The Romanization of Roman Britain Part 2

[Footnote 1: _Vict. Hist. Somerset_, i. 213-14. A few Romano-British houses at Silchester (_in insula_ xiv. (1), see _Archaeologia_, lv. 221) and at Caerwent (house No. 3, see _Arch._ lvii, plate 40) do bear some resemblance to the Mediterranean type, as I have observed in _Archaeol.

Anzeiger_, 1902, p. 105. But they stand alone. Similarly, parallels may be drawn between Pompeian wall-paintings of houses and certain 'villa'

remains in western Germany, as at Nennig; see Rostowzew, _Archaeol.

Jahrbuch_, 1904, p. 103. But these again seem to me the exception.]

The point is made clearer by the character of the internal fittings, for these are wholly borrowed from Italian sources. If we cannot find in the Romano-British house either _atrium_ or _impluvium_, _tablinum_ or peristyle, such as we find regularly in Italy, we have none the less the painted wall-plaster (Fig. 11) and mosaic floors, the hypocausts and bath-rooms of Italy. The wall-paintings and mosaics may be poorer in Britain, the hypocausts more numerous; the things themselves are those of the south. No mosaic, I believe, has ever come to light in the whole of Roman Britain which represents any local subject or contains any uncla.s.sical feature. The usual ornamentation consists either of mythological scenes, such as Orpheus charming the animals, or Apollo chasing Daphne, or Actaeon rent by his hounds, or of geometrical devices like the so-called Asiatic shields which are purely of cla.s.sical origin.[1] Perhaps we may detect in Britain a special fondness for the cable or guilloche pattern, and we may conjecture that from Romano-British mosaics it pa.s.sed in a modified form into Later Celtic art. But the ornament itself, whether in single border or in many-stranded panels of plaitwork, occurs not rarely in Italy as well as in thoroughly Romanized lands like southern Spain and southern Gaul and Africa, and also in Greece and Asia Minor. It is a cla.s.sical, not a British pattern.

[Footnote 1: It has been suggested that these mosaics were princ.i.p.ally laid by itinerant Italians. The idea is, of course, due to modern a.n.a.logies. It does not seem quite impossible, since the work is in a sense that of an artist, and the pay might have been high enough to attract stray decorators of good standing from the Continent. However, no evidence exists to prove this or even to make it probable. The mosaics of Roman Britain, with hardly an exception, are such as might easily be made in a province which was capable of exporting skilled workmen to Gaul (p. 57). They have also the appearance of imitative work copied from patterns rather than of designs sketched by artists. It is most natural to suppose that, like the Gaulish Samian ware--which is imitative in just the same fashion--they are local products.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11. RESTORATION OF PAINTED PATTERN ON WALL-PLASTER AT SILCHESTER. Showing a purely conventional style based on cla.s.sical models. (P. 34.) (_From Archaeologia._)]

Nor is the Roman fashion of house-fittings confined to the mansions of the wealthy. Hypocausts and painted stucco, copied, though crudely, from Roman originals, have been discovered in poor houses and in mean villages.[1] They formed part, even there, of the ordinary environment of life. They were not, as an eminent writer[2] calls them, 'a delicate exotic varnish.' Indeed, I cannot recognize in our Romano-British remains the contrast alleged by this writer 'between an exotic culture of a higher order and a vernacular culture of a primitive kind'. There were in Britain splendid houses and poor ones. But a continuous gradation of all sorts of houses and all degrees of comfort connects them, and there is no discernible breach in the scale. Throughout, the dominant element is the Roman provincial fashion which is borrowed from Italy.

[Footnote 1: R.C. h.o.a.re, _Ancient Wilts, Roman Aera_, p. 127: 'On some of the highest of our downs I have found stuccoed and painted walls, as well as hypocausts, introduced into the rude settlements of the Britons.' This is fully borne out by General Pitt-Rivers' discoveries near Rushmore, to be mentioned below. Similar rude hypocausts were opened some years ago in my presence at Eastbourne.]

[Footnote 2: Vinogradoff, _Growth of the Manor_, p. 39.]

We find Roman influence even in the most secluded villages of the upland region. At Din Lligwy, on the northeast coast of Anglesea, recent excavation (Fig. 12) has uncovered the ruins of a village enclosure about three-quarters of an acre in extent, containing round and square huts or rooms, with walls of roughly coursed masonry and roofs of tile.

