0:00:08 > 0:00:14From its earliest days, Britain was an object of desire.
0:00:24 > 0:00:29Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae", worth the conquest,
0:00:29 > 0:00:33the best compliment that could occur to a Roman.
0:00:35 > 0:00:43He'd never visited these shores but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49Silver was abundant there too. Apparently so were pearls,
0:00:49 > 0:00:55although Tacitus had heard they were grey, like the overcast, rain-heavy skies,
0:00:55 > 0:01:02and that the natives only bothered to collect them when they were cast up on the shore.
0:01:02 > 0:01:09As far as the Roman historians were concerned, Britannia might well be off at the edge of the world,
0:01:09 > 0:01:13but it was at the edge of THEIR world, not a barbarian wilderness.
0:01:13 > 0:01:20If those same writers had been able to travel in time to the northernmost of our islands,
0:01:20 > 0:01:27to the Orcades, our modern Orkney, they would have seen something more astonishing than heaps of pearls.
0:01:27 > 0:01:33The unmistakable signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome.
0:02:22 > 0:02:27There are remains of Stone Age life dotted all over Britain and Ireland.
0:02:28 > 0:02:36But nowhere as abundantly as Orkney, with mounds, graves and, above all, great circles of standing stones,
0:02:36 > 0:02:41like here at Brodgar, vast, imposing and utterly unknowable.
0:02:45 > 0:02:52But Orkney boasts another Neolithic site, in its way even more impressive than Brodgar.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56The last thing you would expect from the Stone Age.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00A shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient domestic life.
0:03:00 > 0:03:07Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island, a village called Skara Brae.
0:03:14 > 0:03:20Here, beneath an area no bigger than the eighteenth green of a golf course,
0:03:21 > 0:03:28lies Europe's most complete Neolithic community, preserved for 5,000 years under sand and grass
0:03:28 > 0:03:32until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46This is a recognisable village,
0:03:46 > 0:03:51neatly fitted into its landscape between the pasture and the sea.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54Intimate, domestic, self-sufficient.
0:03:54 > 0:03:59Although technically still in the Stone Age, in the Neolithic period,
0:03:59 > 0:04:06these dwellings are not huts, but true houses built from the sandstone slabs that lie all around the island
0:04:06 > 0:04:13and which gave stout protection to the villagers here at Skara Brae from their biting Orcadian winds.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20And the villagers were real neighbours,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24their houses connected by walled, sometimes decorated alleyways.
0:04:24 > 0:04:31It's not too much of a stretch to imagine gossip travelling down those alleyways after a seafood supper.
0:04:35 > 0:04:42We have, in other words, everything you could possibly want from a village, except a church and a pub.
0:04:45 > 0:04:50In 3000 BC, the sea and the air were a little warmer than they are now,
0:04:50 > 0:04:54and once they'd settled in their sandstone houses
0:04:54 > 0:05:01they could harvest red bream and the mussels and oysters that were abundant in the shallows.
0:05:13 > 0:05:18Cattle provided meat and milk. Dogs were kept for hunting and company.
0:05:18 > 0:05:23During the Neolithic centuries there would have been a dozen houses here,
0:05:23 > 0:05:27half dug into the ground for comfort and safety -
0:05:27 > 0:05:31a thriving, bustling community of 50 or 60.
0:05:34 > 0:05:39But the real miracle of Skara Brae is that these houses were not mere shelters.
0:05:39 > 0:05:44They were built by people who had culture, who had style.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49Here's where they showed off that style.
0:05:49 > 0:05:57The fully equipped, all-purpose Neolithic living room, complete with luxuries and necessities.
0:05:57 > 0:06:04Necessities? Well, at the centre, a hearth around which they warm themselves and cook their food.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12A stone tank in which to keep live fish bait.
0:06:17 > 0:06:22Since we know that some of these houses had drains underneath them
0:06:22 > 0:06:26they must also, believe it or not, have had indoor toilets. Luxuries?
0:06:26 > 0:06:32The orthopaedically correct stone bed may not seem particularly luxurious
0:06:32 > 0:06:39but the addition of layers of heather and straw would certainly have softened the sleeping surface
0:06:39 > 0:06:43and would actually have made this bed seem rather snug.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48At the centre of it all was this spectacular dresser
0:06:48 > 0:06:55on which our house-proud Neolithic villagers would have set out all their most precious stuff.
0:06:55 > 0:07:02Fine bone and ivory necklaces. Beautifully wrought and carved stone objects.
0:07:02 > 0:07:07Everything designed to make a grand interior statement.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36Given the rudimentary nature of their tools,
0:07:36 > 0:07:43it would have taken countless man-hours to build, not just these domestic dwellings,
0:07:43 > 0:07:47but the circles of stone where they worshipped.
0:07:47 > 0:07:53So Skara Brae was not just an isolated settlement of fishers and farmers.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57Its people must have belonged to some larger society,
0:07:57 > 0:08:02sophisticated enough to mobilise the army of toilers and craftsmen needed
0:08:02 > 0:08:07not just to make these monuments, but to stand them on end.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12They were just as concerned about housing the dead as the living.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17The mausoleum at Maes Howe, a couple of miles from Skara Brae,
0:08:17 > 0:08:21seems no more than a swelling on the grassy landscape
0:08:21 > 0:08:23but this is a British pyramid.
