Caesar's landing in Kent in 55 b.c. is a fairly traditional jumping off point for a history of Roman Britain. Yet from the first words of Chapter 1, it is clear that M. and S. are attempting something new: ‘First reaction: numbness, and the shock of the ice-cold sea …’. The stated purpose of the book is to ‘put people back at the heart of the story’ of Roman Britain (p. 7). With this in mind, each chapter opens with a fictionalised reconstruction, beginning with the eagle bearer who leapt into the sea (or was perhaps ‘encouraged’ to leap) in that first chaotic Roman landing, finally persuading the reluctant legionaries to follow suit. A more conventional historical outline of the events follows, but the emphasis on personal experience remains. It is made clear from the outset that the book is aimed at the well-informed general reader, rather than an academic audience. As such, it provides a wonderful introduction to the rise and fall of Britannia through the personal stories of the men and women who shaped events, as M. and S. grapple to understand their motivations, ambitions and desires.
The third collaboration between M. and S., this book is broader in scope than their previous works, which focussed on the events of two important years in Roman history (ad 410: the Year that Shook Rome and 31 bc: Antony, Cleopatra, and the Year that Shook Egypt). This book traces the history of Britannia from Caesar's first expeditions to the departure of the legions and the beginnings of the Saxon conquest. Many works have trodden the same historical ground, among them P. Salway's excellent Roman Britain (1981), but the imaginative and personal perspective provided by M. and S. is refreshing.
M. and S. draw on a variety of sources. The works of contemporary historians, biographers and geographers stand alongside evidence from art, inscriptions and archaeology, including recent finds reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The examples drawn from coinage (such as Carausius' attempts to legitimise his claim to the title of Augustus) are particularly compelling. Archaeological debates, and asides on topics such as ‘Augustus’ abortive expeditions to Britain' (p. 37) or ‘The abandonment of the Antonine Wall’ (p. 141), are given in short thematic boxes separated from the main text. The volume is copiously illustrated with well-selected maps, figures and colour plates. All classical sources are well-referenced in the endnotes (not always the case in popular books), and there is a lengthy bibliography of both original and secondary sources to allow the interested reader to explore further. There are two useful appendices: a timeline, and a glossary of administrative terms and titles. Although a minor and understandable omission, it might have been useful to include a list of the major historical characters. Without explicit guidance, the newcomer could easily be forgiven, for example, for confusing the indigenous leaders Togodumnus and Togidubnus.
The book is at its best when it explores the potential of dramatic and imaginative reconstructions, using historical sources to imagine the personal experience of the characters involved. We are told eloquently, for example, of the dramatic events leading to Constantine's accession: his breathless ride across Europe from the court of Galerius to his father's side in Boulogne, the severity of the subsequent campaign in northern Britain, and how he was acclaimed emperor by the troops in York after his father's death. The story of Constantine is an excellent example of M. and S.'s careful handling of discrepancies in the literary sources. They deal explicitly with the varying accounts, exploring the reasons for the differences whilst at the same time looking for the most likely factual sequence of events.
Through this discursive narrative form, and a willingness to explore a variety of possible avenues, M. and S. are able to explore alternative interpretations and motivations. Nevertheless, the history is largely in line with conventional thought. The format perhaps makes it harder to consider the cases of individuals such as the Gallic leader Commius, about whom we know very little. M. and S. follow the traditional view which sees Commius escaping from his one-time ally Caesar in 51 b.c. to rule as a ‘renegade’ king in Britain, even though recent reappraisals of Commius' gold coinage (see J. Creighton, Britannia [2006]) suggest that in fact Commius may have been ruling as a Roman client king. Such individuals are particularly hard to profile in a book such as this, but thankfully the majority of the historical characters are better attested in the sources.
These characters are not all Roman, but they are almost exclusively powerful men: indigenous rulers, emperors, governors, generals, or other members of the imperial administration. Freed from a more restrictive traditional framework, M. and S. explore the wider careers of these individuals: their rise to power, changing fortunes, and trials and successes in campaigns or government overseas. This helps to place the history of Britannia in its wider imperial context without losing the focus of the story. It is this strong narrative framework and highly accessible style which sets the book apart from works of similar scope, such as Birley's The Roman Government of Britain (2005). Nevertheless, although unconventional in its approach, this is still a history of Great Men, the story of a province told through the prism of their lives. M. and S. do attempt to point out the important role of ‘lost’ historical actors such as Cnaius Sentius (p. 61, mentioned fleetingly in Eutropius' ‘Breviarium’, 7.13.2), but the book remains in this sense a largely traditional history.
On this topic, it would be difficult not to talk about women. M. and S. mention work on ‘the lives of [Britannia's] women’ (p. 7), referencing L. Allason-Jones' (1989) classic Women in Roman Britain (revised edn. 2005), and state that they aim to tell the story of the province ‘through the lives of men and women set in a single narrative’ (p. 10). This is a welcome approach, as women can often be notably absent from conventional Roman histories. Nevertheless, achieving such balance remains a challenge, owing largely to the nature of the evidence. Sixteen women are named in the book, compared with over 150 men. The majority of the women are brief name-checks of wives and daughters, though a few are better covered, including Boudicca and Cartimandua, indigenous leaders who chose very different paths. A few Roman women are touched on in more detail, for example Plotina, Sabina and Julia Domna, although only Plotina is granted an active political role, in the possibility that she may have orchestrated the selection of Hadrian as her husband Trajan's heir.
More interesting is the incorporation of women known only from archaeologically recovered inscriptions: the letter from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina, stationed with their families up on Hadrian's wall, or the votive offering from Iamcilla in the Water Newton treasure, with its pagan overtones in an ostensibly Christian context. The benefits of drawing on such a wide variety of sources are apparent in the nuanced discussion of an additional female figure: Britannia, the emblem of the province. Her changing portrayal is traced through sculpture, literature and depictions on coinage, as she is transformed from trampled captive, to matriarch and warrior queen, to a wild, Oceanic barbarian as the cohesion of the Empire came under increasing pressure at the start of the fifth century. The imaginative narrative framework had a greater potential to explore a less exclusively masculine perspective, but M. and S.'s attempts are a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, this is not intended to be a subaltern history. Accounts focussed on the inhabitants of the province, rather than exclusively their rulers, are provided by two other excellent books: D. Mattingly's An Imperial Possession (2006) which deals with ‘discrepant experience’ of the Roman Empire, and J. Creighton's Britannia (2006). This volume instead presents a new approach to a more conventional history. It is a valuable addition to the field, and sits comfortably alongside the works of Salway and Birley as an excellent general introduction to the history of Roman Britain.
