After a half decade of brutal and co-ordinated raiding from overseas,
Emperor Theodosius the Great restored order in Britain in 369. The next
great crisis will shift us like a pendulum from external threat to
internal rebellion once again. This time it is a revolt by the military
commander Magnus Maximus in 383 after a victory in the previous year
against the Picts. His revolt lasts only until 388 but involved an
incursion into the heart of the Empire itself in a failed attempt to
seize the Imperial throne (albeit that he had already been declared
Western Emperor). His invasion of Italy was defeated by Theodosius at
the Battle of the Save.
It is not long after this
(401) that the Roman legions began to be withdrawn from Britain and
defence transferred to local forces. Hillforts would eventually begin to
be reoccupied, including Cadbury Castle in Somerset from around 470,
later to become associated with the legend of Arthur as Camalet. It
remained so occupied until the 580s. The legions proved necessary for
the struggles for power within the Empire as it began to crumble under
the barbarian invasions on the mainland. In 407 the local Roman usurper
Emperor Constantine III (after a series of such usurpers had emerged and
fallen in the Province) withdrew the legions entirely to support his
own claims.
Given the general mayhem as Vandals,
Burgundians, Alans and Sueves crossed the Rhine at Mainz in 406, it is
no surprise to see Saxon raids start up again after Constantine's
departure and, in 409, there is a native British revolt against his
rule. This is the best marker date for the end of Roman rule since
Emperor Honorius' assertion to the British that they are on their own
and must organise their own defence (410) is simply, by that point, a
statement of the obvious. In that year, Rome itself was sacked by the
Goths under Alaric.
There is, of course, still a Roman
administration and a Romano-British ruling class operating in Britain
after the withdrawal of the military but it appears that, where
possible, capital is being exported or buried and the administrative
structures begin to weaken and collapse as resources disappear. The
Christian Church feels the strain even though it sustains its
relationship with the province for another 45 years or so. In 429, the
well recorded visit of St. Germanus, a Gallo-Roman Bishop, was made to
combat the growing influence of the Pelagian heresy which might be said
to reflect what was later to become a very strong part of the British
character - the importance of free will and self reliance in seeking
salvation. It was Germanus who constructed the story of St. Alban the
martyr, as a useful propaganda tool for stiffening Romano-British spines
within the Christian tradition. The famous debate held with the
Pelagians at Verulamium seems to have had a class element to it.
Germanus appeared to be able to appeal over the heads of the wavering
Romano-British aristocracy and merchant class to the broader population
assembled there. The Church's determination to hold on to Britain was
matched by its equal determination to convert the rising barbarian
powers and tribes,. In 431 Bishop Palladius was sent on missions to the
Irish and the Scots by Pope Celestine.
The
Romano-British did not give up hope of reintegration into the Roman
Empire for quite some time, no doubt assisted by the Catholic Church.
Perhaps we see another constant in British history appearing here,
similar to that between Slavophiles and those who looked to the West in
Russia, by which the Catholics looked to Europe, whether Roman or
Gallic, and the Pelagians preferred national independence, a difference
of outlook that is about to be played out once again in the struggles
over which way the British will vote in the forthcoming European
Referendum. There was a last appeal for the return of the Roman legions
in 446 but Rome was embroiled in its conflict with the formidable Huns
and could not or would not help. It is at this point that the desperate
Roman-British aristocracy, unable to build a sufficient fighting force
of their own, made the fateful decision to appeal to the Angles (from
what is now Southern Denmark) to take on what had been Rome's
responsibility but as mercenaries.
Showing posts with label Roman Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roman Britain. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 August 2015
274-368: The Instabilities of Roman Rule
By the last quarter of the third century, south of Hadrian's Wall,
Roman Britain was a fully romanised and prosperous occupied province
under men who could become minor players in the bigger game of Roman
imperial politics, using the resources made available by the need to
have a significant military on hand to protect the asset from potential
raiding on three of its four sides - Ireland, north of the Wall and
across the North Sea.
