Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (23 page)

Europe's face is as pocked by defensive works as the moon's by craters. Most impressive of all are the earthen citadels (frequently though not invariably sited on dominant summits); Celtica's quintessential landmark. Collectively they represent one of the biggest constructional feats in the human story, though their earlier origins and their presence in other parts of the world denies that they were Celtic only. Even within the Celtic lands there were major differences of style and scale. Near the Mediterranean, mimicking the town walls of Greek colonies, the forts had developed as dry-stone citadels, their walls ambitiously provided with towers, usually square; defending paved streets and stone houses. Prominent examples include Entremont, near Aix-en-Provence, where the bastioned stone walls enclose nine acres; Puig de Sant Andreu (near Empuries,
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at the northern end of the Costa Brava); also in Catalonia, Castellet de Banyoles (Tivissa, twenty-eight miles west of Tarragona), with mudbrick towers on a stone base; and Citania (Portugal).

In Gaul proper another technique, which Caesar called
murus Gallicus
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(Gaulish walling) had emerged in reply to the approach of Rome. The defenders grasped that perpendicular walls make stiffer obstacles than sloping mounds. They experimented with dry-stonework but soon found that it was brittle to the battering ram and breachable under bombardment. Accordingly they devised double masonry facings, up to forty feet apart, the gap bridged by joists and cross-braced. This framework of nailed timber packed with rubble and backed by an earthern ramp, was resistant to shot and ram; but not to the slumping and sliding which follow woodrot. Though great metalworkers, good carpenters and moderate masons, the Celts never mastered the simple process of firing chalk or limestone to produce quicklime. Its full exploitation, though not its invention, was the work of Rome and crucial to almost all architectural advance during this period. Without lime there could be no mortar or concrete; and without mortar to grip or concrete to back its stone facings, the
murus Gallicus
remains a cul-de-sac in defensive building. None the less impressive results were produced. Excavation of the Bibracte
oppidum
(near Autun) and that of Manching (Bavaria) revealed three and four-mile circuits of Gaulish walling respectively.

However, these advances were never to reach the Britons, who were in all respects more conservative. In the south and west of England traditional construction continued, with billions of basketfuls of soil, hand-dumped in ant-like operations. Size and imposing position are characteristic, but the forts are also numerous. Herefordshire and Shropshire are their heartland, the seventy miles from Ross-on-Wye north to Oswestry containing some fifty major specimens, sometimes only a mile or two apart. Wessex too is rich in spectacular examples, including Maiden Castle (Dorset) of forty-five acres, capital of the Durotriges, a tribe opposed to Rome. Though less frequent, there are big hillforts in most parts of Britain. An impressive tribal capital is Eildon (near Melrose, Roxburghshire) of forty acres
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and containing 300 roundhouses. North Wales, where rock is often more available than soil, developed its own style. Tre'r Ceiri, in a rugged and inaccessible situation near the north coast of the Lleyn Peninsula, is among Britain's most romantic, with a stone wall surviving to rampart walk and internal buildings visible. There are some 200 British hillforts of more than fifteen acres. They grew considerably during the last four centuries
BC
, doubling and trebling their rampart rings and developing elaborate gateways with interned entrances and flanking guard chambers. Within were villages of 300–500 souls; but occasionally much larger, up to the 5,000 size.

Smaller works are almost uncountable. Fortified farms and defended villages are typical of the North and West, with clusters in central-south Scotland and Pembrokeshire densest of all. In general there was a wide variety in size, from capital ‘cities' to single dwellings; and in function, from tribal strongholds, local refuges and communal animal pens, to markets, industrial centres and chieftains' castles; sometimes all of these combined. In essence Iron Age forts were prototype towns and the Romans called them such. The very existence of this scale of structure suggests power, dictatorially held. Strabo states that Gaulish government was ‘normally autocratic'.
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He adds that in Gaul ‘a single leader was chosen annually. In emergencies too, one man was elected by popular acclaim.' These were late developments, in imitation of Roman practice and unlikely to be found in traditionalist Wessex and western Britain, where reoccupation of hillforts suggests increasing lawlessness. Smaller forts were being abandoned and the larger made stronger, perhaps in response to slave trafficking.