0:08:23 > 0:08:31And, in keeping with our taste for understatement, it reserves all its impact for the interior.
0:08:33 > 0:08:35Imagine them open once more,
0:08:35 > 0:08:40a detail from the village given the job of pulling back the stone seals,
0:08:40 > 0:08:44lugging the body through the low opening in the earth,
0:08:44 > 0:08:53up 36 feet of narrow, tight-fitting passageway, lit only once a year by the rays of the winter solstice -
0:08:53 > 0:08:58a death canal constriction smelling of the underworld.
0:09:14 > 0:09:20Finally, the passageway opens up into this stupendous, high-vaulted masonry chamber.
0:09:20 > 0:09:26Some of these tombs would have been elaborately decorated with carvings
0:09:26 > 0:09:31in the form of circles or spirals, like waves, or breeze-pushed clouds.
0:09:31 > 0:09:38Others would have had neat little stone stores or cubicles where the bodies would be laid out on shelves.
0:09:43 > 0:09:49The grandest tombs had openings cut in the wall to create side chambers
0:09:49 > 0:09:56where important bodies could be laid out in aristocratic spaciousness, like family vaults in a church.
0:10:01 > 0:10:09Unlike mediaeval knights, though, these grandees were buried with eagles and dogs, or even treasure,
0:10:09 > 0:10:15the kind of thing that the Vikings, who broke into the tombs, thousands of years later, were quick to filch.
0:10:18 > 0:10:26In return, though, these early tomb raiders left their own legacy. These wonderful graffiti.
0:10:26 > 0:10:32"These rooms were carved by the most skilled room carver in the Western Ocean."
0:10:32 > 0:10:35"Aye, but it thorny here!"
0:10:35 > 0:10:38"Ingegirth is one horny bitch!"
0:10:46 > 0:10:51As for the Orcadian hoi polloi, well, they ranked a space in the common chamber,
0:10:51 > 0:10:56on a floor carpeted with the bones of hundreds of their predecessors.
0:10:56 > 0:11:00A crowded waiting room to their afterworld.
0:11:11 > 0:11:17For centuries, life at Skara Brae must have continued in much the same way.
0:11:17 > 0:11:23But around 2500 BC, the island climate seems to have got colder and wetter.
0:11:23 > 0:11:31The red bream disappeared, as did the stable environment the Orcadians had enjoyed for generations.
0:11:31 > 0:11:33Fields were abandoned,
0:11:33 > 0:11:40the farmers and fishers migrated, leaving their stone buildings and tombs to be covered
0:11:40 > 0:11:45by layers of peat, drifting sand and finally grass.
0:11:48 > 0:11:55The mainland, too, of course, had its burial chambers, like the Long Barrow at West Kennet.
0:12:02 > 0:12:08And there were also the great stone circles, the largest at Avebury.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14But the most spectacular of all at Stonehenge.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26By 1000 BC, things were changing fast.
0:12:26 > 0:12:32All over the British landscape a protracted struggle for good land was taking place.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36Forests were cleared so that Iron Age Britain was not,
0:12:36 > 0:12:43as was once imagined, an unbroken forest kingdom from Cornwall to Inverness.
0:12:43 > 0:12:51It was a patchwork of fields dotted with woodland copses, giving cover for game, especially wild pigs.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56And it was a crowded island.
0:12:56 > 0:13:04We now think as many people lived on this land as during the reign of Elizabeth I, 2,500 years later.
0:13:05 > 0:13:13Some archaeologists believe that almost as much land was being farmed in the Iron Age as in 1914.
0:13:17 > 0:13:24So it comes as no surprise to see one spectacular difference from the little world of Skara Brae.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27Great windowless towers.
0:13:27 > 0:13:34They were built in the centuries before the Roman invasions, when population pressure was intense,
0:13:34 > 0:13:42and farmers had growing need of protection, first from the elements, but later from each other.
0:13:49 > 0:13:52Many of those towers still survive,
0:13:52 > 0:13:59though none are as daunting as the great stone stockade on Aran, off Ireland's west coast.
0:14:02 > 0:14:07They didn't just spring up around the edges of the British Islands.
0:14:07 > 0:14:14All over the mainland too, the great hill forts of the Iron Age remain visible in terraced contours
0:14:14 > 0:14:17at places like Danebury and Maiden Castle.
0:14:17 > 0:14:20Lofty seats of power for the tribal chiefs,
0:14:20 > 0:14:27they were defended by rings of earth works, timber palisades and ramparts.
0:14:32 > 0:14:37Behind those daunting walls, this was not a world in panicky retreat.
0:14:39 > 0:14:46The Iron Age Britain into which the Romans eventually crashed with such alarming force
0:14:46 > 0:14:49was a dynamic, expanding society.
0:14:49 > 0:14:57From their workshops came the spectacular metalwork with which the elite decorated their bodies -
0:14:57 > 0:15:04armlets, pins and brooches, and ornamental shields like this, the so-called Battersea Shield.
0:15:23 > 0:15:29Or the astonishing stylised bronze horses, endearingly melancholy in expression,
0:15:29 > 0:15:34like so many Eeyores, resigned to a bad day in battle.
0:15:39 > 0:15:42With tribal manufacture came trade.
