Valentinian III's mother Galla Placidia had died in 450. His sister Honoria may not have survived their mother by very long and never again appears in our sources. The emperor was only in his early thirties, but never became his own man. Influence at court shifted and there were new opportunities for ambitious men. At the same time, Aetius' position had become weaker. In recent years, even before the attack of Attila, he had been less able to recruit Huns to fight for him. While Attila was alive, Valentinian clearly needed his most powerful general to oppose the enemy invasions. Now that the Hun was dead, Aetius seemed less necessary. The general understood his new vulnerability and hoped to secure his position by arranging a marriage between his son and Valentinian's daughter Placidia. The emperor continued to resent Aetius and was encouraged to act by a wily senator named Petronius Maximus. In September 454 the general came to the palace at Ravenna for a meeting. During the discussion Valentinian and his eunuch chamberlain suddenly attacked Aetius with swords and hacked him to death. One of the emperor's advisers told him that he had cut off his right hand with his left. Yet the instigator Petronius was disappointed with the scale of his emperor's gratitude. Recruiting two members of Aetius' bodyguard, he arranged for them to murder Valentinian III on i6 March 455. Petronius Maximus then immediately declared himself emperor.34
18
Sunset on an Outpost of Empire
`The barbarians over the Rhine ... reduced the inhabitants of Britain and some of the Gallic peoples to such straits that they revolted from the Roman empire, no longer submitted to Roman law, and reverted to their native customs. The Britons, therefore, armed themselves and ran many risks to ensure their own safety and free their cities from the attacking barbarians.' - Zosimus, late fifth century.'
`However, the Romans never succeeded in recovering Britain, but it remained from that time on under tyrants.' - Procopius, mid late sixth century.
ometime after 446 Aetius was said to have received an appeal for aid from the Britons who were under attack from the Picts, Scots and other barbarians. They complained that `the barbarians push us back into the sea, the sea pushes us back into the barbarians; between these two kinds of death we are either drowned or slaughtered'. There had not been Roman governors in Britain for a generation, but the island was still clearly considered part of the empire in a general sense. Leading Britons obviously felt the same way, hence their appeal to the military commander of the west. In the event, Aetius had other priorities and sent no aid. Left to their own devices the British `councillors' agreed with a local warlord or king - literally a `proud tyrant' - to hire Saxon mercenaries. These beat back the northern barbarians, but then turned against their employers, sacking towns and forcing many to flee across the sea. Eventually, a nobleman named Ambrosius Aurelianus, described as the `last of the Roman race', emerged as leader of the survivors. The Britons won some victories, culminating in a great triumph at Badon Hill.'
The story is first told by the British cleric Gildas sometime in the sixth century. He provides no dates, although the impression is that this account covered a considerable period - decades at the very least. He does mention that the initial appeal was to a man who was three times consul, and this was only true of Aetius from 446-454. Actually, Gildas calls him Agitio, but a later version of the story was surely right to correct this to Aetius. Yet the mistake does raise the question of just how much Gildas actually knew of events a century or more before his lifetime. He was also not writing a history and this passage comes from the introduction to a bitter attack on the `tyrants' and priests of his own day. Literary sources for fifth-century Britain are very sparse and were almost all written long after the events they describe. Some facts may be accurate, others confused and perhaps merged with myth, or deliberately distorted by later propaganda. Separating these strands is certainly not easy, and a few scholars would say that it was altogether impossible.4
Yet there is nothing inherently implausible about Gildas' account. The Saxons - a term that was used at the time to embrace a range of different groups including the Angles, Jutes and Frisians - did end up dominating much of what would become England by the late sixth century. Other sources suggest that there was serious conflict with them in the middle years of the fifth century. That some Saxons were hired to fight against other `barbarians' and later came into conflict with their employers was a familiar enough tale in the Roman world at this period. We also know that significant numbers of Britons fled to north-western Gaul, so that in time Armorica became known as Brittany.'
Dates are rare in the sources, and often both they and some of the accompanying details must be suspect. There is archaeological evidence for the period, but even by normal standards this presents considerable problems of interpretation. As a result, radically different accounts of life and politics in fifth-century Britain continue to be produced. On the fringes of this there is the constant flow of material about Arthur, much of it aimed at the more popular end of the market and extending into fiction and film. This varies from quite serious history to highly fanciful studies. Gildas never mentions Arthur and it is a later source that associates him with the victory at Badon Hill. It is better to begin trying to understand the Britain of this era before any attempt to describe an `historical' Arthur. Recently, there has been much more emphasis by academics on placing events in Britain within the wider context of the history of the Western Empire. This has proved fruitful, although if anything has added to the variety of interpretations of the same evidence. Here the emphasis will be the other way around, looking at what the experience in Britain tells us about the last years of the Western Empire.'
Britannia
Britain was one of the last major additions to the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar had landed in the south-east in 55 Bc and returned with a larger force in the following year. There was no permanent occupation. The expeditions were huge propaganda successes, but achieved little in practical terms and did not result in the creation of a province. Trade with Britain increased massively in the following decades and there was some diplomatic contact. A string of royal refugees fleeing the power struggles within and between the tribes of south-eastern Britain arrived at the imperial court seeking support. Augustus decided against intervening, feeling that the cost of occupation would be greater than any likely profit.
