56 2 THE INFLUENCES AND RESULTS OF 4 they developed were prolific in salt, iron, tin, and lead. They burned coal where wood was scanty in the north, and in one instance carried a mine under water.1 Under Julian, (A. D. 358), eight hundred vessels were employed in the corn-trade between the English coasts and the Roman colonies on the Rhine. Before Cæsar's time even the beech and the fir had been unknown in our forests;3 and the apple, the nut, and the raspberry were probably the chief of our native fruits. The better half of our common trees, from the cherry to the chestnut, are of Roman origin; the vine and the fig-tree were introduced, and maintained themselves; the pea, the radish, and other common vegetables were then added to the garden; and it is even possible that to Rome we owe the rose, the lily, and the pæony. The mule and pigeon followed the track of the legions. Yet a country life was not that to which the colonist generally inclined. He was rather a dweller in towns, a trader, and a builder, and he scattered cities broadcast over the island. The splendour of Roman remains attracted attention in the twelfth century, when the grass was growing over them, and generations had already quarried in them for homes. Above all, those numerous cities had been centres of Roman polity and law. These influences can hardly be overrated, nor can it be doubted that many of them remained, and even gathered 1 Bruce's Roman Wall, pp. 441, 442. 2 Zosimus, iii. 145. 3 Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. v. c. 12. The apple (afall), the nut (corenen), and the raspberry (afanen), have distinctly Keltic names; as also have the oak, the lime-tree, and the birch. The cherry, Pliny tells us, was introduced. Hist. Nat., lib. XV. s. 30. Roman names meet us for the pear (peran), the mulberry (mor), the laurel (llor), the chesnut (castan), the pine (pin), the poplar (poplysen), the pea (pys), the radish (rhuddigl), the cabbage (cawl), the parsley (perllys), and the flax (llin). 5 Welsh names," "mul" and "colomen." THE ROMAN OCCUPATION. 57 strength, where all seemed to be swept away. For good or for evil, England was henceforth a part of the European commonwealth of nations; sharing that commerce for want of which Ireland remained barbarous; sharing the alliances for disregarding which the Saxon dynasty perished; penetrated by ideas which have connected the people in every historical struggle, crusades and French wars, with the sympathies and hopes of other men. CHAPTER IV. DECLINE OF THE ROMAN DOMINION. CAUSES OF WEAKNESS IN THE EMPIRE. REVOLT OF CARAUSIUS. CONSTANTIUS AND CONSTANTINE. THE ROMAN WALL. REVOLTS OF MAXIMUS AND CONSTANTINE. BRITAIN LEFT TO ITSELF. D URING the third century the Roman empire was fast breaking up. It had succeeded in weakening the nationality of its subject peoples, but it had not moulded them into citizens; they were provincials, not Romans. In fact, it was no object of the emperors to revive traditions of the Republic, or excite an enthusiasm for the old Roman greatness that must have ended in the desire of the old Roman liberties. Every institution of the empire tended to replace the idea of a common country, by the phantom of a central authority, against which combination should be impossible. Citizenship, indeed, was forced upon all, and the old distinctions of separate franchises were annulled; but then citizenship, in the third century, meant only the obligation to pay taxes, and not the right to make laws, or to hold office. Foreign officers led the legions, foreign consuls assembled the senate, and the emperor himself was often sprung from the obscure blood of races1 whom 1 The parents of Diocletian were Dalmatian slaves; those of Probus, Illyrian peasants. Maximin was a INCONGRUOUS SOCIAL STRUCTURE. 59 the old Roman patricians had only considered fit for the amphitheatre. Above all, society was split up into several castes. A small aristocracy of office, and a pariah population of slaves were the two extremes. Between these, as we have seen, came the decuriones, whose only duty was to produce wealth, and pay taxes on it to the treasury. That these men might neither be soldiers nor Christian priests,' except by express permission, implied in itself that the empire did not desire its citizens either to carry arms or to take other service than its own. Inaction and timidity were therefore forced upon the middle classes, at the very moment when the Goth was at the gates of the empire. Meanwhile, the legions were a separate society; recruited from the few country districts of Italy where a peasantry still remained: but still more from military colonies and from barbarous tribes. They were subject only to their own tribunals, and encouraged by these in a soldatesque license against civilians; the very title of the head of the state, imperator or general, seemed to justify the pretensions of the troops to supersede the senate and name their sovereign. Under these circumstances, it is not wonderful if Britain, the most remote and military province of the west, was the one in which pretenders to the crown' were most frequently set up by the legions. Already, in A.D. 277, Probus had thought it expedient to settle Burgundian and Vandal colonies in the island, with a view of dividing the forces of any future revolt, yet only ten 1 Guizot's Civilisation en France, Leçon 2ème. Cf. Cod., lib. xii. tit. 35; xi. tit. 46. If they evaded the prohibition, "Per xxx et innumeros annos presbyteri quidam gradu func ti vel ministri ecclesiæ, retrahuntur munere sacro et curiæ deputantur.” Amb., Epist. xl. p. 29. 2 "Britannia fertilis provincia tyrannorum." St. Jerome, epist. 43. 60 REVOLT OF CARAUSIUS. years later, under Diocletian, Carausius, a Menapian or Belgo-German by birth, had almost succeeded in establishing an insular royalty. A sailor by profession, he had been entrusted with the defence of the coasts of Britain and North Gaul, against the Frisian pirates. But as he never overtook their fleets, until they had done the work of havoc, and never restored the plundered wealth to the provincials, it was thought he acted in concert with the enemy; and instructions were given from Rome to put him to death. Carausius heard of the orders in time to escape into Britain, assumed the purple, and usurped the empire. The Roman legion then in the island seems to have acquiesced sullenly in a revolution it could not defeat.' A more reliable army was constructed of a few auxiliary cohorts who were taken in detail and absorbed, and of foreign mercenaries, who flocked to serve under a countryman, and to enjoy the rich pay drained from the province. Even merchants from Gaul were drafted into the ranks. But the strength of the usurper was in his fleet, which commanded the British seas and hurled the imperial galleys back upon Gaul. Maximian was baffled for a time, and a peace was concluded which left the rebel in possession of Britain, and with the title of imperator. Carausius seems to have governed with great ability. He drove back the northern tribes, who were plundering Valentia; and bridled the country with seven forts along the lines of Antonine. He is commemorated in Irish legend as 1 I infer that the Roman soldiers did not support Carausius heartily, from the antithesis in the words of Eumenius,"occupatâ legione Romanâ. . . . solicitatis per spolia ipsarum provinciarum non mediocribus copiis barbarorum." Again, in the final battle against Allectus, scarcely any Roman by birth was slain. Eumenius Panegyricus, M. B., pp. lxvii. lxviii. 2 Nennius, p. 19. |