Roman Society in Britain• Highly classified– Top: people associated with the legions

the provincial administration the government of towns wealthy traders commercial classes

At the lowest end: the slaves: many of them were able to gain their freedommight occupy important governmental posts

Women: rigidly circumscribed: not allowed to hold public office, limited property rights

Achievements of the Roman Empire in Britain

• One of the greatest: its system of roads – vital to link military headquarters, the isolated forts, for speedy movement of troops, munitions and supplies, for trade

• London – chief administrative center• They utilized bridges – not known in

Britain• Communication with all parts of the

country

Conclusion

• The great mass of the British people did not become Romanized

• The influence of the Roman thought that survived in Britain was through the Church: Christianity had replaced the old Celtic Gods by the end of the 4th century

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest• The settlement of the Nordic Peoples is the

governing event of British History• The beginning of the first raids of Saxon

pirates on the coast of Roman Britain took place well before 300AD

• It ends about 1020 when Canute completed the Scandinavian conquest of England by reconciling on equal terms the kindred races of Saxon and Dane

• The attempt to Latinize the Celtic broke down because there were too few Romans

• The Nordic conquest of England had larger, permanent results because it was secured on a general displacement of Celtic by Nordic peoples in the richest agricultural districts of the island

• This distinctive character of the modern English is Nordic tempered by Welsh

• In Scotland the Celtic element is radically stronger, but here also the Nordic language and character have prevailed

• NORDIC – the German, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Scandinavian peoples of the 5th century

• FEATURES in common:– Common art of decorating weapons, jewelry– Common customs of war and agriculture– Allied languages– Religion of Thor and Woden– They had all originally come from the shores of

the Baltic The Jutes – settled in Kent and the Isle of Wight

• The Anglo-Saxons – settled the greater part of Britain between Forth and the borders of Cornwall

• Many of them were farmers, whalers, deep-sea fishermen, seal-hunters

• Fierce, courageous, loyal• Followed their chief with great fidelity• Form of government: autocratic kinship exercised by a member

of the royal family• Mutual aid to be rendered between all members of a wide clan• Before their migration to Britain• Tribalism was yielding to individualism• Kinship replaced by the relation between warriors and chief• All these set the basis of aristocracy and the beginning of

feudalism

• The naval military organization – based on the discipline of the crew

• There are no authentic chronicles of the Saxon conquest

• the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at their weakest

• The Britons in their refuge among the Welsh mountains relapsed into Celtic barbarism

• The Saxons – had a Runic alphabet• Saint Augustine and his monks brought the Latin

alphabet and the custom of written record• Britain became the country of Pilgrim Fathers

• The Anglo-Saxons:– Were not city-dwellers– Had no mercantile instincts– Were bloody-minded pirates– Destroyed a higher civilization than theirs– The Roman roads helped to hasten the pace of conquest and

destruction– The first results: to destroy the peace and unity of the Roman

province– Wore boar-head helmet, had spears and wooden shields– Desire – to settle in large rural townships and toil the soil– Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries: a fearsome chaos of warring tribes

and kingdoms, public and private war was the rule– the emergence of England as a nation did not begin as a result of a

quick, decisive victory over the native Britons, but as a result of hundreds of years of settlement and growth

This is the sound basis of the new English civilization

Political Face of England• There were separate kingdoms in England, settled by Angles,

Saxons and Jutes whose areas, bit by bit, extended into the Celtic regions: Northumbria in the north; Mercia westwards to the River Severn and Wessex into Devon and Cornwall. In the southeast, the kingdoms of Sussex and Kent had achieved early prominence.

