ROMAN BRITAIN
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CHIEF ROMAN ROADS.
The Romans greatly changed the face of Britain by their great engineering works. They drew broad roads from place to place, seldom turning aside to avoid forest or river. Their solidly-built causeways were carried across the marshy tracts, and pierced through the midst of the densest woods. Where the road went, clearings on each side were made, and population sprang up in what had hitherto been trackless wilderness. The Romans explored the remotest corners of Wales and Cornwall in their search after mineral wealth; they worked many tin, lead, and copper mines in the island, and exported the ores to Gaul and Italy. They developed the fisheries of Britain, especially the oyster fishery; not only did they prize British pearls, but the oysters themselves were exported as a special luxury to the distant capital of the world. They improved the farming of the open country so much that in years of scarcity the corn of Britain fed northern Gaul. In the more pleasant corners of the land Roman officials or wealthy merchants built themselves fine villas, with floors of mosaic, and elaborate heating-apparatus to guard them against the cold of the northern winter. Hundreds of such abodes are to be found: they clustered especially thick along the south coast and in the vale of Gloucester.
Gauls, Italians, Greeks, and Orientals came to share in the trade of Britain, and at the same time many of its natives must have crossed to the continent, notably those who were sent to serve in the auxiliary cohorts of Britons, which formed part of the Roman army, and were quartered on the Rhine and Danube. But in spite of all this intercourse, the Celts did not become Romanized like the Gauls or Spaniards; the survival of their native tongue to this day sufficiently proves it. In all the other provinces of the West, Latin completely extinguished the old native languages. In the towns, however, the Britons often took Roman names, and men of note in the countryside did the same. Many of the commonest Welsh names of to-day are corrupt forms of Latin names: Owen, for example, is a degradation from Eugenius, and Rhys from Ambrosius, though they have lost so entirely the shape of their ancient originals.
Britain harassed by barbarians.
Britain shared with the other provinces in the disasters which fell upon the empire in the third century, in the days of the weak usurpers who held the imperial throne after the extinction of the family of Severus. Three races are recorded as having troubled the land: the first was the ancient enemy, the Caledonians from beyond the wall, whom now the Chronicles generally style Picts, "the painted men," because they alone of the inhabitants of Britain still retained the barbarous habit of tattooing themselves. The second foe was the race of the Saxons, the German tribes who dwelt by the mouths of the Elbe and Weser. They were great marauders by sea, and so vexed the east of Britain by their descents that the emperors created an officer called "The Count of the Saxon Shore," [2] whose duty was to guard the coast from the Wash as far as Beachy Head by a chain of castles on the water's edge, and a flotilla of war-galleys. The third enemy was the Scottish race, a tribe who then occupied northern Ireland, and had not yet moved across to the land which now bears their name. They infested the shores of the province which lay between the Clyde and the Severn.
Carausius.
Attacked at once by Pict and Scot and Saxon, the province declined in prosperity, and gained little help from the continent where emperors were being made and remade at the rate of about one every three years. Britain seems to have first recovered herself in the time of Carausius, a "Count of the Saxon Shore," who proclaimed himself emperor, and reigned as an independent sovereign on our side of the Channel (287). His fleet drove off the Saxons, and his armies held back the Pict and Scot as long as he lived. But after a reign of seven years the rebel emperor was murdered, and three years later the province was reunited to the empire.
Constantius and Constantine.