The beginning of the Christian era and after.

3.2.1. In AD 43 the Roman Emperor Claudius sent an army to Britain which conquered the southern part of the island. It was not an easy task. The Britons rose again and again, sword in hand. One of the most famous rebellions against the Romans was led by Boadicea, a British queen (circa AD 61). The Britons forced the Romans out of London, and some 70,000 Romans were killed in a few days. The Romans retaliated with a vengeance.

The Romans could not conquer “ Caledonia”, as they called Scotland. At last Emperor built a great wall of earth, known as the Hadrian’s Wall, more than 70 miles long, to keep out Picts and Scots. According to another version, the name “Britain” comes from the word “Pretani”, the Greco-Roman word for the inhabitants of Britain. The Romans mispronounced the word and called the island “ Britania ”. The island got one more name. It was the name of “ Albion ”. It meant “white land”, because the first view for most visitors was the white cliffs near Dover.

3.2.2. In the north and the west the older social order remained much untouched, while in the towns and where the Roman type villas were concentrated, the slave-owning system developed. Otherwise the old way of life of the British Celts did not change very much. The Romans brought law and order, fine buildings, roads and towns, and what is more important peace for more than 300 years. The Romans brought the skills of reading and writing to Britain. The written word was important for spreading ideas and also for establishing power. While the Celtic peasantry remained illiterate and only Celtic speaking, a number of town dwellers spoke Latin and Greek.

3.2.3. There’s one remarkable point about the Roman period in the history of the UK. Despite their long occupation in Britain, the Romans left not very much behind. Most of their villas, baths, temples, the impressive network of roads and the cities they founded, including Londinium, were soon destroyed or fell into disrepair. Probably the only long lasting reminders are place names on the territory of modern England (such as Chester, Lancaster, Gloucester); a layer of the Roman borrowings in the lexical system of modern English. The Christian religion was first brought to Britain by means of Roman ships.

3.2.4. Soon after the departure of the Romans (407) the Celts retained their independence for a short period of time. From the middle of the V century they were the subject to numerous attacks of the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons. At first the Germanic tribes only raided Britain, but after AD 430 they began to settle. The Angles settled in the east, and also in the north Midlands, while the Saxons settled in a band of land from the Thames Estuary westwards.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16