Scattered up and down in it lay hundreds of fragments of Samian and other Roman or Romano-British pottery and a far smaller quant.i.ty of ruder pieces, a few bits of Roman gla.s.s, some Roman coins of the period A.D. 250-350, various iron nails and hooks, querns, bones, and so forth.[1] The place lies on the extreme edge of the British province and on an island where no proper Roman occupation can be detected, while its ground-plan shows little sign of a Roman influence. Yet the smaller objects and perhaps also the squareness of one or two rooms show that even here, in the later days of the Empire, the products of Roman civilization and the external fabric of Roman provincial life were present and almost predominant.

[Footnote 1: E. Neil Baynes, _Arch. Cambrensis_, 1908, pp. 183-210.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12. NATIVE VILLAGE AT DIN LLIGWY, ANGLESEA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13. LATE CELTIC METAL WORK, NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM (1/3).

(_Boss of shield, of perhaps first century B.C., found in the Thames at Wandsworth, a little before 1850._)]

CHAPTER V

ROMANIZATION IN ART

Art shows a rather different picture. Here we reach definite survivals of Celtic traditions. There flourished in Britain before the Claudian conquest a vigorous native art, chiefly working in metal and enamel, and characterized by its love for spiral devices and its fantastic use of animal forms. This art--La Tene or Late Celtic or whatever it be styled--was common to all the Celtic lands of Europe just before the Christian era, but its vestiges are particularly clear in Britain. When the Romans spread their dominion over the island, it almost wholly vanished. For that we are not to blame any evil influence of this particular Empire. All native arts, however beautiful, tend to disappear before the more even technique and the neater finish of town manufactures. The process is merely part of the honour which a coherent civilization enjoys in the eyes of country folk. Disraeli somewhere describes a Syrian lady preferring the French polish of a western boot to the jewels of an eastern slipper. With a similar preference the British Celt abandoned his national art and adopted the Roman provincial fashion.

He did not abandon it entirely. Little local manufactures of pottery or fibulae testify to its sporadic survival. Such are the brooches with Celtic affinities made (as it seems) near Brough (Verterae) in Westmorland, and the New Forest urns with their curious leaf ornament (Fig. 14),[1] and above all the Castor ware from the banks of the Nen, five miles west of Peterborough. We may briefly examine this last instance.[2] At Castor and Chesterton, on the north and south sides of the river, were two Romano-British settlements of comfortable houses, furnished in genuine Roman style. Round them were extensive pottery works. The ware, or at least the most characteristic of the wares, made in these works is generally known as Castor or Durobrivian ware. Castor was not, indeed, its only place of manufacture. It was produced freely in northern Gaul, and possibly elsewhere in Britain.[3] But Castor is the best known and best attested manufacturing centre, and the easiest for us to examine. The ware directly embodies the Celtic tradition.

It is based, indeed, on cla.s.sical elements, foliated scrolls, hunting scenes, and occasionally mythological representations (Figs. 15, 16). But it recasts these elements with the vigour of a true art and in accordance with its special tendencies. Those fantastic animals with strange out-stretched legs and backturned heads and eager eyes; those tiny scrolls scattered by way of decoration above or below them; the rude beading which serves, not ineffectively, for ornament or for dividing line; the suggestion of returning spirals; the evident delight of the artist in plant and animal forms and his neglect of the human figure--all these are Celtic. When we turn to the rarer scenes in which man is specially prominent--a hunt, or a gladiatorial show, or Hesione fettered naked to a rock and Hercules saving her from the monster[4]--the vigour fails (Fig. 17). The artist could not or would not cope with the human form. His nude figures, Hesione and Hercules, and his clothed gladiators are not fantastic but grotesque. They retain traces of Celtic treatment, as in Hesione's hair. But the general treatment is Roman. The Late Celtic art is here sinking into the general conventionalism of the Roman provinces.

[Footnote 1: For the New Forest ware see the _Victoria Hist. of Hampshire_, i. 326, and _Archaeol. Journal_, x.x.x. 319. The Brough brooches have been pointed out by Sir A.J. Evans, whose work on Late Celtic Art is the foundation of all that has since been written on it, but have not been discussed in detail.]

[Footnote 2: _Victoria Hist. of Northamptonshire_, i. 206-13; Artis, _Durobrivae of Antoninus_ (fol. 1828).]

[Footnote 3: For the Belgic 'Castor ware' see the Belgian _Bulletin des commissions royales d'art et d'archeologie_ (pa.s.sim); H. du Cleuziou, _Poterie gauloise_ (Paris, 1872), Fig. 173, from Cologne; _Sammlung Niessen_ (Koln, 1911), plates lx.x.xvii, lx.x.xviii; Brongniart, _Traite des arts ceram._, pl. xxix (Ghent and Rheinzabern). M. Salomon Reinach tells me that the ware is not infrequent in the departments of the valleys of the Seine, Marne, and Oise. The Colchester gladiator's urn mentioning the Thirtieth Legion (C.R. Smith, _Coll. Ant._, iv. 82, C. vii. 1335, 3) may well be of Rhenish manufacture.]

