Not so Romanized? Tradition, reinvention or discovery in the study of Roman Britain

Abstract

Recent scholarship has claimed that the history of Roman Britain has been discussed in terms of ‘Romanization’ since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In fact, it is wrong to think that there is a single tradition in the understanding of Roman Britain. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Camden and his followers were primarily interested in the bringing of ‘civility’ to England, with only a minimal consciousness of material culture (coins, inscriptions and sites). Discussion of Roman Britain was already overshadowed by an emphasis on military identity, viewing Roman soldiers and civilian subjects as essentially separate, the latter little influenced by the former. Only in the later nineteenth century, and particularly in the work of Francis Haverfield, did an idea of cultural ‘Romanization’ find its way to the centre of scholarly discussions. Far from there being a single scholarly understanding of the history of Roman Britain, accounts have been continually rewritten to reflect the nature of the relationship between the English and their empire.

Keywords:

• Archaeology
• civility
• inscription
• reinvention
• Romanized
• Romanization
• tradition

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Robin Osborne for the invitation to write this paper and for his helpful comments on an earlier draft. The argument has also been improved by the comments of Ann O'Connor, David Mattingly, Divya Tolia Kelly, Christina Unwin and an anonymous referee. I am grateful to Sheila Hingley (Palace Green Library, Durham) for assistance with the illustrations. Phil Freeman has helped me in fundamental ways to develop my ideas about the topics covered in this paper. AHRC and Durham University provided support for the research leave that enabled me to complete its research and writing.

Notes

1 See, for example, Kahn (1997: 162) for discussion of the deep influence of Rome on Cymbeline in Shakespeare's play.

2 William Slatyer used the word ‘Romanized’ to refer to ‘Agricola's policy to haue had Brittons brought up after the Latines fashion, so to haue them made more tractable, and leaue their rudeness’ (1621: 163). Edmund Boulton (1624: ch. 2) also used ‘Romanised’ to refer to the comments of Tacitus in Agricola (21). A search for references to ‘Romanized’ and ‘Romanised’ in Early English Books Online (eebo.chadwyck.com/) located no additional significant seventeenth-century uses of the term in the context of the adoption of Latin fashions. Multiple uses of the word in this online database relate to the religious authority of Rome.

3 Togidubnus is likely to be a more appropriate reading of the name of the ancient British leader who has usually been titled Cogidubnus (Braund 1996: 108–12).

4 Various nineteenth-century authors did use ‘Romanized’ in accounts of Roman discoveries, including Buckman and Newmarch (1850: 8–9), Coote (1878), Scarth (1883), Windle (1897) and Wright (1852), but they adopted it sparingly and often to address settlers from other provinces rather than indigenous Britons (Hingley 2008). Hoare's use of the term (1810: 85–6) is of more interest (Hingley 2008), but will not be discussed here.

5 The OED dates Whitney's use of the word to 1876, but Guy de la Bédoyère has pointed out to me that the book was actually published in 1867.

6 Mommsen (1885: 176). For the context of Mommsen's writings on the Roman provinces, see Dyson (2006: 91–2), Freeman (1997: 29–35) and Wulff Alonso (1991).

7 Other Western Europeans and North Americans, who suppose that their ancestors had in the ancient past been incorporated and civilized by Rome, have drawn upon comparable ideas.