0:15:42 > 0:15:50The warriors, Druid priests and artists of Iron Age Britain shipped their wares all over Europe,
0:15:50 > 0:15:53trading with the expanding Roman Empire.
0:15:53 > 0:15:56In return, with no home-grown grapes or olives,
0:15:56 > 0:16:01Mediterranean wine and oil arrived in large earthenware jars.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11So Iron Age Britain was definitely not the back of beyond.
0:16:11 > 0:16:17Its tribes may have led lives separated by custom and language, with no great capital city,
0:16:17 > 0:16:21but taken together, they added up to something in the world,
0:16:21 > 0:16:29the bustling of countless productive energetic beehives. And what the bees made was not honey but gold.
0:16:30 > 0:16:38So the Romans would have known all about this strange but alluring world of fat cattle and busy forges.
0:16:38 > 0:16:44Evidence of its refinement would certainly have found its way to Rome.
0:16:46 > 0:16:52Along with the glittering metalware came stories of alarming cults
0:16:52 > 0:16:56which might have prompted the usual Roman dinnertime discussions.
0:16:56 > 0:17:03All very interesting, I dare say, but would we really want to call them a civilisation?
0:17:11 > 0:17:15Supposing they would have seen an ancient sculpture
0:17:15 > 0:17:20like this haunting stone face with its archaic, secretive smile,
0:17:20 > 0:17:28the eyes closed, as if in some mysterious devotional trance. The nose flattened, the cheeks broad.
0:17:28 > 0:17:36All so spellbindingly reminiscent of things the Romans must have seen in Etruria, or on the Greek Islands.
0:17:36 > 0:17:41Would they then have said, "This is a work of art"? Probably not.
0:17:41 > 0:17:49Sooner or later they'd have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out like a boiled egg,
0:17:49 > 0:17:51to hold sacrificial offerings.
0:17:51 > 0:17:58Then they would have remembered stories that Rome told about the grizzly brutality of the Druids.
0:17:58 > 0:18:04Perhaps they'd have taken note of stories told by the northern savages themselves
0:18:04 > 0:18:09of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully
0:18:09 > 0:18:15to those who had parted them from the rest of their body, warning of vengeance to come.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19Then they would have thought, "Well, perhaps not.
0:18:19 > 0:18:26"Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads."
0:18:33 > 0:18:40So why did the Romans come here, to the edge of the world, and run the gauntlet of these ominous totems?
0:18:40 > 0:18:47It was the lure of treasure - all those pearls Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps.
0:18:47 > 0:18:52But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most,
0:18:52 > 0:18:57the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier.
0:18:59 > 0:19:07So in the written annals of Western history, the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date.
0:19:07 > 0:19:13In 55 BC, Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel.
0:19:18 > 0:19:20Julius Caesar must have supposed
0:19:20 > 0:19:24that all he had to do was land his legions in force,
0:19:24 > 0:19:31and the Britons, just cowed by the spectacle of all those glittering helmets and eagle standards,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34would simply queue up to surrender.
0:19:34 > 0:19:41They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. Trouble was, geography didn't.
0:19:44 > 0:19:49Not once, but twice Julius Caesar's plans were sabotaged
0:19:49 > 0:19:53by that perennial secret weapon of the British - the weather.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57On the first go round, in 55 BC, a cavalry transport,
0:19:57 > 0:20:03which missed the high tide and was four days late, finally got going
0:20:03 > 0:20:08only to run directly into a storm and be blown right back to Gaul.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16A century later, Claudius, the club-foot stammerer,
0:20:16 > 0:20:22on the face of it the most unlikely conqueror of all, was determined to get it right.
0:20:22 > 0:20:27If it was to be done, he thought, it had to be done in such massive force
0:20:27 > 0:20:31that he would not repeat the embarrassments of Julius.
0:20:31 > 0:20:37So Claudius' invasion force was immense, some forty thousand troops.
0:20:37 > 0:20:44The kind of army which could barely be conceived of, much less encountered in Iron Age Britain.
0:20:44 > 0:20:49Claudius did succeed where Julius Caesar had failed,
0:20:49 > 0:20:53through a brilliant strategy of carrot and stick.
0:20:57 > 0:21:02Yes, he would seize the largely undefended oppida, or towns,
0:21:02 > 0:21:10and strike at the heart of the British aristocracy, its places of status, prestige and worship.
0:21:10 > 0:21:17But for those chieftains sensible enough to reach for the olive branch rather than the battle javelin,
0:21:17 > 0:21:25Claudius' plan was to give them, or rather their sons, a trip to Rome and watch their resistance melt.
0:21:29 > 0:21:34While they were in Rome, many of them must have begun to notice
0:21:34 > 0:21:39that life for your average patrician was, well, exceptionally sweet.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42So, before long, they began to hunger for a taste of themselves.
0:21:42 > 0:21:49If there were sumptuous country villas amidst the olive groves of the Roman countryside,
0:21:49 > 0:21:55why could there not be sumptuous country villas amidst the pear orchards of the South Downs?
0:21:55 > 0:22:04Just fall in line, be a little reasonable, judicious support... see what you would end up with.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08The spectacular palace at Fishbourne.
0:22:14 > 0:22:20The man who built it was Togidubnus, King of the Regenses in what would be Sussex -
0:22:20 > 0:22:25one of the quickest to sign up as Rome's local ally.