[Footnote 4: This, or the corresponding scene of Perseus and Andromeda, is a favourite with artists in northern Gaul and Britain. It occurs on tombstones at Chester (_Grosvenor Museum Catalogue_, No. 138) and Trier (Hettner, _Die rom. Steindenkmaler zu Trier_, p. 206), and Arlon (Wiltheim, _Luciliburgensia_, plate 57), and the Igel monument. For other instances see Roscher's _Lexikon Mythol._, under 'Hesione'.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14. FRAGMENTS OF NEW FOREST POTTERY WITH LEAF PATTERNS. (_From Archaeologia_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15. URNS FROM CASTOR, NOW IN PETERBOROUGH MUSEUM.

(P. 41)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16. HUNTING SCENES FROM CASTOR WARE (ARTIS, DUROBRIVAE). (SEE PAGE 41.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17. HERCULES RESCUING HESIONE. (_From a piece of Castor ware found in Northamptonshire._ C.R. Smith, _Coll. Ant._, vol.

iv, Pl. XXIV.)]

A second instance may be cited, this time from sculpture, of important British work which is Celtic, or at least un-Roman (Frontispiece). The Spa at Bath (Aquae Sulis) contained a stately temple to Sul or Sulis Minerva, G.o.ddess of the waters. The pediment of this temple, partly preserved by a lucky accident and unearthed in 1790, was carved with a trophy of arms--in the centre a round wreathed shield upheld by two Victories, and below and on either side a helmet, a standard (?), and a cuira.s.s. It is a cla.s.sical group, such as occurs on other Roman reliefs.

But its treatment breaks clean away from the cla.s.sical. The sculptor placed on the shield a Gorgon's head, as suits alike Minerva and a shield. But he gave to the Gorgon a beard and moustache, almost in the manner of a head of Fear, and he wrought its features with a fierce virile vigour that finds no kin in Greek or Roman art. I need not here discuss the reasons which may have led him to add the male attributes to a properly female type. For our present purpose the important fact is that he could do it. Here is proof that, once at least, the supremacy of the dominant conventional art of the Empire could be rudely broken down.[1]

[Footnote 1: For the details of the temple and pediment see _Vict. Hist.

Somerset_, i. 229 foll., and references given there. I have discussed the artistic problem on pp. 235 and 236.]

A third example, also from sculpture, is supplied by the Corbridge Lion, found among the ruins of Corstopitum in Northumberland in 1907 (Fig.

18). It is a sculpture in the round showing nearly a life-sized lion standing above his prey. The scene is common in provincial Roman work, and not least in Gaul and Britain. Often it is connected with graves, sometimes (as perhaps here) it served for the ornament of a fountain.

But if the scene is common, the execution of it is not. Artistically, indeed, the piece is open to criticism. The lion is not the ordinary beast of nature. His face, the pose of his feet, the curl of his tail round his hind leg, are all untrue to life. The man who carved him knew perhaps more of dogs than lions. But he fashioned a living animal.

Fantastic and even grotesque as it is, his work possesses a wholly uncla.s.sical fierceness and vigour, and not a few observers have remarked when seeing it that it recalls not the Roman world but the Middle Ages.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Arch. Aeliana_, 1908, p. 205. I owe to Dr. Chalmers Mitch.e.l.l a criticism on the truthfulness of the sculpture.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18. THE CORBRIDGE LION. (P. 43.)]

These exceptions to the ruling Roman-provincial culture are probably commoner in Britain than in the Celtic lands across the Channel. In northern Gaul we meet no such vigorous semi-barbaric carving as the Gorgon and the Lion. At Trier or Metz or Arlon or Sens the sculptures are consistently cla.s.sical in style and feeling, and the value of this fact is none the less if (with some writers) we find special geographical reasons for the occurrence of certain of these sculptures.[1] Smaller objects tell much the same tale. In particular the bronze 'fibulae' of Roman Britain are peculiarly British. Their commonest varieties are derived from Celtic prototypes and hardly occur abroad. The most striking example of this is supplied by the enamelled 'dragon-brooches'. Both their design (Fig. 19) and their gorgeous colouring are Celtic in spirit; they occur not seldom in Britain; on the Continent only four instances have been recorded.[2] Here certainly Roman Britain is more Celtic than Gallia Belgica or the Rhine Valley.