In 43, the emperor Claudius was desperate for military glory to cement his tenuous hold on power. Therefore he ordered a massive expedition to invade Britain and even travelled to the island himself. The tribes of the south-east were quickly overcome or surrendered. Progress elsewhere was slower, and it is not at all clear just how much of Britain the Romans planned to conquer. In 6o they came close to losing the territory they did control. Queen Boudica of the Iceni rebelled and was joined by many other previously pro-Roman tribes. The three largest cities of the province - Londinium (London), Camulodunum (Colchester) and Verulamium (St Albans) - were all sacked. Finally a decisive battle, followed by ruthless punitive action, broke the back of the rebellion and it was never repeated. Over the next decades more conquests were made in the west and north. What would become Wales and the north of England were occupied only after heavy fighting. In 84 a Roman army won a victory somewhere in Scotland, while elements of the fleet circumnavigated Britain and proved that it was an island.7
Claudius sent four legions and a strong force of auxiliaries to invade Britain. A generation later the garrison was reduced to three legions, although the number of auxiliaries seems to have increased. One estimate of the garrison of Britain in the middle of the second century places this as high as 50,000 men, although this rather assumes that all units attested in the province were there simultaneously. Even if the actual garrison was smaller, it was certainly a substantial part of the entire Roman army - somewhere between one-tenth and one-eighth. Some troops were stationed in the west, especially in Wales, but the bulk of the provincial garrison was deployed to the north. It was also in the north that a series of frontier defences were created, befor
e the main line settled permanently on Hadrian's Wall. All of this was immensely costly. It was also dangerous for such a large army to be given to a single governor, and it was no coincidence that one of the challengers for the throne in 193 was the legate of Britain. Septimius Severus' campaigns against the Caledonians may have permitted a substantial reduction in troop numbers. Barrack blocks built in the forts of Hadrian's Wall in the following years all appear to have been about half the size of those in earlier periods. It is quite likely that centuries in these units were halved in size from eighty to forty men, although they still remained under the command of a centurion. If this occurred more generally, then the size of the army in Britain may have been reduced by as much as 50 per cent. The provincial command was also divided.'
Even if the garrison in the third century was substantially smaller than in earlier periods, it was still large and costly. Britain's mineral resources were exploited from very soon after the conquest. The island also produced a substantial surplus of grain, and a large part of this was either from imperial estates or taken by the state as tax, so that British wheat helped to feed the troops stationed in the Rhineland. Even so, it is doubtful that the profits of occupying Britain ever covered the expense of maintaining government and garrison there. Over time just under thirty cities were created. Most were local capitals and administrative centres for groups based around the old tribes. Some of the cities, notably London, Cirencester, Silchester and St Albans (Verulamium) were large and in due course gained basilicas, theatres, amphitheatres and bath houses. No circus with chariot racing was known in Britain, until one was discovered in 2004 at St Albans. In the fourth century all major cities almost certainly did build large churches - a basilica-type building that may well be a cathedral has been identified in London. Other capitals were more modest and it is fair to say that none acquired the splendour of so many cities in other provinces, especially those nearer the Mediterranean. In many areas there were no cities and only what are known as `small towns' by archaeologists. Usually lying on the main roads, these communities acted as market towns and housed various local industries.'
Many British aristocrats sided with the Romans from the beginning and did very well out of the conquest. The grand villa or palace complex at Fishbourne was built in the first century, most probably as a residence for the client ruler Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, who was described as a `great king'. It was normal Roman practice to win over the leaders of conquered peoples, and prominent British families soon gained citizenship and a Latin education. However, it does seem to have taken the British nobility a very long time to break into the higher levels of imperial service. Many built villas and grand town houses, but the ethos of civic life so typical of other provinces was less developed in Britain and it seems to have been rarer for them to spend money on major endowments for their communities. Britain has produced markedly fewer inscriptions than most other sizeable provinces, and a large part of those that do survive are military. In many areas the focus of life remained essentially rural. Much of the population continued to live on farmsteads and in small villages. Some changed to more Roman styles of buildings, but others continued to live in the traditional - and highly functional - roundhouses familiar from the Iron Age.'°
Geographically, Britain was on the very margins of the empire - indeed, of the world as far as Greeks and Romans were concerned. There was contact with Ireland, but the Roman official line was that it would not be worth the expense of conquest and occupation. Britain required a large garrison and never quite developed as much or in the same way as some of the provinces nearer the heart of the empire. It might therefore be tempting to see its conquest as a failure, a costly burden imposed on the empire by the vanity and urgent need for glory of Claudius. This would be a mistake. Not all provinces developed identically, and Britain remained under Roman rule for three and a half centuries during which time life there changed profoundly. If there was a significant drop in troop numbers in the third century, then this may have brought the province closer to making a profit for the empire. If it was not the wealthiest province in the empire, there was still considerable prosperity for a wide section of the population. The recent claim that `for every winner under Roman rule, there were a hundred losers' is very hard to substantiate, and the same author himself notes that `it does not follow that life would have been any better without Rome.' It does seem true that the gap between richest and poorest widened. Then as now the fact that some of the population became substantially wealthier does not automatically mean that the lifestyle of the remainder declined or that they became poorer in real terms. The sheer quantity of finds on virtually every British site from the Roman period compared to Iron Age or postRoman occupation makes it clear that many objects were far more readily available to the general population."