The tension between Roman Imperial desire to control and maintain the asset and what local rulers and commanders wanted must be placed in its context - that local interests saw their primary needs as either being protected by Rome or being allowed to protect themselves on their terms if Rome could not do so for whatever reason. After the imposition of direct rule on Britain from Rome in 274, we see, within fifteen years, the rise of an independent 'British Emperor' Carausius, actually a Belgic-Roman naval commander who had been charged with clearing the English Channel of pirates. The propertied interests of Britain were wholly dependant on export of grain and manufactures to the wider Roman Empire. Rome itself was not doing much directly to keep the trade routes open and so the local military Commander clearly got himself the local mandate to keep the resources available to him on site and not have them weakened by interference from overseas, failures to provide resources or autonomy of decision-making or any attempt to have taxes or men diverted to Rome's needs rather than those of 'national' defence.
In fact, the Carausian Revolt had its opportunistic aspects as these things tend to do. Carausius was apparently about to be arrested and executed on charges of dealing with the Frankish and Saxon pirates and embezzlement. His independent Empire lasted a bare decade (286-296) but, based on observation of the dynamics of all Empires trying to hold on to their assets against the depredations of border tribes and organised crime (we see this in the struggles of our own Atlantic System to hold the line against migration and organised crime today), we might see these charges as charges of central Roman frustration at Carausius rationally following a local policy of buying off the enemy at a time when this was not the policy of the centre. It could easily have been the opposite position - the centre seeking to cut deals with the barbarians and a local commander commited to military action. This tension between military aggression against 'invaders', or building walls or bribery, accommodation and negotiation is played out today in the policy discussions about how to deal with Libyan trafficking gangs in Europe and even Mexican cartels. Under some Imperial administrations, whether Roman or Chinese, negotiation with 'terrorists' would have been regarded as self-defeating and morally culpable as much as it does today to Washington policymakers.
Carausian himself may have been called Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius but he was actually a Menapian (Belgic) of humble birth and shows us another aspect of the Roman Empire by this period. Rome had run out of Romans and a distinctive hybridisation of Roman and native culture created a class of people who saw themselves as Roman but also detached from Rome itself. In power, Carausius appears to have actively worked to create a British national identity albeit within a Roman cultural framework. It is this tendency to integrate local elites into the processes of higher administration that permits, across Empire, the emergence in time of independent centres of power that come and go - entering imperial politics from the periphery, setting up temporary independent polities and acting as minor powers representing a preference for imperial ways of doing things as more efficient but choosing or forced to deal with the rapidly developing barbarian polities and organised ethnic criminalities (from an imperial perspective) at their borders. There are analogies for this in Chinese imperial history. Over-expansion in order to acquire maximun assets and push barbarian threats ever further outwards not merely reaches a certain natural limit of cost-effectiveness but creates its own nemesis as barbarian tribes cohere and adopt and adapt imperial military technologies. Observe the skilled adoption of Western techniques by ISIS in the Middle East and you see what the Mongols and Franks did in their time. The periphery creates unstable 'civilised warlords' who can threaten the centre itself and the costs of holding everything together increase. Does this not remind us a little of our current situation in the West as Washington, free trade, NATO and the 'Big Five' surveillance reach the limits of their expansionary capability? It is as if decline is built into Empire by its very expansionary and 'globalising' nature.
Carausius held the southern shore of the English Channel, inherited as local naval commander, until 293 when Constantius I isolated Boulogne and cut him off from his Frankish allies. Boulogne was taken and Carausius assassinated by Allectus (one of his own officers who succeeded him and was also Menapian). Allectus was defeated within three years. Britain returned to Roman rule under Constantius I, founder of the Constantinian Dynasty, who invaded Britain in 296 and defeated Allectus in 297, leaving behind a myth of British independence that would reappear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work in the twelfth century, interestingly linked to Christian resistance to Diocletian's persecution. Somewhere in the sub-text is a story of resistance to centralised power being associated with the relatively new religion of Christianity since it would seem that the punitive operations of Julius Asclepiodotus, who Constantius appointed military governor after the revolt, involved some serious persecution of Christians (part of a much wider war on the faith undertaken by Diocletian in these years).
