the influence for this decision, accepting merchant shipping with ease from the far-flung regions of the south of Britannia.

Merchants, trading in wines and spices, were able to sail into London and disgorge their cargo mostly intended for the military occupation and eventually to the well to do who could afford such luxuries. At the end of the third century money was coined in the London mint, and the city was the headquarters of the financial administration. In the later days of the province London seems to have been the centre of civil government, as York was of the military, although it never received the status of municipium.

The villas of country gentlemen were erected in the most delightful places of virgin countryside, amid primeval forests and the gushing of untamed streams. At least five hundred have been explored in the south and more being unearthed in the most unexpected places in mid Britain, some of which have come to light by the activities of metal detecting.

The comparitive unsuccess of urban life led the better class Roman Britons to establish themselves in the country, and thus the villa system was the dominant feature of Roman Britain in its heyday. The villas retained their prosperity after the towns had already decayed. The town was shrunken after the third century. The villas still flourished in the fourth, and in some cases lingered on into the dark days of the fifth. The accession of Hadrian was marked by a serious disaster. The Ninth Legion disappeared from history in combating an obscure rising of the tribes of Northern Britain. The defences were disorganised and the province was in danger. Hadrian himself came to Britain in A.D.122, and the reorganisation of the frontier began.

 

 

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