0:22:25 > 0:22:31He was rewarded with enough wealth to build himself something fit for a Roman.
0:22:31 > 0:22:37Only the extraordinary mosaic floors survive, but the place was as big as four football pitches,
0:22:37 > 0:22:43grand enough for someone who now gloried in the name of Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus.
0:22:43 > 0:22:50He couldn't have been the only British chief to realise on which side his bread was buttered.
0:22:50 > 0:22:58All over Britain, rulers thought a Roman connection would help in their pursuit of local power and status.
0:22:58 > 0:23:03The person we think of as embodying British national resistance to Rome,
0:23:03 > 0:23:11Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, came from a family of happy, even eager collaborators.
0:23:11 > 0:23:19It only took a policy of stupidity, arrogance and brutality on the part of the local Roman governor
0:23:19 > 0:23:24to turn her from a warm supporter of Rome into its most dangerous enemy.
0:23:25 > 0:23:33In a show of brutal arrogance, the local governor had East Anglia declared a slave province.
0:23:33 > 0:23:39To make the point about exactly who owned whom, Boudicca was then treated to a public flogging
0:23:39 > 0:23:42while her daughters were raped before her.
0:23:45 > 0:23:52In 60 AD, Boudicca rose up in furious revolt, quickly gathering an army bent on vengeance.
0:23:52 > 0:23:58With the cream of the Roman troops tied down, suppressing an insurgency in North Wales,
0:23:58 > 0:24:06Boudicca's army marched towards the place symbolising the hated Roman colonisation of Britain. Colchester.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10It helped that it was lightly garrisoned.
0:24:10 > 0:24:17After a fire-storm march through eastern England, burning Roman settlements, it was the city's turn.
0:24:17 > 0:24:25The frightened Roman colonists then had to fall back to the one place they were sure they'd be protected,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29by their Emperor and their Gods - the great temple of Claudius.
0:24:35 > 0:24:42If the terrified Romans thought they'd escape the implacable anger of Boudicca, they were out of luck.
0:24:42 > 0:24:50With thousands of them huddled in the temple above these foundations, she began to set light to it.
0:24:50 > 0:24:56They must have been able to smell the scorch and the smoke and the fire coming towards them
0:24:56 > 0:25:04as their new imperial city burned down with themselves and everything else here buried in smoking ash.
0:25:04 > 0:25:07Thousands died in this place.
0:25:07 > 0:25:09Boudicca had her revenge.
0:25:21 > 0:25:25But her triumph couldn't last.
0:25:27 > 0:25:32The lightly defended civilians of Colchester were one thing,
0:25:32 > 0:25:40now she'd have to face a disciplined Roman army, fully prepared for all that she could throw at them.
0:25:42 > 0:25:50Sure enough, when the two forces met, Boudicca's swollen and unwieldy army was no match for the legions.
0:25:50 > 0:25:56Her great insurrection ended in a gory, chaotic slaughter.
0:26:34 > 0:26:40Boudicca took her own life rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49Lessons have been learned the hard way, at least for some.
0:26:49 > 0:26:57And so when barbarians started attacking Roman forts in the north the Romans knew exactly what to do.
0:26:58 > 0:27:05In 79 AD, an enormous pitched battle took place on the slopes of an unidentified highland mountain
0:27:05 > 0:27:08which Tacitus calls Mons Graupius.
0:27:08 > 0:27:15The result - another slaughter - but not before the Caledonian general, Calgacus,
0:27:15 > 0:27:22delivered the first great anti-imperialist speech on Scotland's soil.
0:27:22 > 0:27:24"Here at the world's end,
0:27:24 > 0:27:30"on its last inch of liberty, we have lived unmolested,
0:27:30 > 0:27:35"to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39"But there are no other tribes to come.
0:27:39 > 0:27:44"Nothing but sea, and cliffs, and these more deadly Romans
0:27:44 > 0:27:49"whose arrogance you cannot escape by obedience and self-restraint.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52"To plunder, butcher, steal,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55"these things they misname "Empire".
0:27:55 > 0:28:01"They make a desolation and they call it peace."
0:28:08 > 0:28:11Of course, Calgacus never said any such thing.
0:28:11 > 0:28:18This was the speech written long after the event by Tacitus, and it's Roman, not Scottish.
0:28:18 > 0:28:22Yet this burning sentiment would echo down the generations.
0:28:22 > 0:28:29Like Britannia itself, the idea of free Caledonia was from the first a Roman invention.
0:28:31 > 0:28:34There was one Emperor, Spanish by birth,
0:28:34 > 0:28:39who knew even the world's biggest empire needed to know its limits
0:28:39 > 0:28:46and he, of course, was destined, in Britain, at any rate, to be remembered by a wall.
0:28:47 > 0:28:54When we think of Hadrian's Wall, we tend to think of the Romans rather like US cavalrymen,
0:28:54 > 0:29:01deep in Indian country, defending the flag, peering through the cracks and waiting for smoke signals.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04A place where paranoia sweated from every stone.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07It wasn't really like that at all.
0:29:07 > 0:29:14As fantastically ambitious as this was, stretching 73 miles from the Solway to the Tyne,
0:29:14 > 0:29:19and although Hadrian probably conceived it in response to a rebellion
0:29:19 > 0:29:26on the part of the people whom the Romans referred to as Britunculi, nasty, wretched little Brits,
0:29:26 > 0:29:33almost certainly he didn't mean it as an impermeable barrier against barbarian onslaught from the north.
