Reading My Way Through Roman Britain, Part 3
British journalist Charlotte Higgins (It's All Greek To Me) was always fascinated by the classical world, but that fascination didn't extend to Roman Britain. She thought of Britain as an unglamorous outpost on the edge of the Roman Empire--an opinion shared by most Romans of the time-. A visit to Hadrian's Wall changed her mind. Under Another Sky: Journeys In Roman Britain is the story of her search to understand Rome's 360-year occupation of Britain and its influence on the British sense of history and identity
Higgins travels across Britain in an unreliable camper van in search of traces of ancient Rome. She walks the tourist-friendly Hadrian Wall and tracks down the remains of Londinium through modern London with the help of a map published by the Museum of London. She visits small museums, major museums, and a tourist trap called Iceni Village. She interviews archaeologists, museum curators, farmers turned innkeepers near Hadrian's Wall, and a full-time Roman centurion who appears at museum events and school programs. She considers the unexpected cache of Roman "postcards" known as the Vindolanda writing tablets, an influential eighteenth-century forgery of a Roman text, and re-imaginings of Roman Britain by later generations of British antiquarians, poets, military engineers and composers, including Benajmin Britten's soulful Roman Wall Blues, composed for a radio play by W. H. Auden.
Under Another Sky weaves together Britain's history and contemporary landscape into a complex and fascinating whole that is part travelogue, part history, and wholly charming.
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Reading My Way Through Roman Britain, Part 2
Guy de la Bédoyère's The Real Lives Of Roman Britain: A History of Roman Britain Through The Lives of Those Who Were There is not a narrative history of Roman Britain. (De la Bédoyère has already written several versions of that narrative.) It is instead an attempt to look at the 360 years of Roman occupation in terms of human experience rather than "the generalities of military campaigns, the antics of emperors, the arid plains of statistical models and typologies of pottery, the skeletal remains of buildings, and theoretical archaeological agendas." [p.xi]
The attempt is not entirely successful due to a problem that de la Bédoyère identifies early in the book as "visibility". There is surprisingly little evidence, physical or textual, about the Roman experience in Britain and even less about individuals--often no more than a name and a hint. (Sometimes not even a name. One individual, known as the "Aldgate-Pulborough potter", is recognizable only by the distinctive incompetence of his work.) Consequently, much of the book is devoted less to the lives of Roman Britain and more to an evaluation of the available evidence.
In lesser hands, this close analysis of inscriptions, clay tablets, pottery shards, and, yes, the skeletal remains of buildings could be as dry as the dust from which they are taken. De la Bédoyère considers each bit of evidence with wit and imagination, leading the reader with him on the path of discovery rather than simply providing her with his conclusions.
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Reading My Way Through Roman Britain, Part 1
"Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough", with thanks to Velella and Creative Commons
Thanks to the luck of the book-review draw, I recently ended up reading two books on Roman Britain back-to-back.* The two books are very different. Guy de la Bédoyère's The Real Lives of Roman Britain is an attempt to look at the period of Roman occupation in terms of individual human experience--a frustrating endeavor because there is surprisingly little evidence. Charlotte Higgins's Under Another Sky: Journeys In Roman Britain is a more personal attempt to understand the Roman occupation and its continuing influence on Britain's sense of history and identity--think VW bus and hiking Hadrian's Wall.** Both were fascinating; taken together they gave me a rich picture of a period I mistakenly thought I knew something about.
My reviews of both books will appear in coming posts. In the meantime, here are some of the things that surprised me:
- Rome controlled Britain for 360 years, assuming a floating definition of control. That's almost twice as long as Britain ruled India.
- Britain was a hotbed of revolt against Rome for most of those 360 years. I knew about Boudica, the female ruler who led an uprising against the Romans in 61 CE.*** And because I knew about Boudica I was vaguely aware that the Druid stronghold at Mona (modern Anglesey) was believed to harbor dangerous rebels. But I knew nothing about, for example, the Gallic Empire, a short-lived break-away regime founded by Marcus Cassianus Latinus Postumus ***in 259 CE in Britain's northwestern-provinces. Postumus and his successors borrowed all the attributes of a "real" Roman emperor, including coins minted in their names, consulships, assassinations and usurpations.
- I knew that the pre-Roman Britons left no written history. That what we know about them comes from Roman accounts and archaeological finds. (Some of which are pretty spectacular.) I didn't realize that what we know about the experience of the Romans themselves in Britain is also based on relatively limited evidence. For instance, the primary source for Julius Caesar's not particularly successful invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 BCE are Caesar's own accounts, which are certainly contemporary but by no means unbiased.
There's a lot to learn out there.
* Usually this happens in response to a major historical anniversary, but unless I'm missing something this time it was just because.
**And yes, I am now thinking about hiking along Hadrian's Wall.
***Thank you, Antonia Fraser
****Which does, in fact, mean posthumous. The name was given to a man born after his father's death. Who knew?