What we seem to have in late third century Roman Britain is an identifiable Belgic ruling class that had been fully romanised but is quite prepared to work with Frankish barbarians pragmatically, simply diverting some of the tax take perhaps from Rome to the barbarians in order to buy them off, and who were perhaps partially adopting Christianity as an ideology of resistance to Roman religious (and so moral and organisational) claims. It is soon after the revolt (304) that St. Alban is executed at Verulamium (later named St. Alban's). Alban was a converted Roman legionary. It is not difficult to see this as a political as much as a religious execution, if the story is not a later invention entirely. Despite the doubts as to veracity, the sheltering by a Roman Officer of a Christian dissident (Amphibalus, also caught and executed) and the story of his conversion seems to hide a deeper narrative of political and military defeat and of an attempt to root out the elite groups who had challenged direct Roman Imperial rule.
Meanwhile, we must not forget the North Britons who would have taken their own raiding opportunities from the fighting in southern Britain. Constantine the Great will cross the Channel to claim the Empire in another ironical reversal of the recent years of struggle only after Constantius I (Constantine the Great's father) had crossed the Channel in the other direction (305) and brought his son with him to mount a major and apparently successful campaign against the Picts in 306. Constantine's father died that year in Eboracum (York) but ensured the army accepted his son as heir - the second campaign against the Picts was thus aborted in order to secure the Empire for the family.
Christianity is a significant political factor across the Empire by this time. The story of St. Alban becomes even more suggestive when we find that Constantine the Great goes on to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire in a series of measures starting in 313 with the Edict of Milan. Christianity in the Empire is another story entirely but it is hard not to see Constantine responding to its ability to mobilise continued resistance in an important asset like Britain and elsewhere, and coming to the 'realpolitik' view that, ironically, just as Carausius might come to an accommodation with the Franks to allow the English Channel trading routes to operate securely so the Emperor might come to an accommodation with the internal dissidents and turn them from cause of instability to force for stabilisation.
Britain returns to being a relatively stable back water of the Empire for a while but we see the Emperor Constans having to cross to Britain in 343 (the visit was short and sharp and undertaken under dangerous sea conditions suggesting an emergency response to some event) and in the 360s the Mildenhall Treasure was buried suggesting some further internal instability in the elite (though the narrative about this find remains unclear). The serious problems for Roman rule really start again with a run of raids on the Britain by Saxon pirates from 363 to 368, with a particularly large raid in 364 that seems to have been more than just piratical and another in 367 by a coalition of Picts, Scots and Saxons that almost brought Roman Britain to its knees.
The tension between Roman Imperial desire to control and maintain the asset and what local rulers and commanders wanted must be placed in its context - that local interests saw their primary needs as either being protected by Rome or being allowed to protect themselves on their terms if Rome could not do so for whatever reason. After the imposition of direct rule on Britain from Rome in 274, we see, within fifteen years, the rise of an independent 'British Emperor' Carausius, actually a Belgic-Roman naval commander who had been charged with clearing the English Channel of pirates. The propertied interests of Britain were wholly dependant on export of grain and manufactures to the wider Roman Empire. Rome itself was not doing much directly to keep the trade routes open and so the local military Commander clearly got himself the local mandate to keep the resources available to him on site and not have them weakened by interference from overseas, failures to provide resources or autonomy of decision-making or any attempt to have taxes or men diverted to Rome's needs rather than those of 'national' defence.
In fact, the Carausian Revolt had its opportunistic aspects as these things tend to do. Carausius was apparently about to be arrested and executed on charges of dealing with the Frankish and Saxon pirates and embezzlement. His independent Empire lasted a bare decade (286-296) but, based on observation of the dynamics of all Empires trying to hold on to their assets against the depredations of border tribes and organised crime (we see this in the struggles of our own Atlantic System to hold the line against migration and organised crime today), we might see these charges as charges of central Roman frustration at Carausius rationally following a local policy of buying off the enemy at a time when this was not the policy of the centre. It could easily have been the opposite position - the centre seeking to cut deals with the barbarians and a local commander commited to military action. This tension between military aggression against 'invaders', or building walls or bribery, accommodation and negotiation is played out today in the policy discussions about how to deal with Libyan trafficking gangs in Europe and even Mexican cartels. Under some Imperial administrations, whether Roman or Chinese, negotiation with 'terrorists' would have been regarded as self-defeating and morally culpable as much as it does today to Washington policymakers.