• Hengist and Horsa had arrived in Kent with a small fleet of ships in around 446 AD to aid the Britons in the defense of their lands. They had been invited by British chief Vortigern to fight the northern barbarians in return for pay and supplies, but more importantly, for land

• The invaders, who were Jutes, named the capital of their new kingdom Canterbury, the borough of the people of the Cantii

• the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Britain was an Anglo-Celtic kingdom, peopled by Anglo-Celts. The dynasty founded there by Hengist lasted for three centuries

• thirty years after the arrival of Hengist to Britain, another chieftain named Aelle came to settle. The leader of the South Saxons, Aella ruled the kingdom that became Sussex. Other kingdoms were those of the East Saxons (Essex); the Middle Saxons (Middlesex), and the West Saxons, (Wessex) destined to become the most powerful of all and one that eventually brought together all the diverse people of England (named for the Angles) into one single nation.

• after the conversion of the Saxon peoples to Christianity, written laws began to be enacted in England to provide appropriate penalties for offenses against the Church

• In Kent, King Aethelbert (601-04) was the first to set down the laws of his people in the English language; his laws constitute by far the earliest body of law expressed in any Germanic language

• The Danes came in a huge fleet to London in 851 to destroy the army of Mercia and capture Canterbury. They had begun their deprivations with the devastation of Lindisfarne in 793, and the next hundred years saw army after army crossing the North Sea, first to find treasure, and then to take over good, productive farm lands upon which to raise their families

• The turning point took place in 878. From the Chronicle, we learn of the decisive event that took place at Edington (Ethandune), when Alfred "fought with the whole force of the Danes and put them to flight, and rode after them to their fortifications and besieged them a fortnight”

• the rise and fall of successive English kingdoms during the seventh and eighth centuries: Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex

• a Northumbrian nobleman, Benedict Biscop, founded two monasteries, Wearmouth (674) and Jarrow (681). Both were to play important parts in the cultural phenomenon.

• Biscop made six journeys to Rome, acquiring many valuable manuscripts

• "the Venerable Bede," - a monk who lived from 673-735. He entered Jarrow at the age of seven

• he became the most learned scholar of his time. Working in the library with the manuscripts acquired by Benedict Biscop, he added greatly to its store of knowledge through his voluminous correspondence.

• His contemporary reputation rested on his biblical writings and commentaries on the Scriptures as well as his chronological works that established a firm system of calculating the date of Easter. Bede's greatest work was his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.

Early National Poetry• English literature is considered either medieval

or modern• The medieval literature belongs to the era that

formed the bridge over which the world advanced from the confusion following the collapse of Rome to the complex modern world.

• There are 2 periods:– 1. the Anglo-Saxon period (670-1050) deals with

legendary literature of an ancient Northern people– 2. the Middle English period (1050-1400) deals with

the experimental literature of an amalgam of races

The Old English Period• The Old English period is generally grouped in

2 main divisions: national and Christian• To the former are assigned those poems of

which subjects are drawn from English, or rather Teutonic tradition and history or from the customs of the English life

• To the latter those which deal with Biblical matters, ecclesiastical traditions and religious subjects of Christian origin

• Most of earlier national poems are anonymous and belong to times anterior to unification of England under King Alfred (AD 886) – work of minstrels rather than of literary men

• The earliest English poem written while the Anglo-Saxons were still on the continent is “Widsith – the Song of a Traveler” – a kind of travel journey in which a vagrant minstrel tells us of the people he has visited and places to which he has been

• Another of these poems is “Deor’s Complaint” – a lyrical cry of one bard about another and more successful rival

• The most important “Beowulf” which has been presented practically complete in a manuscript in West Saxon dialect round AD1000

• It developed orally and achieved its present form during the 8th century in Mercia or Northumberland. The setting is southern Scandinavia in the Age of Migration of the 5th and 6th century

• It is an epic recording of great deeds of the heroic warrior Beowulf

• The action of the poem is attached at many points to the history of Germanic Europe

• There is a Homeric greatness about the atmosphere of the poem

• The historical background is drawn with clear actuality and the character of Beowulf is pictured vigorously and impressively - one of the most important monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature

• It paints simply and clearly the social customs of ancestors – how they lived in peace and war, how their towns and country places looked like, their pleasures and their hardships