0:29:38 > 0:29:45The wall was studded with mile castles, and turrets, and forts, like this one at Housteads.
0:29:45 > 0:29:48But as Britain settled down in the 2nd century AD,
0:29:48 > 0:29:53these places became up-country hill stations,
0:29:53 > 0:29:58more like social centres and business centres than really grim heavily-manned barracks.
0:30:00 > 0:30:08The purpose of the forts became not to prevent people going to and fro so much as to control/observe them.
0:30:08 > 0:30:13The forts became a place where a kind of customs scam was imposed
0:30:13 > 0:30:17on those trying to do business on one side or the other.
0:30:17 > 0:30:21It may be better to think of the wall not as a fence but a spine
0:30:21 > 0:30:28around which control of northern Britain toughened, hardened and prospered.
0:30:28 > 0:30:34If we can now imagine Hadrian's Wall as not such a bad posting,
0:30:34 > 0:30:39it's because our sense of what life was like at the time has been transformed
0:30:39 > 0:30:42by a recent astonishing find.
0:30:42 > 0:30:44The so-called Vindolanda Tablets.
0:30:44 > 0:30:50They're scraps of Roman correspondence, jottings, scribblings, and drafts of letters
0:30:50 > 0:30:55thrown away as rubbish by their authors, almost 2000 years ago.
0:30:55 > 0:31:00For 25 years, archaeologists here have been digging up these letters:
0:31:00 > 0:31:041,300 of them from 7 metres below the ground.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09Up they've come, lovingly separated from dirt, debris and each other,
0:31:09 > 0:31:12and painstakingly deciphered.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16At once poignantly fragile and miraculously enduring,
0:31:16 > 0:31:23the voices of the Roman frontier in the windy north country, loud, clear and strong.
0:31:25 > 0:31:29"Decorian Masculus to Tribune Cerrialis, Greeting.
0:31:29 > 0:31:33"Please give instructions as to what you want us to do tomorrow.
0:31:33 > 0:31:39"Are we all to return with the standard, or half? My troops have no beer. Please order some to be sent."
0:31:39 > 0:31:45"I've sent you two pairs of socks, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants.
0:31:45 > 0:31:50"Greet Epus Tetricus and your mess mates with whom I pray you get on well."
0:31:50 > 0:31:56"..I implore your mercifulness not to allow me, an innocent man from overseas,
0:31:56 > 0:32:03- "to have been beaten by rods..."- "I invite you to my party on the 3rd day before the Ides of September.
0:32:03 > 0:32:11"Please come as the day will be so much more enjoyable to me if you were here."
0:32:11 > 0:32:17A world of garrisons and barracks had now become a society in its own right.
0:32:21 > 0:32:27From the middle of the 2nd century it makes sense to talk about a Romano-British culture,
0:32:27 > 0:32:35and not just as a colonial veneer imposed on the resentful natives, but as a genuine fusion.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45And nowhere was this clearer than here in Bath.
0:32:59 > 0:33:07The quintessential Romano-British place. At once mod con and mysterious cult, therapy and luxury.
0:33:07 > 0:33:15A marvel of hydraulic engineering, and a showy theatre of the waters of healing.
0:33:15 > 0:33:19The spa was an extravaganza of buildings
0:33:19 > 0:33:27constructed over a spring that gushed a third of a million gallons of hot water into the baths daily.
0:33:59 > 0:34:06When you soaked yourself at Bath you washed your body and soul - ablution and devotion at the same time.
0:34:06 > 0:34:11Much of the bathing, as well as the flirting, gossip and deal making
0:34:11 > 0:34:15went on in this austerely grandiose great bath.
0:34:17 > 0:34:22But the spiritual heart of the place was the sacred spring,
0:34:22 > 0:34:26a ferny grotto where water collected,
0:34:26 > 0:34:31and where the devotees of the presiding goddess, Sulis Minerva,
0:34:31 > 0:34:37could look through an especially constructed window at the altar erected in her honour,
0:34:37 > 0:34:42and occasionally could throw gift offerings in her way.
0:34:44 > 0:34:50Bath was not the only place where Romano-Britons could wallow in the well-being of the province.
0:34:56 > 0:35:03In Dover, the Romans built this 96-bedroom hotel. Now 20 feet below street level,
0:35:03 > 0:35:08but the last word in luxury for any VIP disembarking from Gaul.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16By the 4th century, however, Rome was in deep trouble,
0:35:16 > 0:35:21attacked by barbarians and undermined by endless political turmoil.
0:35:21 > 0:35:28Britannia couldn't remain detached from the fate of the rest of the empire forever.
0:35:28 > 0:35:35At some point, Dover's significance for Britannia changed from a port of entry to a defensive stronghold,
0:35:35 > 0:35:39and a welcome mat gave way to the "Keep Out" sign
0:35:39 > 0:35:47in the shape of massive walls built smack through the grand hotel's lobby.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52This is the sort of wall the Romans built at Dover.
0:35:54 > 0:35:59This is Porchester, a Roman shore fort, a truly colossal structure,
0:35:59 > 0:36:07that makes all too clear the scale of threat the Romans felt the barbarians posed.
