C. PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO ROMAN BRITAIN IN 1914
The following summary of the books and articles on Roman Britain which appeared in 1914 is grouped under two heads, first, those few which deal with general aspects of the subject, and secondly, the far larger number which concern special sites or areas. In this second class, those which belong to England are placed under their counties in alphabetical order, while those which belong to Wales and Scotland are grouped under these two headings. I have in general admitted only matter which was published in 1914, or which bears that date.
1. General
(1) Mr. G. L. Cheesman's Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army (Oxford University Press) does not deal especially with Roman Britain, but it deserves brief notice here. It is an excellent and up-to-date sketch of an important section of the Roman army, with which British archaeologists are much concerned. It also contains valuable lists, which can be found nowhere else, of the 'auxiliary' regiments stationed in Britain (pp. 146-9 and 170-1). It is full, cheap, compact; every historical and archaeological library should get it.
(2) A learned and scholarly attempt to settle the obscure chronology of the north British frontiers in the fourth century has been made by Mr. H. Craster, Fellow of All Souls, and one of the excavators of Corbridge, in the Archaeological Journal (lxxi. 25-44). His conclusions are novel and, though to some extent disputable, are well worth printing. Starting from the known fact that, during much of the third century, the north frontier of Roman Britain coincided roughly with the line of Cheviot and was then withdrawn to the line of Hadrian's Wall, he distinguishes five stages in the subsequent history. (1) At or just before the outset of the fourth century, in the reign of Diocletian, the Wall was reorganized in some ill-recorded fashion. (2) Thirty years later, towards the end of Constantine's reign, about A.D. 320-30, it was (he thinks) further reorganized; perhaps its mile-castles were then discarded. (3) Thirty or forty years later still, after disturbances which (he conjectures) included the temporary loss of Hadrian's Wall and the destruction of its garrisons, Theodosius carried out in 369 a fuller reorganization. This garrison had consisted of the regiments known to us by various evidence as posted 'per lineam valli' in the third and early fourth centuries; their places were now filled by soldiers of whom we know absolutely nothing. (4) In 383 Maximus withdrew these unknown troops for his continental wars. Now perhaps the line of the Wall had to be given up, but Tyne and Solway, South Shields, Corbridge, and Carlisle were still held. (5) Finally, about 395-9, Stilicho ordered a last reorganization; he withdrew the frontier from the Tyne to the Tees, from Carlisle to Lancaster, and garrisoned the new line with new soldiery—those, namely, which are listed in the Notitia as serving under the Dux Britanniarum, save only the regiments 'per lineam valli'; these last the compiler of the Notitia borrowed from the older order to disguise the loss of the Wall. Even this did not last. In 402 Stilicho had to summon troops to Italy for home defence—among them, Mr. Craster suggests, the Sixth Legion—and in 407 the remaining Roman soldiers, including the Second Legion, were taken to the continent by Constantine III.
Every one who handles this difficult period must indulge in conjecture; Mr. Craster has, perhaps, indulged rather much. It might be simpler to connect the abandonment of the mile-castles—his stage 2—with the recorded troubles which called Constans to Britain in 343, rather than invent an unrecorded action by Constantine I. I hesitate also to assume for the period 369-83 an otherwise unknown frontier garrison, which has left no trace of itself. I feel still greater doubt respecting the years 383-99. Here Mr. Craster argues from coin-finds. No coins have been found on the line of the Wall which were minted later than 383, and none at Corbridge, Carlisle, and South Shields which were minted later than 395; therefore, he infers, the Wall was abandoned soon after 383, and the other sites soon after 395. This is too rigid an argument. It may be a mere accident that the Wall has as yet yielded no coin which was minted between 383 and 395. At Wroxeter, for example, two small hoards were found some years ago which had clearly been lost at the moment when the town was sacked. By these hoards we should be able to date the catastrophe. Now the latest coin in one hoard was minted in or before 377, and the latest in the other in or before 383. But newer finds show that Wroxeter was not destroyed at earliest till after 390. Again, as Mr. Craster himself says, the coining of Roman copper practically stopped in 395; after that year the older copper issues appear to have remained in use for many a long day. That is clear in Gaul, where coins later than 395 seem to be rare, although Roman armies and influences were present for another fifty years. When Mr. Craster states that 'archaeology gives no support to the theory that the Tyne-Solway line was held after 395', he might add that it gives equally little support to the theory that it was not held after 395.
Incidentally, he offers a new theory of the two chapters in the Notitia Dignitatum which describe the forces commanded by the Comes Litoris Saxonici and the Dux Britanniarum (Occ. 28 and 40). It is agreed that these chapters do not exhibit the garrison of Britain at the moment when the Notitia was substantially completed, about A.D. 425, for the good reason that there was then no garrison left in the island; they exhibit some garrison which had then ceased to exist, and which is mentioned, apparently, to disguise the loss of the province. The question is, to what date do they refer? Mommsen long ago pointed out that the regiments enumerated in one part of them (the 'per lineam valli' section) are very much the same as existed in the third century. Seeck added the suggestion that these regiments remained in garrison till 383, when Maximus marched them off to the continent. According to him, the garrison of the Wall through the first eighty years of the fourth century was much the same as it had been in the third century, with certain changes and additions. Mr. Craster holds a different view. He thinks that most of the troops named in these chapters were due to Stilicho's reorganization in 395-9, but that one section, headed 'per lineam valli', records troops who had been in Britain in the third century and had been destroyed before 369. I cannot feel that he has proved his case. One would have thought that, when the compiler of the Notitia in 425 wanted to fill the gap left by the loss of the Wall, he would have gone back to the last garrison of the Wall, that is, on Mr. Craster's view, the garrison of 369-83, not to arrangements which had vanished some years earlier. But the problems of this obscure period are not to be solved without many attacks. We must be glad that Mr. Craster has delivered a serious attack; even if he has not succeeded, his scholarly discussion may make things easier for the next assailants.
(3) The Antiquary for 1914 contains an attempt by Mr. W. J. Kaye to catalogue all the examples of triple vases of Roman date found in Britain. It also prints a note by myself (p. 439) on the topography of the campaign of Suetonius against Boudicca, which argues that the defeat of the British warrior queen occurred somewhere on Watling Street between Chester (or Wroxeter) and London.