Carausian himself may have been called Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius but he was actually a Menapian (Belgic) of humble birth and shows us another aspect of the Roman Empire by this period. Rome had run out of Romans and a distinctive hybridisation of Roman and native culture created a class of people who saw themselves as Roman but also detached from Rome itself. In power, Carausius appears to have actively worked to create a British national identity albeit within a Roman cultural framework. It is this tendency to integrate local elites into the processes of higher administration that permits, across Empire, the emergence in time of independent centres of power that come and go - entering imperial politics from the periphery, setting up temporary independent polities and acting as minor powers representing a preference for imperial ways of doing things as more efficient but choosing or forced to deal with the rapidly developing barbarian polities and organised ethnic criminalities (from an imperial perspective) at their borders. There are analogies for this in Chinese imperial history. Over-expansion in order to acquire maximun assets and push barbarian threats ever further outwards not merely reaches a certain natural limit of cost-effectiveness but creates its own nemesis as barbarian tribes cohere and adopt and adapt imperial military technologies. Observe the skilled adoption of Western techniques by ISIS in the Middle East and you see what the Mongols and Franks did in their time. The periphery creates unstable 'civilised warlords' who can threaten the centre itself and the costs of holding everything together increase. Does this not remind us a little of our current situation in the West as Washington, free trade, NATO and the 'Big Five' surveillance reach the limits of their expansionary capability? It is as if decline is built into Empire by its very expansionary and 'globalising' nature.
Carausius held the southern shore of the English Channel, inherited as local naval commander, until 293 when Constantius I isolated Boulogne and cut him off from his Frankish allies. Boulogne was taken and Carausius assassinated by Allectus (one of his own officers who succeeded him and was also Menapian). Allectus was defeated within three years. Britain returned to Roman rule under Constantius I, founder of the Constantinian Dynasty, who invaded Britain in 296 and defeated Allectus in 297, leaving behind a myth of British independence that would reappear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work in the twelfth century, interestingly linked to Christian resistance to Diocletian's persecution. Somewhere in the sub-text is a story of resistance to centralised power being associated with the relatively new religion of Christianity since it would seem that the punitive operations of Julius Asclepiodotus, who Constantius appointed military governor after the revolt, involved some serious persecution of Christians (part of a much wider war on the faith undertaken by Diocletian in these years).
What we seem to have in late third century Roman Britain is an identifiable Belgic ruling class that had been fully romanised but is quite prepared to work with Frankish barbarians pragmatically, simply diverting some of the tax take perhaps from Rome to the barbarians in order to buy them off, and who were perhaps partially adopting Christianity as an ideology of resistance to Roman religious (and so moral and organisational) claims. It is soon after the revolt (304) that St. Alban is executed at Verulamium (later named St. Alban's). Alban was a converted Roman legionary. It is not difficult to see this as a political as much as a religious execution, if the story is not a later invention entirely. Despite the doubts as to veracity, the sheltering by a Roman Officer of a Christian dissident (Amphibalus, also caught and executed) and the story of his conversion seems to hide a deeper narrative of political and military defeat and of an attempt to root out the elite groups who had challenged direct Roman Imperial rule.
Meanwhile, we must not forget the North Britons who would have taken their own raiding opportunities from the fighting in southern Britain. Constantine the Great will cross the Channel to claim the Empire in another ironical reversal of the recent years of struggle only after Constantius I (Constantine the Great's father) had crossed the Channel in the other direction (305) and brought his son with him to mount a major and apparently successful campaign against the Picts in 306. Constantine's father died that year in Eboracum (York) but ensured the army accepted his son as heir - the second campaign against the Picts was thus aborted in order to secure the Empire for the family.
