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Notes on the Roman Coast Defences of Britain, especially in Yorkshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

F. Haverfield
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Extract

It is a commonplace that Britain is an island. The further truth, that it is an island which is very closely tied to the continent lying east of it, is a good deal less familiar. Geographical writers are apt, even for historical purposes, to emphasise instead those two features of the island which Mr. Mackinder in his admirable volume has called its insularity and its universality, its separation, that is, from Europe, and its central position in the world. I feel, however, that both students of ancient history, and also modern men at this particular moment, are more concerned with the peculiar relation of Britain to Europe. It is not the insularity of the island but its dependence on the continent which really matters. This dependence dates from days long before the first appearance of man; it is due, indeed, to the configuration of western Europe in remote geological periods. In those dateless days the seas which now divide our southern coast from France, and our eastern coast from the Low Countries and from Germany, were river valleys which took the drainage of a vast area extending from Wales and the Pennine hills on the north-west, to the Eifel, the Vosges and the Cevennes on the south-east. The rivers have long vanished, but their valleys, vast almost as the valley of a Missouri or a Mississippi, can still be traced in the configuration of the British and continental coasts. On each side of the sea the main rivers flow down to face each other, the main harbours of each land lie vis-à-vis and the natural entrances by which trader or soldier might wish to enter Britain open on to the main exits by which he might wish to start from the continent. Nor is it merely a matter of entrances or exits. That part of Britain which faces the continent is the lower-lying part of the great valley which I have mentioned. It is therefore fairly flat, and it offers no strategic obstacle to invaders. Its only features, its forests and its fens, are hardly large enough even to divert the march of armies and have been over-rated by writers like the late Dr. Guest and Mr. J. R. Green. The really difficult regions of Britain, the tangled uplands of Wales and west Yorkshire and the north, lie far away from the path of European aggressors. They might assist the rulers of Britain in checking an Irish invasion; they do not protect it from European influences. Britain is a land which was made to be invaded from the continent.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 2 , November 1912 , pp. 201 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © F. Haverfield 1912. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 203 note 1 C.I.L. vii 137; Mommsen, Bonner Jahrb. lxviii, 55, correcting Hübner.

page 203 note 2 Not. Dign. Occid. xxxviii, 8. That the fleet was connected with the Somme (anciently Samara) is shewn by the tiles stamped CLSAM which have been found on its estuary at Etaples: Vaillant, V. J., Recherches d'épigr. (Arras, 1888), p. 385Google Scholar, and Epigraphie de la Morinie (Boul. 1890), p. 249Google Scholar.

page 204 note 1 I may record here, without arguing the matter, my dissent from the view of Dr. Rice Holmes (Ancient Britain and Julius Caesar, pp. 544, foll.).

page 206 note 1 Arch. Ael. 1st ser. ii, 110, 2nd ser. x, 103.

page 207 note 1 Atkinson, J. C., Hist. of Cleveland (Barrow, 1874), i, 54Google Scholar.

page 210 note 1 Ptol. ii, 3, 4. The notion is as old as the sixteenth century (Camden, etc.). Horsley (p. 369) however identified Dunum with the Tees.

page 210 note 2 A hoard of late fourth century (? silver) coins (Valens, Gratian, Theodosius, Arcadius, Honorius) was found long ago at Whorlton in Cleveland. But this is too far from the coast to concern us, and if the coins were silver, as seems probable from the record in Ord's History of Cleveland, such hoards occur not very rarely elsewhere in Britain.

page 210 note 3 G. Young's Whitby (1817), ii, 708; L. Charlton's Whitby (1779), p. 43.

page 210 note 4 Huebner, C.I.L. vii, 268=Inscr. Brit. Christ. 185, and Exempla Scripturae Epigrapbicae, 781. I have seen the inscription myself: see Eph. Epigr. ix, p. 561.

page 212 note 1 Evans, A. J., Numismatic Chronicle, 1887, p. 208Google Scholar =Archaeol. Cambrensis, 1888, p. 318; Zosimus, vi, 2 and Olympiodorus, in Photius, Bibl. Cod. 80, Müller, Fragm. Hist. Graec. iv, p. 59. The latter gives the name as Iustinus, but this appears to be an error.

page 212 note 2 The name has been interpreted as equivalent to Caer-nase, the headland with the caer or fort upon it. Such a hybrid form is most improbable, and Mr. W. H. Stevenson tells me that until old spellings of the name can be adduced, its interpretation must remain dubious.

page 212 note 3 I extract the following sentences from the report of Mr. Cortis: “The larger amphorae are of coarse bluish-grey clay, containing much coarse sand and sometimes mica. The smaller jars are usually of a fine well-burnt clay, black and often glazed on the outside, sometimes light coloured within. Many, both large and small, are ornamented in various ways; red and lighter varieties are also found, and one piece of Samian. … The jar, which occupied a prominent position in the illustration, had been crushed, but enough of the fragments were found to enable a restoration. The material is a fine clay, burnt red. The jar is ornamented with a scroll in white paint, stands about 18 ins. high and is about 14 ins. in greatest diameter; it has two handles and on the rim between them a face and on the opposite side a little plain carving to correspond.” This kind of face-urn is a well known type of very late Roman pottery.

page 213 note 1 Eph. Epigr. ix, p. 562.

page 213 note 2 Cortis, W. S., Twenty-sixth report of the Scarborough Philosophical and Archaeological Society (Scarb. 1858), pp. 18–25Google Scholar; hence Wright, Intellectual Observer, Oct. 1866, p. 234, and Mayhew, British Arch. Assoc. Journal, xliv, 353, who adds a mention of the Constantinian coins found (he says) about 1888. For the inscription, see the illustration of Cortis; from him depend Wright, Watkin, Arch. Journ. xxxi, 349, Hübner, Eph. Epigr. iii, 143, who wrongly calls the object a tile. See also my note, Eph. ix, 562. When I visited the site with Mr. W. H. St. John Hope some years ago, no trace of ancient remains seemed visible.

page 213 note 3 See my notes, Antiquary, Oct. 1893, p. 162, and 1894, p. 245.

page 214 note 1 In Eutropium, i, 393, foll: de cons. Stilich. ii, 250–255. These passages have been supposed by Keller (Stilicho, p. 17) to refer to events in A.D. 385, while Bury (Life of St. Patrick, p. 328) refers the second to A.D. 388–391, and the first to A.D. 395–399. The latter date seems right. But I cannot help thinking that Birt is right in connecting both passages with the same events. It is true that in the first Claudian mentions only the Picts, in the second he mentions Picts, Scots, and Saxons, but the first passage is very brief and Claudian's rhetoric could hardly be pressed.

page 214 note 2 Honorius was created Augustus in Nov. 393, at the age of 9. But his name would hardly occur on a tile in this fashion till after his father's death, For the tile, stamped HON AVG ANDRIA, see Eph. Epig. ix, 1281 and Proc. Soc. Antiq. Lond. 1905, p. 411.

page 214 note 3 De bello Pollentino, 416, “venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis.” Whether legio here means a legion or, as often in Claudian, a levy of troops, does not matter for our present purpose: see my note, Classical Review, xxi (1907), 105Google Scholar.