The expansion of this Roman territory beyond the borders of the initial city-state of Rome had started long before the state organization turned into an Empire. In its territorial peak after the conquest of Dacia by Trajan, thereby being the largest empire in the classical antiquity period of European history. In the centuries before the autocracy of Augustus, Rome (Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic) had already accumulated most of its territory beyond the Italian Peninsula, including its former Mediterranean competitors Syracuse and Carthage. In the late Republic, Augustus definitively added Egypt to the Imperium Romanum. Augustus's reforms, turning the Roman state into an empire, survived mostly unchanged until the Diocletian reform at end of the 3rd century, which turned the empire into a tetrarchy.
The Romans knew the British Isles as the "Tin Islands", from Punic traders and merchants who engaged in commerce with the Celtic tribes of this land from their bases in Carthaginian Hispania. Roman soldiers landed at Richborough and defeated the southeastern British tribes under Caratacus, a historical British chieftain of the Catuvellauni tribe. Caswallan, a century earlier named his younger son of the former king Heli, having protected Ireland and abroad, Kent, Trinovantum (London), and Cornwall. Five British tribes, the Cenimagni, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bibroci and the Cassi, surrendered to Caesar and revealed the location of Cassivellaunus's stronghold, which Caesar proceeded to put under siege. For the first twenty years, the Roman rule was oppressive, and this treatment led Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, to revolt. The Trinovantes and Catuvellauni joined.
In the following years the Romans conquered more of the island, increasing the size of Roman Britain. The governor Agricola, father-in-law to the historian Tacitus, conquered the Ordovices of Celtic Wales in 78. Its tribal lands were located in Wales between the Silures to the south and the Deceangli to the north-east. The name of this tribe appears to be preserved in the place name Dinorwig ("Fort of the Ordovices") in North Wales.
Agricola defeated the Caledonians in 84 at the Battle of Mons Graupius, in what is today northern Scotland. Agricola was recalled from Britain back to Rome, and the Romans retired to a more defensible line along the Forth-Clyde isthmus, freeing soldiers badly needed along other frontiers. The practice of building these massive walls, though having its origins in prehistory, was refined during the rise of city-states, and energetic wall-building continued into the medieval period and beyond in certain parts of Europe.
In Central Europe, the Celts built large fortified settlements known as oppida, whose walls seem partially influenced by those built in the Mediterranean. The founding of urban centres was an important means of territorial expansion and many cities, especially in eastern Europe, were founded precisely for this purpose during the period of Eastern Colonisation. The early Middle Ages also saw the creation of some towns built around castles.
Trajan's Dacian Wars may have led to troop reductions in the area or even total withdrawal followed by slighting of the forts by the natives rather than an unrecorded military defeat of southern Scotland. When Roman emperor Hadrian reached Britannia on his famous tour of the Roman provinces around 120, he directed an extensive defensive wall, known to posterity as Hadrian's Wall, to be built close to the line of the Stanegate frontier. Hadrian was active in the wars against the Dacians as legate of the V Macedonica. He was also archon in Athens for a brief time, and was elected an Athenian citizen.
In the reign of Antoninus Pius the Hadrianic border was briefly extended north to the Forth-Clyde isthmus, where the Antonine Wall was built around 142 following the military re-occupation of the Scottish lowlands by a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus. This northward extension of the empire was probably the result of attacks, maybe by the Selgovae of south-west Scotland, on the Roman buffer state of the Votadini who lived north of the Hadrianic frontier on Great Britain, and the Danube and Rhine. Prior to Hadrian's arrival on Great Britain there had been a major rebellion in Britannia, spanning roughly two years (119-121). It was here he initiated the building of Hadrian's Wall during 122. The wall was built chiefly to safeguard the frontier province of Britannia, by preventing future possible invasions from the northern country of Caledonia (Scotland). By the end of 122 he had concluded his visit to Britannia, and from there headed south by sea to Mauretania. When Hadrian arrived on the Euphrates, he characteristically solved the problem through a negotiated settlement with the Parthian king (probably Chosroes). He then proceeded to check the Roman defenses before setting off West along the coast of the Black Sea. After meeting Antinous, Hadrian traveled through Anatolia. By March of 125 Hadrian had reached Athens presiding over the festival of Dionysia. On his return to Italy, Hadrian made a detour to Sicily. In September of 128 Hadrian again attended the Eleusian mysteries. This time his visit to Greece seems to have concentrated on Athens and Sparta - the two ancient rivals for dominance of Greece.