Christianity is a significant political factor across the Empire by this time. The story of St. Alban becomes even more suggestive when we find that Constantine the Great goes on to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire in a series of measures starting in 313 with the Edict of Milan. Christianity in the Empire is another story entirely but it is hard not to see Constantine responding to its ability to mobilise continued resistance in an important asset like Britain and elsewhere, and coming to the 'realpolitik' view that, ironically, just as Carausius might come to an accommodation with the Franks to allow the English Channel trading routes to operate securely so the Emperor might come to an accommodation with the internal dissidents and turn them from cause of instability to force for stabilisation.
Britain returns to being a relatively stable back water of the Empire for a while but we see the Emperor Constans having to cross to Britain in 343 (the visit was short and sharp and undertaken under dangerous sea conditions suggesting an emergency response to some event) and in the 360s the Mildenhall Treasure was buried suggesting some further internal instability in the elite (though the narrative about this find remains unclear). The serious problems for Roman rule really start again with a run of raids on the Britain by Saxon pirates from 363 to 368, with a particularly large raid in 364 that seems to have been more than just piratical and another in 367 by a coalition of Picts, Scots and Saxons that almost brought Roman Britain to its knees.
77-273: The Problem of Caledonia
The arrival of Gnaeus Julius Agricola gives us the most famous Roman
Governor of antiquity because his life and deeds were written up by the
Roman historian, his son-in-law Tacitus, but he was an important element
in the final conquest of Britain even if his public relations ran ahead
of his achievements. Having moved against the Ordovices and Anglesey,
over which Rome had temporarily lost control, Agricola then undertook a
campaign to subdue Northern England in 78, possibly as far as the Firth
of Tay (Scotland) in the following year. There may even have been a
small exploratory expedition to Ireland similar to that of Caesar's in
55 though nothing came of it and nothing may be assumed about its
reality.
In 80, Agricola was faced with a major Caledonian (Scottish) rising. A war ensued that led to the pivotal battle of Mons Graupius (83-84) in the far north of Scotland which, if it actually took place (there is some doubt amongst a minority of historians) resulted in the complete defeat of the Northern British, led by Calgacus, Chief of the Caledonian Confederation. Whether the 10,000 British casualties figure is true or not is debatable but the Romans are unlikely to have taken many prisoners so far from home and surrounded by the enemy. Nevertheless, the battle may still have left 20,000 defeated but still formidable Caledonians in the surrounding forests.
Tacitus almost certainly invents a famous speech by Calgacus before the battle that probably tells us more about Roman doubts and sensibilities than it does those of the British. It is worth quoting in full because it suggests that intelligent Romans had some qualms about the ethical basis for their own imperialist endeavours:
In 117, Hadrian became Emperor and appeared in
Britain in 121 after a rebellion (119-121) in order to restore order. He
famously settled the matter (with one significant gap under the later
Antonines 142-162 which temporarily restored the frontier to the Firth
of Forth and Firth of Clyde line and was briefly reoccupied by Septimus
Severus in 208-211) of the boundary between barbarian North Briton and
Roman Britain by ordering the building of his famous wall along the
Tyne-Solway frontier between 122 and 128 under his Governor Aulus
Platorius Nepos. Hadrian died in 138.
As suggested above, the advance into Scotland by
Emperor Antoninus Pius in 140 was a temporary business especially as the
tribes between the Antonine (under Governor Quintus Lolius Albinus) and
Hadrian's Wall were organised into another anti-Roman confederacy, the
continuously troublesome Maeatae: the Antonine Wall may have merely been
intended to limit the connections between these lowland tribes and the
Caledonians to their North as well as to control trade between them. The
withdrawal from the more northerly wall in 162 simply meant the
restoration of Hadrian's Wall as the definitive frontier under Marcus
Aurelius.