0:36:07 > 0:36:16Inside it lies a Norman castle, built a thousand years later, and now completely dwarfed by it.
0:36:18 > 0:36:25It was one of several such forts strung out along the southern and eastern coasts.
0:36:25 > 0:36:33Not even fortifications like those of Porchester or Hadrian's Wall could work without adequate troops.
0:36:33 > 0:36:38As more and more legionaries were sucked back to fight for Rome on the continent,
0:36:38 > 0:36:44and as Picts and Saxons, spotting the weakness, started raids from the north and east,
0:36:44 > 0:36:50Britannia couldn't help but feel the chill of vulnerability.
0:36:50 > 0:36:54And when, in the year 410, Aleric the Goth sacked Rome,
0:36:54 > 0:36:59and the last two legions departed to prop up the tottering empire,
0:36:59 > 0:37:03that chill developed into an acute anxiety attack.
0:37:07 > 0:37:13This was one of the genuinely fateful moments in British history, the legions departing.
0:37:13 > 0:37:20No, it was not like Hong Kong in 1997. There were no flags flying or pipers piping.
0:37:20 > 0:37:25The Governor was not driving around his courtyard, seven times pledging to return.
0:37:25 > 0:37:32Doubtless, many of the Romano-British did hope and expect to see the eagles back some day.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35The tax collectors, and the magistrates,
0:37:35 > 0:37:42and the town counsellors, poets, potters, musicians, newly Christian priests all said to themselves,
0:37:42 > 0:37:45"Well, this couldn't go on forever.
0:37:45 > 0:37:51"We couldn't always look to Mother Rome, and Mother Rome is half infested with barbarians anyway.
0:37:51 > 0:37:54"We can handle this. We've got the Saxon shore forts,
0:37:54 > 0:37:59"we can hire barbarians to deal with other barbarians. We can handle this.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02"We CAN handle this!"
0:38:09 > 0:38:17For the less confident, there was only one thing to do - bury their treasure and head for the hills...
0:38:18 > 0:38:25..planning, as refugees always do, to return when the worst was over and dig it all up again.
0:38:27 > 0:38:35But in the case of this horde of 15,000 gems, medals and exquisite silver tigress, they never did.
0:38:42 > 0:38:50It was instead discovered in 1992 at Hoxne in Suffolk, and is now kept in the British Museum.
0:38:58 > 0:39:03Some force was needed to stop the barbarians in the north and west
0:39:03 > 0:39:09from exploiting the yawning vacuum of power left by the exit of the legions.
0:39:11 > 0:39:18At first, the warriors from north Germany and Denmark sailing up-river in their wave horses seemed a boon,
0:39:18 > 0:39:20not a curse.
0:39:20 > 0:39:26When one local despot named Vortigen naively imagined he could use the imported barbarians
0:39:26 > 0:39:32as his own personal military muscle, but neglected to pay them, as per the contract,
0:39:32 > 0:39:36he made one of the more spectacular blunders in British history.
0:39:36 > 0:39:43Furious at being stiffed, the Saxons turned on the local population they'd been hired to defend,
0:39:43 > 0:39:49and when they'd finished burning and pillaging, they took land in lieu of pay,
0:39:49 > 0:39:55settling down amidst the understandably dismayed native population.
0:39:55 > 0:39:58Dismayed but not, I think, terrified,
0:39:58 > 0:40:03for although earliest chroniclers of the coming of the Saxons
0:40:03 > 0:40:07thought of Vortigen's faux pas as heralding some apocalypse,
0:40:07 > 0:40:14it wasn't as if someone turned the lights out on Roman Britannia and declared the Dark Ages had begun.
0:40:14 > 0:40:20The long process by which Roman Britannia morphed into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was gradual.
0:40:20 > 0:40:24Not sudden. An adaptation not an annihilation.
0:40:27 > 0:40:31For a long time, the Saxons were a tiny minority,
0:40:31 > 0:40:34numbered in hundreds rather than thousands,
0:40:34 > 0:40:39living in the midst of a strongly Romano-British population.
0:40:39 > 0:40:43As different as these cultures were, they were still neighbours.
0:40:43 > 0:40:49The vast majority still tried, and succeeded, in living some sort of Roman life.
0:40:50 > 0:40:54Here we're at Wroxeter in Shropshire, the Roman Viriconium.
0:40:54 > 0:40:59There's wonderful evidence of this make-do, hybrid, improvised world,
0:40:59 > 0:41:04poised between Roman ruins and Anglo-Saxon beginnings.
0:41:04 > 0:41:10When the bath house stopped functioning, the citizens took the tiles and used them for paving.
0:41:10 > 0:41:15And when the roof of the great basilica threatened to fall in
0:41:15 > 0:41:18the citizens demolished the whole building themselves.
0:41:18 > 0:41:22Inside the shell they put up a new timber structure,
0:41:22 > 0:41:28spacious and elegant enough to give the sense they were still living some sort of Roman lifestyle,
0:41:28 > 0:41:31although in an increasingly phantom Britannia.
0:41:34 > 0:41:38Eventually, though, the adaptations became ever more makeshift -
0:41:38 > 0:41:42the fabric of Roman life increasingly threadbare,
0:41:42 > 0:41:46until it did indeed fall apart altogether.
0:41:48 > 0:41:52The island was now divided into three utterly different realms.
