The Roman Britain

The Roman Britain                                          By: Sanna Eklund

The Roman Britain was a part of the Great Britain between year 43 and 410, and was controlled by the Roman Empire.

The name "Britain" comes from the Greco-Roman word: "Pretani".
Pretani was the word for the inhabitants of Britain and was mispronounced as "Britannia".

The Romans invaded Britain because the Celts of Britain were working with the Celts of Gaul against them. Gaul was a country that is today's France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland and the western part of northern Italy.

When the Romans invaded Britain they brought the skills of writing and reading. It was important because they could spread ideas and also get power.

Britain was probably more literate between 43 and 410, until again at fifteenth century.

They had not such difficulty to invade Britain, apart from the Boadicea's revolt. The Romans had a better trained army. And it became easier because the Celts fought among themselves.

One colony they never could conquer was "Caledonia". Caledonia was the today's Scotland. They tried to conquer Caledonia over a century, but they never succeeded.

After a while they built a strong wall along the northern border, to keep out raiders from the north. The wall was named after the one who planned it, Emperor Hadrian.

The first sign that the Roman Empire was collapsing was around 367. Many raiders crossing the Hadrian wall that started to attack them.

And the Romans started to find it more and more difficult to stop them.

In 409 the Romans left Britain. The Roman Empire left Britain to fight alone against the Scots, Irish and the Saxons.

The Roman life:

The most characteristic of Roman Britain were their towns; they were the basis of the Roman civilisation.

The Roman Britain had three kinds of towns. Two of them were established by Roman charter, the third was the old Celtic tribal capital.

The towns back then didn't have any walls around them until the third century. Almost every town had thick stone walls around them.

When the Romans left Britain did they built the towns of stone, and had planned streets, markets and shops. The roads continued to be used and became the main roads of today.

Six of these roads met in London. Back then London were twice the size of Paris, and in the northern Europe London were the most important trading centre.

But the biggest change during the Roman Britain was outside the towns. It was the growth of large farms called "villas". The villas belonged to the richer Britain people. The richer Britain people were almost like town people, and were more Roman than Celt in their manners.

The villas were usually close to a town so the corps could be sold easily.

The life during the Roman Britain wasn't as civilised as we might think, it was just civilised for the richest.

The bodies that were buried in a Roman graveyard to show that life expectancy was low. Half of the population died betwe...