Later Roman Britain Routledge Revivals

Later Roman Britain, first published in 1980, charts the end of Roman rule in Britain and gives an overall impression of the beginning of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ of British history, the transitional period which saw the breakdown of Roman administration and the beginnings of Saxon settlement. Stephen Johnson traces the flourishing of Romano-British society and the pressures upon it which produced its eventual fragmentation, examining the province’s barbarian neighbours and the way the defence was organised against the many threats to its security. The final chapters, using mainly the findings of recent archaeology, assess the initial arrival of the Saxon settlers, and indicate the continuity of life between late Roman and early Saxon England. Later Roman Britain gives a fascinating glimpse of a period scarce with historical sources, but during which changes fundamental to the formation of modern Britain began to take place.

In Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain, first published in 1991, Professor Dorothy Watts sets out to distinguish possible Pagan features in Romano-British Christianity in the period leading up to and immediately following the withdrawal of Roman forces in AD 410. Watts argues that British Christianity at the time contained many Pagan influences, suggesting that the former, although it had been present in the British Isles for some two centuries, was not nearly as firmly established as in other parts of the Empire. Building on recent developments in the archaeology of Roman Britain, and utilising a nuanced method for deciphering the significance of objects with ambiguous religious identities, Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain will be of interest to classicists, students of the history of the British Isles, Church historians, and also to those generally interested in the place of Christianity during the twilight of the Western Roman Empire.

The Coming of Rome, first published in 1979, examines some basic features of Roman Britain: the cities, the towns, and the monuments of an urban culture. J.S. Wacher considers the evidence, mainly from inscriptions, of the people who inhabited or visited Britain during approximately the first two centuries of Roman rule. The Roman conquest of Britain and the progressive extension of Roman control marked a dramatic transformation of British society. Although there was much contact between pre-Roman Britain and the Continent, the advent of Romanisation meant incorporation into a much larger economic system. But Britain stood on one of the most distant frontiers of the Roman world, and the Romano-British society which gradually evolved was thus distinctive. Profusely illustrated throughout, The Coming of Rome will appeal to historians and archaeologists, as well as the general reader interested in some of the most formative centuries of Britain’s development.

Roman Britain, first published in 1972, gives the young reader a vivid impression of the British Isles immediately preceding, during and after the Roman occupation, which lasted for 400 years. Using a selection of extracts, both historical and imaginative, it offer a suitably comprehensive account of Roman Britain: the campaigns fought to subdue it, the military and civil government established to govern it, relations between the Imperial administration and the natives, and the departure of the legions to fight elsewhere in the Empire. Selections of poetry by John Masefield, W.H. Auden, Rudyard Kipling and A.E. Housman are included, together with prose extracts from Bede, Tacitus, Hilaire Belloc, Henry Treece, Alfred Duggan, Rudyard Kipling. Physically compact, Roman Britain encourages young classicists and historians to engage imaginatively with the subject, whilst also supplying ample opportunity for more detailed discussion and further reading.

This book explains what Britain was like in the fourth century AD and how this can only be understood in the wider context of the western Roman Empire.

Originally published in 1978, this volume comprises articles previously published in the historical journal, Past and Present, ranging over nearly a thousand years of Graeco-Roman history. The essays focus primarily on the Roman Empire, reflecting the increase, in British scholarship of the post-war years, of explanatory, ‘structuralist’ studies of this period in Roman history. The topics treated include Athenian politics, the Roman conquest of the east, violence in the later Roman Republic, the second Sophistic, and persecutions of the early Christians. The authors have all produced original studies, a number of which have generated significant research by other ancient historians.

The legacy of Rome is still very much with us in Europe. It forms part of our cultural backdrop, and is enshrined in the European mind, whether through classical literature, education and jurisprudence, or spectacular ruins. In Rome and Its Empire, first published in 1989, Stephen Johnson examines our understanding of the archaeological aspects of Roman civilisation, and traces the development of archaeology from the earliest post-Roman times, through to its real discovery in the eighteenth century, and its burgeoning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Various areas of modern archaeological thought and practice are examined with regard to the study of Roman archaeology. The emphasis is on how archaeologists examine and classify material, and the various ways in which valid historical conclusions are deduced from that evidence. Johnson concludes by exploring how techniques from other disciplines are now being applied to archaeological study, and indicates what we may yet learn from this.