The wild Gallaecian Celts make their entry in written history in the 1st-century epic Punica of Silius Italicus on the First Punic War. Gallaecia, as a region, was thus marked for the Romans as much for its mixed Celtiberian culture, the culture of the castros or castrexa, the hillforts of Celtic origin, as for the lure of its gold mines. At a far later date, the mythic history that was encapsulated in Leabhar Gabhala Eireann credited Gallaecia as the point from which the Celts sailed to conquer Ireland, as they had Gallaecia, by force of arms. After the Punic Wars, the Romans turned their attention to conquering Hispania. The final extinction of Celtic resistance was the aim of the violent and ruthless Cantabrian Wars fought under the emperor Octavian from 26 to 19 BC.
Hadrian appointed Aulus Platorius Nepos as governor to undertake this work who brought a Legio VI Victrix which replaced the famous IX Hispana with him from Lower Germany. The legion saw its first action in Perugia in 41 BC. In 31 B.C. the legion fought in the Battle of Actium against Marc Antony. The legion stayed in Spain for nearly a century and received the surname Hispaniensis. Soldiers of this unit and X Gemina numbered among the first settlers of Zaragoza-the capital city of the autonomous region and former kingdom of Aragon in Spain, and is located on the river Ebro, and its tributaries the Huerva and Gállego, near the centre of the region, in a great valley with a variety of landscapes, ranging from desert (Los Monegros) to thick forest, meadows and mountains.. The cognomen Victrix dates back to the reign of Nero.
The first Antonine occupation of Scotland ended as a result of a further crisis in 155-157, when the Brigantes revolted. During the twenty yeare period following the reversion of the frontier to Hadrian's Wall, Rome was concerned with continental issues primarily problems in the Danube provinces. In 119, Hadrian relocated the legion to northern Britannia, to assist the already present legions in quelling the resistance there. In 122 the legion started work on Hadrian's Wall which would sustain the peace for two decades. Twenty years later, they helped construct the Antonine Wall, but it was largely abandoned by 164. The Maeatae were a confederation of tribes who lived probably between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall or possibly just on either side of Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain.They appear to have come together as a result of treaties struck between the Roman Empire and the various frontier tribes in the 180s AD under the governorship of Ulpius Marcellus.
Albinus crossed to Gaul in 195 where the provinces were also sympathetic to him and set up at Lugdunum. Severus arrived in February 196 and the ensuing battle was decisive. Although Albinus came close to victory, Severus' reinforcements won the day. An expedition led by Severus and probably numbering around 20,000 troops, moved north in 208 or 209, crossing the wall and passing through eastern Scotland in a route similar to that used by Agricola. Severus was unable to meet the Caledonians on a battlefield. The campaign pushed northwards as far as the River Tay and peace treaties were signed with the Caledonians who seem to have suffered similar losses to the Romans. By 210, Severus had returned to YORK with the frontier set at Hadrian's Wall and assumed the title Britannicus. Septimius Severus tried to solve the problem of powerful and rebellious governors in Britain by dividing the existing province into Upper Britain and Lower Britain and a string of forts were built along the coast of southern Britain to control piracy, over the next hundred years they expanded in number, becoming the Saxon Shore Forts.
During the middle of the third century the Roman empire was convulsed by barbarian invasions, rebellions and new imperial pretenders. Britannia apparently avoided these troubles, although increasing inflation had its economic effect. In 259, a so-called Gallic Empire was established when Postumus rebelled against Gallienus. Britannia was part of this until 274 when Aurelian reunited the empire. In the late 270s a half-Brythonic usurper named Bononus rebelled to avoid the repercussions of letting his fleet be burnt by barbarians at Cologne. He was quickly crushed by Probus, but soon afterwards an unnamed governor in Britannia also attempted an uprising. Irregular troops of Vandals and Burgundians were sent across the Channel by Probus to put down the uprising, perhaps in 278. The last of the string of rebellions to affect Britannia was that of Carausius and his successor Allectus. Carausius was a naval commander, probably in the English Channel. He was accused of keeping pirate booty for himself, and his execution was ordered by the Emperor Maximian. He then in 286 set himself up as emperor in Britain and northern Gaul, and remained in power whilst Maximian dealt with uprisings elsewhere. In 288, an invasion failed to unseat the usurper. An uneasy peace ensued, during which Carausius issued coins proclaiming his legitimacy and inviting official recognition.