0:41:52 > 0:41:57The remains of Britannia hung on in the west.
0:41:57 > 0:42:03North of the abandoned walls and forts, the Scottish tribes, for the most part, stayed pagan.
0:42:03 > 0:42:09England, the realm of Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, was planted in the east,
0:42:09 > 0:42:14all the way from Kent to the kingdom of Bernicia in Northumbria.
0:42:21 > 0:42:27Saxon chiefs often built settlements on the ruined remains of old Roman British towns, not least London.
0:42:27 > 0:42:32Like many invaders, they hankered after what they had destroyed.
0:42:34 > 0:42:39Showier pieces of their armour often bare startling resemblances to Roman armour,
0:42:39 > 0:42:44and their leaders aspired to be something more than war chiefs.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48They wanted to be known as dux, a Roman duke.
0:42:48 > 0:42:55But in one crucial respect the Germanic tribal societies were utterly different from the Romans.
0:42:55 > 0:43:00Theirs was a culture based on the blood feud and punishment by ordeal.
0:43:01 > 0:43:07It was an entire social system. Its plunder was the glue of loyalty.
0:43:16 > 0:43:23But the Saxons were no more immune to change than the Romans had been before them.
0:43:23 > 0:43:29To look at the relics recovered from the Sutton Hoo burial site is to be teased by a powerful question.
0:43:29 > 0:43:37Did the Saxon lord buried here find his resting place in a pagan Valhalla or a Christian paradise?
0:43:39 > 0:43:44The history of the conversions between the 6th C and the 8th C
0:43:44 > 0:43:49is another crucial turning point in the history of the British Isles.
0:43:55 > 0:44:02But while the legions had long gone, the shadow of Rome fell once again on these islands.
0:44:02 > 0:44:06This time, though, it was an invasion of the soul,
0:44:06 > 0:44:12and the warriors were carrying Christian gospels rather than swords.
0:44:12 > 0:44:18The process began in a country that had never been touched by Roman rule in the first place.
0:44:18 > 0:44:22The land the Romans called Hibernia. Ireland.
0:44:24 > 0:44:32One of the most famous of the early missionaries to Ireland, St Patrick, was a Romano-British aristocrat -
0:44:32 > 0:44:36"the Patrician," or Patricius as he called himself.
0:44:36 > 0:44:42So there was nothing remotely Irish about the teenager who was kidnapped and sold into slavery
0:44:42 > 0:44:46by Irish raiders some time in the early 5th Century.
0:44:49 > 0:44:57It was only after he'd escaped, probably to Brittany, been ordained then visited by prophetic dreams,
0:44:57 > 0:45:02that he returned to Ireland, this time the messenger of the gospel.
0:45:05 > 0:45:09Patrick understood that the monastic ideal of the retreat
0:45:09 > 0:45:13was perfectly matched with the needs of local royal clans.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19So monasteries like Aran, off the Gulf-swept Irish coast,
0:45:19 > 0:45:24with their beehive cells, and encircling stone walls,
0:45:24 > 0:45:28looked like a stronghold, an encampment for God.
0:45:37 > 0:45:43But what about the dragon slayers on the mainland? Who converted them?
0:45:48 > 0:45:51One man gives us the answer.
0:45:52 > 0:46:00To school children of my generation, growing up in the 1950s, he will always be the Venerable Bede.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06Bede was not just the founding father of English history.
0:46:06 > 0:46:12Arguably, he was also the first consummate storyteller in all of English literature.
0:46:12 > 0:46:18He was not exactly well-travelled. He spent virtually his entire life here in Jarrow.
0:46:18 > 0:46:25But in a few lines he could conjure up not just the world of holy men and hermits,
0:46:25 > 0:46:31but the world of the great halls of Saxon Kings, their firelight and roasting meat,
0:46:31 > 0:46:34or the death throes of a great warhorse.
0:46:34 > 0:46:39His masterful grip on narrative made Bede not just an authentic historian
0:46:39 > 0:46:43but also a brilliant propagandist for the early church.
0:46:46 > 0:46:50Bede sees without any starry-eyed sentimentality
0:46:50 > 0:46:58what could overcome the mistrust of the pagan kings when asked to abandon their traditional gods.
0:46:58 > 0:47:02According to the most touching speech in Bede's entire history,
0:47:02 > 0:47:08the clinching moment of persuasion for one noble was nothing more than a gambler's bet.
0:47:09 > 0:47:14"It seems to me, my lord, that the present life of men here on Earth
0:47:14 > 0:47:20"is as though a sparrow in wintertime should come to a house and very swiftly fly through it,
0:47:20 > 0:47:25"entering in one window and straight away passing out through another,
0:47:25 > 0:47:29"while you sit at dinner...in a hall made warm with a great fire,
0:47:29 > 0:47:35"while outside, there are the raging tempests of winter, rain and snow.
0:47:35 > 0:47:41"For that short time it be within the house, the bird feels no smart of the winter storm
0:47:41 > 0:47:46"but soon passes again from winter back to winter and escapes your sight.
0:47:46 > 0:47:51"So the life of man here appears for a little season.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55"But what follows, or what has gone before, that surely we do not know.
0:47:55 > 0:48:02"Wherefore if this new learning has bought us any certainty methinks it is worthy to be followed."
