Roads in Britain, before the Romans, were not high in numbers and were decent at best. There were only few long trade routes and many roads just connected local fields and small towns. Britain before the Romans was very primitive as a culture. There were a few reasons why the Romans wanted to colonize Britain. Initially, when Caesar was the leader of the Romans, the reason why they wanted to invade Britain was because the British tribes were allies with Gaul.
Previously, when the Romans tried to take over Gaul , the British helped the Gauls fight against the Romans. Since Caesar did not want the British to help the Gauls, he stressed the prospective take over Britain. By the time the Romans actually had control of the country their emperor was Claudius. Claudius had invaded for two reasons the first being personal glorification. By taking over Britain , he would accomplish something that the previous three emperors did not do. Secondly, there were three sons of one of the pro-Roman leaders in Britain, and two of his sons were anti-Roman. The third was pro-Roman and sought help from Rome, allegedly to protect his inheritance. Later, the two anti-Roman brothers demanded the return of the third brother and the two brothers started to take over the land of another pro-Roman leader, Verica, in Britain.
Since Claudius wanted to protect Verica’s land, because they were allies, Claudius had a political reason to invade. When the Romans invaded Britain, they established a capital at Colchester. Using civilians and the military, the Romans ruled over Britain as a single province called Britannia. Up until 200 AD, the province had a governor and a senior senator who were responsible for the conquest and military occupation. The governor also had to take care of administrative and judicial activities, “which included oversight of the tribal civitates and the trial of cases involving those who were not Roman citizens”. The resulting invasion of Britain created the prospect of a wealth-based aristocracy in which the people that the Romans wanted to deal with were the ones they got to deal with.
When the Romans completed the invasion of Britain, they brought their goods from all parts of Europe to Britain to help the economy. The importation of all these goods turned out to be a problem because there were a lot more goods going into the country than were going out. Goods imported into Roman Britain were Roman wine, jewellery, and pottery. Exported goods from Roman Britain included cattle, grain, lead, iron, tin, and hunting dogs.
The presence of the Roman army in Britain significantly helped the British economy for two reasons. One, because the roads they built helped trading move faster. Secondly, having 40,000 Roman troops in Britain was a natural market energizer for British industry. By the reign of Hadrian, the country was developing goods that were good enough to export which solved the problem.
When the Antoine period came around, the prosperity of town and country life showed that Britain was economically on its feet. Once Roman town life whittled away, the need for imports did as well. Socially, there was a major effect on Roman-Britains in the province. After the Romans took over, those at the top were people associated with the legions, those involved in government, and the wealthy traders and members of the commercial class. Later, in 212 AD, citizenship was given to all free-born people in the empire. In reality, however, people were still divided between the honestiores (upper class), and the humiliores (lower class). Slaves were always the lowest in the social structure of Britain at this time.
One aspect of the Roman invasion previously not mentioned is religion. Christianity was tolerated by the Romans, but in essence, not welcomed until about the fourth century. Prior to the Romans, most British joined Pagan cults. After the Romans came, they allowed the British to allow the British to keep their religious practices. Although the Romans brought with them the Roman Olympic gods whom they worshipped. Jupiter was the main Olympic god and was unique to the Romans and the Roman-British. Many other Olympic gods were associated and were viewed as presiding over many different activities involved with everyday life. Some British converted to worshipping the Olympic gods, but, some also, “through the process of interpretario Romana, in conjunction with their closest equivalents in Celtic pantheons”.
Interpretario Romana involved the pairing up of an Olympic one to a British one. This meant that the British god was the correspondent to the Olympic god. This facilitated a new type of hybrid religion between the Roman and British religions (Shotter 83). In Roman Britain, many people had personal shrines in their homes worshipping various deities. The deities they worshipped were based on the everyday activities they had in common with the deity. Roman British placed small figures, made of metal or terracotta, of the certain god upon these shrines to show their praise. Another reason why people had these homemade shrines was because temples in Roman Britain were not there for people to come and pray. Instead, “the temple was literally the ‘house of god’ in which god’s image was kept, to be ‘consulted’ by the priests of the cult. Roman British who wanted to receive the word of certain deities were to congregate outside of the temple as an altar-group, and wait for the priests’ pronouncements. The Romans also changed the way the British lived.