The vulnerability of Southern Britain to Caledonian resurgence is demonstrated at the end of the second century AD. Septimius Severus, who was to die in Eboracum (York) in 211, became Emperor in 193 and appointed Clodius Albinus, a powerful Imperial politician who had tried to become Emperor in 193, as Governor of Britain. It may have been a necessary but was not a wise choice because the British and Hispanic Legions declared for Clodius Albinus as Emperor and the Legions followed him in a (second) attempt in 196 to seize the Imperial throne. Britain was left undefended. What actually happened next is unclear but it is probable that the northern tribes started to become troublesome with the withdrawal of the three Legions generally required to hold down the province. Once Clodius Albinus had been crushed with consummate brutality (Septimius Severus is said to have ridden his horse over his naked corpse as an act of humiliation and beheaded his wife and sons), Severus returned to Britain personally to restore order on the Scottish frontier with near-genocidal fervour. After his death, his son Caracalla eventually sued for peace and the Romans permanently withdrew to the Tyne-Solway line. The engagement of these Emperors in Britain throughout this period suggests that the South of Britain was a major economic asset to be protected even at great cost in men and financial resources. At the end of the day, we must never forget that empires are fundamentally intended to be profitable businesses. Legions were merely what corporate lawyers are today - very expensive necessities.
Notes
1. "Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough" by Velella - Personal photograph taken by Velella.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg#/media/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg
In 80, Agricola was faced with a major Caledonian (Scottish) rising. A war ensued that led to the pivotal battle of Mons Graupius (83-84) in the far north of Scotland which, if it actually took place (there is some doubt amongst a minority of historians) resulted in the complete defeat of the Northern British, led by Calgacus, Chief of the Caledonian Confederation. Whether the 10,000 British casualties figure is true or not is debatable but the Romans are unlikely to have taken many prisoners so far from home and surrounded by the enemy. Nevertheless, the battle may still have left 20,000 defeated but still formidable Caledonians in the surrounding forests.
Tacitus almost certainly invents a famous speech by Calgacus before the battle that probably tells us more about Roman doubts and sensibilities than it does those of the British. It is worth quoting in full because it suggests that intelligent Romans had some qualms about the ethical basis for their own imperialist endeavours:
Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain's glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.This speech inspired intellectual and educated anti-imperialists and British nationalists within the later British Imperium when it aspired to be the New Rome and perhaps acted as a restraint on a ruling caste educated in the classics and torn between the libertarian values of the Isles and the mission to create an ethical world empire. Be all that as it may, and despite doubts about the extent of Agricola's victory, the drive against the North Britons created space for the South Britons to be fully romanised. In fact, Scotland itself was far from pacified. Within a few years of Agricola's campaign, Rome had withdrawn to a line between the Tyne and Solway Firth which was to be the Roman frontier for much of Imperial history.
 |
| Hadrian's Wall today (For Source - See Note 1) |
 |
| Rome's Northernmost Frontier - The Antonine Wall (Source - Wikipedia) |
The vulnerability of Southern Britain to Caledonian resurgence is demonstrated at the end of the second century AD. Septimius Severus, who was to die in Eboracum (York) in 211, became Emperor in 193 and appointed Clodius Albinus, a powerful Imperial politician who had tried to become Emperor in 193, as Governor of Britain. It may have been a necessary but was not a wise choice because the British and Hispanic Legions declared for Clodius Albinus as Emperor and the Legions followed him in a (second) attempt in 196 to seize the Imperial throne. Britain was left undefended. What actually happened next is unclear but it is probable that the northern tribes started to become troublesome with the withdrawal of the three Legions generally required to hold down the province. Once Clodius Albinus had been crushed with consummate brutality (Septimius Severus is said to have ridden his horse over his naked corpse as an act of humiliation and beheaded his wife and sons), Severus returned to Britain personally to restore order on the Scottish frontier with near-genocidal fervour. After his death, his son Caracalla eventually sued for peace and the Romans permanently withdrew to the Tyne-Solway line. The engagement of these Emperors in Britain throughout this period suggests that the South of Britain was a major economic asset to be protected even at great cost in men and financial resources. At the end of the day, we must never forget that empires are fundamentally intended to be profitable businesses. Legions were merely what corporate lawyers are today - very expensive necessities.
Notes
1. "Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough" by Velella - Personal photograph taken by Velella.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg#/media/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg
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