By contrast, what is now called south-eastern England was a separate world. Belgic invaders, arriving only a half century before Caesar, had brought new fashions and more advanced ideas. These did not, however, include non-violence. Their takeover of all southern England was probably forestalled only by the arrival of Claudius. Mighty men, painted and tattooed, with copious moustaches; glorious in war, with dashing chariots and flashing helmets of gilt and bronze; they carried shields of superb artistry, wore hauberks of iron rings
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and wielded long sword and spear. The Belgic settlers also led the descent to the plains. Though other areas were slow to follow, this process was now almost complete in south-eastern Britain, where topography was in any case less suited to hillfort building. Their
oppida
were nevertheless strong and guarded, presumably against chariot assault, by long dyke-and-ditch systems. These did not always form continuous circuits, but were often in straight lines, having some resemblance to a noughts-and-crosses layout, with settlement in the central square. Sometimes there are gaps, presumably where patches of woodland, thickened with thorn and felled tree trunks, made earthwork unnecessary. Caesar said that ‘the Britons call any fortified place in the thick forest which they have defended with dykes and ditches an
oppidum
(town) and use it as a refuge in time of trouble'.
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Among these were the biggest British strongholds and the most sophisticated settlements. Wheathampstead (Herts), close to the Lea, encloses twice the space of Maiden Castle. Camelodunum (Colchester), scene of Claudius' durbar, was biggest of all: twelve square miles, including pasture and fields. At its heart was a thriving urban centre and seat of kings, with a mint, plus commercial and industrial facilities. Though in time superseded by London (which did not yet exist) this would be Roman Britain's first capital. Thus the process by which people congregate for safety, leading by degrees to formation of towns and so to social and cultural consequences unforeseen, was well under way by the eve of conquest. As an index of development, at least seventeen native coin types are known. These were adapted versions of classical originals, some with portraits of British kings and their names in Roman characters. They suggest an openness to Mediterranean influence and also the widening of a rudimentary reading ability, previously confined to the Druids. There were roads, unmetalled but serviceable, especially in summer. More broadly, here was a market economy able to produce food surpluses and to collect, transport and store them: factors which increased the risk of invasion, since Britain's potential for feeding and moving armies can hardly have escaped the notice of Roman intelligence. By contrast there is no sign of native coinage and no trace of pre-conquest Roman money or trade goods north and west of a line from Bristol to the Humber.

Regarding population, the once accepted figure of two million may now be trebled. For example, the capacity of the Welsh border hillforts points to about sixteen persons per square mile, suggesting that the more populous areas of the late Iron Age were similar to the quieter regions of Britain today. Though farm had cut deep into forest, landscapes were far from treeless. The natural climax-vegetation of southern England is oak, elm, alder, lime and hazel, with holly, yew and bramble underbrush; mix and density depending on local conditions. Large forests persisted. The Fenlands and many smaller areas were still waterlogged. The notion that Britain's moors and mountains remain unspoilt, while the lowlands have been transformed beyond recognition is, alas, a hiker's view of history. On the contrary, while pockets of near-native woodland survive in the South, almost the entirety of upland Britain has, in relatively recent times, been laid bare by felling and kept bare by sheep; with poisonous or inedible plants like heather, bracken and gorse unnaturally dominant. Wales and the North were once cloaked in oak, elm, alder and Scots pine (
pinus sylvestris
). The glens of northern Scotland are thought to have been thicketed in stunted oak, thinning to birch on the lower slopes, with pine up to 2,000 feet. Ancient sources refer to northern woodland, including the great Caledonian Forest,
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probably covering the entire central Highlands.