The Romans encouraged urban life as opposed to rural life. Those who had previously been accustomed to the rural conditions of Celtic life were persuaded to adapt to city life in order to become wealthier. The Romans wanted the ruling Celtic aristocrats to build places to live in towns. The Romans encouraged the building of these towns close to army bases.
Towns were built in lowland areas by rivers and were walled for the most part. The aristocrats also had to make the town centers the place of commercial activity as was the practice in Rome. Local town councils were formed to build civic buildings as a sign of civilization. Each of these towns was run differently because there was no concrete plan by which the Romans wanted the British aristocrats to abide. There were two other developments that changed the social dynamic of Britain . Those were the villas and public baths both of which were made famous by the Romans. Villas, which means “farms” in Latin, were huge estates owned by the Romanized British. These villas were built ten miles outside of town so that the elite could go to and from town easily. Villas were not just houses but the center of rural industry and agriculture. Villas were big enough to hold “the landowner and his family, overseers, laborers, storehouses, and industrial buildings”.
The public baths were a great place to socialize with each other in a public setting. The baths large enough to accommodate hundreds and some had hot and cold rooms for bathing. Some public baths even divided hot rooms into steam and dry heat areas. Many British would go to the baths daily before dinner to socialize with the other people in town. The baths served as a meeting place, heath club and healing spa to the Roman British.
The Romans had a certain way of constructing their cities. All towns had a forum, amphitheatres, and public baths all coming straight from the Romans. A key when building these public places was to make them big enough for most of the people in the city. Amphitheatres and the town forum helped this cause. Amphitheatres held gruesome events such as gladiatorial contests, fights between men and animals, and public executions much like they did in Rome. These amphitheatres were open-air ovals and among the Roman British, were not as popular as they were amongst Romans. Theatres, on the other hand, held more traditional events like classical plays, pantomime, and religious festivals.
The roads in and around the cities built by the Roman soldiers were built well and significantly helped trade. The soldiers surveyed the land and avoided places where they could not build roads. Another Roman idea was the rectangular street grid within the cities which helped trade and communication flow through all parts of the country and even the empire. Roman soldiers built these roads for another reason, to connect the new towns and army posts that they were building. The new network of roads ignored the previous Celtic roads because the new cities were in different places than the previous Celtic settlements.
The first major road built in Britain by the Romans was known as the Fosse Way. The Fosse Way stretched from Exter, a port city in the southwest, to Lincoln, a city in the northwest part of Britain. At first the Romans connected the big cities and these were the major roads. The minor roads that were built by the Romans were to connect economic centres such as Mendip lead mines and the Nene potteries. These minor roads also connected ports to the economic centres. Lastly there were local roads that connected villas, temples, farms, and villages to larger roads and market towns.
Clothing in Roman Britain was heavily influenced by the Roman invasion. Traditionally, as in most cultures, people wanted to impress other by what they wore. Men in Roman Britain predominantly chose the Roman toga over the Celtic plaids. For women, “the continuing employments of Celtic motifs were largely confined to brooches, which were often enamelled”.
Women during this period liked many different patterns and textures as well as jewelry and jet pendants. However, jewellery and jet pendants were not always to be displayed. This was because often times, these fine pieces were presents from a man to a woman and were highly personal. Messages were also sometimes inscribed on the jewellery to possibly make it too personal to be displayed.
Overall, the Romans helped the British people make their land into a more civilized one. Before the Romans invaded, Britain was lacking behind the Roman Empire as well as other parts of the world economically, socially, and politically. Britain was separated into many different tribes that did whatever they pleased on their own within their small territory. The Romans took great steps to help Britain become what it did. They organized the British culture into a sophisticated and more knowledgeable one. The Romans greatly helped the British make themselves into a better country then and also in the future.