Willingly or not, the population of Roman Britain accepted Roman rule. There was some armed resistance, particularly in northern Britain, but nothing to unite the communities elsewhere in opposition to imperial government. Britain seems to have been spared the worst of the disruptions of the third century, if only because it was physically harder for large armies to cross the seas to reach it. Even if numbers were less than at their height in the second century, there were still significant forces stationed on the island. This, and the tendency for emperors to see Britain's problems as distant and rarely urgent, made it a fertile ground for usurpers. Constantine the Great was by far the most successful, but all of the others also had ambitions beyond simply controlling Britain itself and all took troops across the Channel. This weakened the provincial garrison, but did mean that, with the exception of the suppression of Allectus, all of the campaigns in the resulting civil wars were fought outside Britain.
The End
By the end of the fourth century Britain formed a diocese under a vicarius based in London and responsible to the praetorian prefect. The diocese was subdivided into either four or five provinces - the existence of a fifth is uncertain. Valentinian I formed a province named Valentia after himself, but it is unclear whether this involved the creation of a new province or the renaming of an existing one. The Notitia Dignitatum lists three military commands in Britain. The Comes Britanniae commanded a force of comitatenses consisting of three infantry and six cavalry units. The proportion of foot to mounted regiments is unusual, even if the former were normally larger than the latter. It suggests a force tailored to chase small bands of raiders rather than fight massed battles. This small field force is usually seen as a late creation, perhaps by Stilicho, given recorded cases of despatching field army units from Gaul to deal with problems in Britain during the fourth century. The Dux Britanniarum commanded units of the limitanei, mostly stationed in the north and including the garrisons of some named forts on Hadrian's Wall. Finally, there was the `Count of the Saxon Shore' (Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britannias) controlling limitanei based around the east and south coasts from Brancaster, near the Wash, to Portchester, not far from modern Portsmouth. One survey estimated the maximum total strength of these troops as 20,000, but guessed that it was actually lower at nearer 12,000. As always, the real number of effectives at any one time is likely to have been substantially less than the army's paper strength.12
The garrison of Britain created three usurpers in 406-407. There were clearly still enough troops for the last of these, Constantine III, to cross into Gaul and gain control of a large part of the Western Empire. He must have taken some, perhaps most, of the British army with him and it is unlikely that any of these troops returned. This can only have weakened the defences of Britain, just like previous, ultimately unsuccessful usurpations. The garrison was weaker, but opinion is divided over precisely what threats it faced. No one would dispute that there were enemies to the north. The Picts - the name was most likely derived from `picti' or `painted men' because it was believed that they commonly wore tattoos - seem to have emerged when the old Caledonian tribes became a little more united. To their west were the Scotti, who are
likely to have migrated from Ireland and would eventually give their name to Scotland. Both peoples had launched serious raids into the British provinces during the fourth century. Many of the attacks came by sea along the coast, and there seems also to have been some forays made by the tribes still living in Ireland. The sixteen-year-old St Patrick was taken as a slave by just such a group of raiders, although it is unclear whether this took place before or after the end of direct Roman rule."
The name `Saxon Shore' is only attested in the Notitia Dignitatum. Ammianus mentions the Saxons launching raids against Britain in 367, as part of a simultaneous onslaught by the Picts, Scots and also the Franks. Otherwise there is little explicit evidence for Saxon raiding on the coast of Britain, unlike frequent mention of their attacks on the northern coast of Gaul. This may simply be because the sources are much better for Gaul and extremely sparse for Britain. A literal reading of the accounts of Carausius' operations against pirates in the English Channel would suggest only attacks on Gaul, although raids on the British coast are usually assumed. If the Saxon Shore was named after the enemy it was supposed to defend against, then this would make it unique in Roman history. On the other hand, the suggestion that it was named because large numbers of allied Saxon troops were stationed or settled there is even less convincing and unsupported by any evidence.14
Some have questioned the ability of raiders from what is now northern Germany and Denmark to reach Britain. Far less is known about the sea-going vessels of the tribes in this period than the ships of the Viking age. The few to survive archaeologically may only have been intended for inland waterways. None have sails and it has been claimed that their keels were too small to have supported a strong enough mast to mount one. It would have been possible for a group of warriors to row to Britain and return with any spoils, but it would certainly have been difficult. More probably, we have simply not yet discovered an example of a sailing ship intended for longer voyages. A carving of a boat with a sail has been found in Denmark and it does seem inherently unlikely that the peoples of the area never adopted this technology. It is harder to say how well a shallow-keeled boat would perform under sail, but it is important to remember that fighting at sea was always rare. These vessels were only ever meant to deliver and carry off a group of warriors."
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower Page 41