Four provinces were part of Diocletian's Tetrarchy reform in 293, Britannia became one of the four dioceses—governed by a vicarius—of the prætorian prefecture Galliae ('the Gauls', also comprising the provices of Gaul, Germania and Hispania), after the abolition of the imperial tetrarchs under the Western Emperor (in Rome itself, later Ravenna).
Maxima Caesariensis (based on London):
from Upper Britannia Britannia Prima:
from Upper Britannia Flavia Caesariensis:
from Lower Britannia Britannia Secunda:
from Lower Britannia
Roman troops were garrisoned at YORK for more than 300 years but little is known of the history of the city during that period, partly because systematic and extensive excavation is impossible and partly because the city is so infrequently mentioned in early writings. Two events, however, were of sufficient importance in the history of the empire to earn a mention by Roman writers. Between 208 and 211 the Emperor Severus was at YORK while he was conducting campaigns against the Caledonians and in the latter yeare he died there. Accounts of his death make some obscure references to YORK's topography and mention a temple of Bellona and a domus palatina. It was from YORK, moreover, that Emperor Severus dated a rescript of 5 May 210 headed Eboraci. Almost a century later, in 305, Constantius Chlorus died in the city and Constantine was acclaimed there as his successor. Both Severus and Constantius Chlorus were using YORK as a base for military expeditions and it was as the strategic centre of Roman Britain that the fortress was most important.
While Severus was in YORK, however, the city almost attained a metropolitan status for he brought with him not only his two sons but the entire court; and, as the heading of the rescript shows, even routine legal business of the empire was then conducted from the city. To Severus, too, may be attributed the grant of the status of colonia to the town that had grown up beside the fortress; from the remains of it that have been found it may be assumed that it was a flourishing community with wide trade connexions. In the new arrangements made by Severus for the administration of the country, YORK became the capital of the province of Britannia Inferior. Finally, by the 4th century, the city had become one of the centres of Romano-British Christianity: the three British bishops who attended the council of Arles in 314 had amongst them Eborius episcopus de civitate Eboracensi.
YORK is also mentioned in topographical and other lists compiled in classical times or from classical writings. Ptolemy says that 'Eborakon was in the territory of the Brigantes, a powerful confederation of tribes occupying most of what are now the six northern counties, and he is the first authority to associate YORK with the Sixth Legion. In the Antonine Itinerary, four of the fifteen British itinera pass through YORK. The name of the city is missing from the Notitia Dignitatum but may confidently be restored; thus amended it shows the city still being used as the headquarters of the Sixth Legion at a time when many of the legions had left their traditional stations. YORK is mentioned again in the Ravenna Cosmography.
In 71 Petillius Cerialis led the Ninth Legion out of Lincoln to conduct a campaign in the north. During this campaign YORK was garrisoned by that legion. The first garrison defended itself by an earthwork and a timber palisade; early in the 2nd century these were replaced by a stone wall. The internal buildings of the fortress, too, were rebuilt in stone at about the same time. Soon afterwards, the Sixth Legion, for reasons that are not clear, replaced the Ninth as the garrison. Late in the 2nd century the defences of the fortress were rebuilt, probably because they had been broken down by raiders from the north. This rebuilding was complete by the time the Emperor Severus visited YORK in 208.
For nearly eighty years the north was at peace. Between 287 and 296, however, when Roman troops had been temporarily withdrawn from Britain, the north was again attacked and, after the invaders had been beaten off, the fortress had again to be rebuilt. Roman troops probably remained at YORK for another century but there is little evidence to suggest that the structure of the fortress changed during that period. How late the Roman way of life was pursued in YORK is not known. The town and its community may well have survived after the final withdrawal of Roman troops well into the 5th century. There were certainly Germanic settlements in east YORKSHIRE about the middle of the 5th century and early Anglian cremation burials have been found on The Mount and at Heworth where the urns were among the earliest of their kind found in this country. But it has been suggested that these settlements 'were not those of hostile invaders, but of Germanic mercenaries employed by the British to fight against their northern enemies in the manner recorded by Gildas'.