The Celts were among antiquity's greatest artists. Content was primarily abstract, consisting in the main of curving and twirling lines. These have been traced to Greek and other sources, selectively imitated in a peculiar way. In effect the Celts copied detail such as decorative surrounds, of incidental importance to Mediterranean art, ignoring the representational part which was its true point. Marginal devices, like flowers, fronds, vine stems, abstract patterns and flourishes, were lifted so to speak from the edges of the originals and placed at the centre of Celtic expression. It is as if one were excited about the mouldings on a frame and ignored the picture, or bought a house because of its wallpaper. But the La Tène
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artist was not a student of trivia. The borrowed bits-and-bobs were stylized and developed till the source was forgotten and the original excelled. Soon this school, fusing art with finest craftsmanship and metallurgy, developed a fluid beauty and a curious mystery of its own; simpler than later abstractions, like Arabesque, but bolder and more haunting also. Alongside these masterpieces, Roman provincial work, especially in the western provinces (where it lacked the hand of Greece) seems lustreless. The art of the Roman army too is generally childish without childhood's charm. Unfortunately the imported would tend to replace the native, for La Tène modes of expression withered at the touch of Rome, not through deliberate discouragement but because they hung upon an aristocratic patronage which did not survive the conquest. On the other hand we must not be too hard on the Roman provincials, who make amends for miserliness in the fine by prodigality in the useful arts. Many have admired the profusion of instruments and practical objects to be seen in the most modest Roman museum. The Celts had style; but it was doubtless less unpleasant to have a dental abscess or a splinter in the eye on the Roman side of the frontier.

Artistic flair appears also to distinguish Gaul from German, an opinion to which Frenchmen still subscribe. Nevertheless Roman authors showed scant interest in Celtic creativity or capability, confining their comment to foibles. Caesar speaks of the Gaulish temperament as inconstant and untrustworthy.
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Tacitus uses the expression
inertia Gallorum
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(the good-for-nothingness of the Gauls). Dio wrote of the Britons that ‘their boldness is rashness'.
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As we have noted, recklessness, fecklessness and untrustworthiness were standard Roman views of the northern European. Tacitus adds that the British tribes ‘were once ruled by kings. Now the ambitions of petty chieftains pull them apart.'
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This is substantially untrue. Kingly power was growing. Nevertheless in Britain, as in Gaul and Germany, there would be no coherent reply to the Roman threat. If a tendency can be recognized it is that the weaker tribes sided with Rome against the stronger. In Britain the east coast peoples, less confident of the terrain's ability to protect them, generally accepted the invader more readily.

Hints from ancient authors suggest that Romans, who had viewed pre-conquest Britain with awe, tended to speak slightingly or mockingly thereafter. Hence Appian (2nd century): ‘The Romans already have the best half of Britain and do not need the rest, for even the part they have profits them nothing.'
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There is also Dio's tongue-in-cheek reference to an officer who had been severely disciplined: ‘Lucius Verus did not put him to death, but merely sent him to Britain!'
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What was the Celtic view of Rome? Though some chose to resist and others to acquiesce, it is not difficult to imagine that all feared and hated her. What was
imperium
(Roman rule) but greed? Despite lack of nationhood there were doubtless pan-Gallic sympathies, fed by rumour and refugees. Even the remotest Britons must have been aware of Rome's long progress through Spain and Gaul toward their shores, generating deep dread and resentment against a seeming conspiracy to expunge Celtic independence.

Turning to Celtic and in particular to British society: what we have said about style and swagger applies only to the upper class. That this was an aristocratic culture can be seen from social differences in burial. The majority was poor, ill accoutred and with little occasion for feasting and bombast. This underclass would not have much to lose and perhaps something to gain from a Roman occupation. A third estate was the Druids, a name which may have meant ‘brotherhood of the oak':
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a priestly class in which religious knowledge, learning and literacy resided. Their presence is attested in Gaul and Britain only, with Britain as their heart and Mona (Anglesey) at the heart of Druid Britain. Anglesey, a fair island beyond wildest Wales, its legacy of magic stretching back to the Stone Age, was southern Britain's ultimate refuge. This was doubtless a place apart, a northern Mount Athos, though we must not press that parallel, since human sacrifice was conducted there and observances included the burning of gargantuan effigies of straw and wood, with live humans or sacrificial animals inside. Because of these practices and because the Romans saw it as a focus of resistance, Druidism had been outlawed since earliest contact. This was a tactical error for it would give a desperate edge to resistance in places where the cult was most entrenched.