Yet a complete survey of the brooches used in Roman Britain would show a large number of types which were equally common in Britain and on the Continent. Exceptions are always more interesting than rules--even in grammar. But the exceptions pa.s.s and the rules remain. The Castor ware and the Gorgon's head are exceptions. The rule stands that the material civilization of Britain was Roman. Except the Gorgon, every worked or sculptured stone at Bath follows the cla.s.sical conventions. Except the Castor and New Forest pottery, all the better earthenware in use in Britain obeys the same law. The kind that was most generally employed for all but the meaner purposes, was not Castor but Samian or _terra sigillata_.[3] This ware is singularly characteristic of Roman-provincial art. As I have said above, it is copied wholesale from Italian originals. It is purely imitative and conventional; it reveals none of that delight in ornament, that spontaneousness in devising decoration and in working out artistic patterns which can clearly be traced in Late Celtic work. It is simply cla.s.sical, in an inferior degree.

[Footnote 1: Michaelis, Loeschke and others a.s.sume an early intercourse between the Mosel basin and eastern Europe, and thereby explain both a statue in Pergamene style which was found at Metz and appears to have been carved there and also the Neumagen sculptures. As all these pieces were pretty certainly produced in Roman times, the early intercourse seems an inadequate cause. Moreover, Pergamene work, while rare in Italy, occurs in Aquitania and Africa, and may have been popular in the provinces.]

[Footnote 2: I have given a list in _Archaeologia Aeliana_, 1909, p.

420, to which four English and one foreign example have now to be added.

See also Curle, _Newstead_, p. 319, and R.A. Smith, _Proc. Soc. Ant.

Lond._, xxii. 61.]

[Footnote 3: I may record here a protest against the attempts made from time to time to dispossess the term 'Samian'. Nothing better has been suggested in its stead, and the word itself has the merit of perfect lucidity. Of the various subst.i.tutes suggested, 'Pseudo-Arretine' is clumsy, 'Terra Sigillata' is at least as incorrect, and 'Gaulish' covers only a part of the field (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Lond._, xxiii. 120).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19. 'DRAGON-BROOCHES' FOUND AT CORBRIDGE (1/1). (P.

44.)]

The contrast between this Romano-British civilization and the native culture which preceded it can readily be seen if we compare for a moment a Celtic village and a Romano-British village. Examples of each have been excavated in the south-west of England, hardly thirty miles apart.

The Celtic village is close to Glas...o...b..ry in Somerset. Of itself it is a small, poor place--just a group of pile dwellings rising out of a marsh, or (as it may then have been) a lake, and dating from the two centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.[1] Yet, poor as it was, its art is distinct. There one recognizes all that general delight in decoration and that genuine artistic instinct which mark Late Celtic work, while the technical details of the ornament, as, for example, the returning spiral, reveal their affinity with the same native fashion. On the other hand, no trace of cla.s.sical workmanship or design intrudes.

There has not been found anywhere in the village even a _fibula_ with a hinge instead of a spring, or of an Italian (as opposed to a Late Celtic) pattern. Turn now to the Romano-British villages excavated by General Pitt-Rivers at Woodcuts and Rotherley and Woodyates, eleven miles south-west of Salisbury, near the Roman road from Old Sarum (Sorbiodunum) to Dorchester in Dorset.[2] Here you may search in vain for vestiges of the native art or of that delight in artistic ornament which characterizes it. Everywhere the monotonous Roman culture meets the eye. To pa.s.s from Glas...o...b..ry to Woodcuts is like pa.s.sing from some old timbered village of Kent or Suss.e.x to the uniform streets of a modern city suburb. Life at Woodcuts had, no doubt, its barbaric side.

One writer who has discussed its character with a view to the present problem[3] comments, with evident distaste, on 'dwellings connected with pits used as storage rooms, refuse sinks, and burial places' and 'corpses crouching in un-Roman positions'. The first feature is not without its parallels in modern countries and it was doubtless common in ancient Italy. The second would be more significant if such skeletons occupied all or even the majority of the graves in these villages.

Neither feature really mars the broad result, that the material life was Roman. Perhaps the villagers knew little enough of the Roman civilization in its higher aspects. Perhaps they did not speak Latin fluently or habitually. They may well have counted among the less Romanized of the southern Britons. Yet round them too hung the heavy inevitable atmosphere of the Roman material civilization.

[Footnote 1: The Glas...o...b..ry village was excavated in and after 1892 at intervals; a full account of the finds is now being issued by Bulleid and Gray (_The Glas...o...b..ry Lake Village_, vol. i, 1911), with a preface by Dr. R. Munro. The finds themselves are mostly at Glas...o...b..ry.]

[Footnote 2: Described in four quarto volumes, _Excavations in Cranborne Chase, &c._, issued privately by the late General Pitt-Rivers, 1887-98.]