0:48:02 > 0:48:08It's typical of Bede to put these words in the mouth of a nobleman,
0:48:08 > 0:48:14for the Church in Anglo-Saxon England was just really a branch of the aristocracy.
0:48:14 > 0:48:17St Wilfred the aristocratic Bishop of York
0:48:17 > 0:48:26deliberately used part of Hadrian's Wall to build at Hexham a basilica worthy of Roman authority.
0:48:26 > 0:48:34For Bede and St Wilfred, it was crucial the Roman, not the Irish Celtic Church, won over Britain,
0:48:34 > 0:48:41for what they passionately desired was the reconnection of a converted country with its Roman mother -
0:48:41 > 0:48:45a true homecoming.
0:48:45 > 0:48:50The authority of the Roman Saxon Church, though, didn't guarantee protection.
0:48:50 > 0:48:54Bede himself had had forebodings before he died in 735.
0:48:54 > 0:49:01Sure enough, half a century later, in 793, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle reports:
0:49:01 > 0:49:04"Dire portents appeared over Northumbria.
0:49:04 > 0:49:11"Immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying through the air.
0:49:11 > 0:49:14"A great famine followed.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16"A little after, on 8th of June,
0:49:16 > 0:49:23"the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne."
0:49:23 > 0:49:27The heathen men were, of course, the Vikings.
0:49:36 > 0:49:44If you look long enough and hard enough at any culture, you're gonna find something good to say about it,
0:49:44 > 0:49:50and historians of the Vikings, understandably distressed at the rape and pillage stereotype,
0:49:50 > 0:49:57have asked us to think of things other than sail, land, burn and plunder to say about the Vikings.
0:49:57 > 0:50:03They've said, "Look at their metalwork, look at their ships, look at the great poetic sagas."
0:50:03 > 0:50:07So we know they did come bearing more than just a nasty attitude.
0:50:07 > 0:50:11They came carrying amber, fur and walrus ivory.
0:50:11 > 0:50:18But somehow, though, this vision of the Vikings as rapid transit, long-distance commercial travellers,
0:50:18 > 0:50:22singing their sagas as they sailed to a new market opening
0:50:22 > 0:50:28I don't think would've cut much ice with the priests here at the cathedral at Bradwell-on-Sea,
0:50:28 > 0:50:32a crab scuttle from the area where I grew up as a child.
0:50:37 > 0:50:42There'd been a church here at Bradwell-on-Sea for over 200 years.
0:50:42 > 0:50:46It had originally been built on remains of an old Roman fort,
0:50:46 > 0:50:52and I can't help thinking that the priests would have found their stone defences reassuring
0:50:52 > 0:51:00as they waited nervously for the Viking raids they knew could strike hard and fierce at any moment.
0:51:06 > 0:51:10In addition to land, Vikings were keen on one other merchandise.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13People, whom they sold as slaves.
0:51:16 > 0:51:21A thousand such slaves were taken from Armagh in one raid alone.
0:51:21 > 0:51:27A burial dated to 879 contained a Viking warrior with his sword,
0:51:27 > 0:51:33two ritually-murdered slave girls, and the bones of hundreds of men, women and children -
0:51:33 > 0:51:37his very own body count to take with him to Valhalla.
0:51:45 > 0:51:52On the positive side, though, there was one thing that the Vikings did manage to do, however inadvertently.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56They created England.
0:51:56 > 0:52:00By smashing the power of most of the Saxon kingdoms
0:52:00 > 0:52:06the Vikings accomplished what, left to themselves, the warring tribes could never have managed.
0:52:06 > 0:52:11Some semblance of alliance against a common foe.
0:52:11 > 0:52:15To push back the Vikings to repair some of the damage they'd done
0:52:15 > 0:52:20would need more than just a competent tribal warrior chief.
0:52:20 > 0:52:26It would need someone who had a vision, and a vision not just of victory but of government.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31Someone who could harness Anglo-Saxon energy and determination to Roman military discipline.
0:52:31 > 0:52:38They'd need a local Charlemagne, someone with the intelligence and imagination of a truly Roman ruler.
0:52:43 > 0:52:46And he, of course, was Alfred.
0:52:47 > 0:52:54Our cherished image of Alfred is of the hero on the run, up against steep odds, muddling through,
0:52:54 > 0:52:58taking it on the chin when getting scolded for burning the cakes.
0:53:00 > 0:53:06But the story which really tells you all you need to know about Alfred isn't set in the swamps of Somerset
0:53:06 > 0:53:13but on the Palatine Hill of Rome. It's more startling, illuminating, and it happens to be true.
0:53:16 > 0:53:23As a small boy, Alfred's father King Aethelwulf sent him on a special mission to Rome to see Pope Leo IV,
0:53:23 > 0:53:28probably to ask the Pope's help in the struggle against the Vikings.
0:53:28 > 0:53:35In a ceremony, the Pope dressed the little fellow in the Imperial purple of a Roman consul
0:53:35 > 0:53:43and wound a sword belt around his waist, turning little Alfred into a true Roman Christian warrior.
0:53:46 > 0:53:53On a second trip, Alfred spent a whole year in the Eternal City along with his father,
0:53:53 > 0:53:57walking the ruins of the empire and the sacred sites.
0:53:57 > 0:54:02It was surely this experience which made him what he was - a philosopher prince,
0:54:02 > 0:54:10someone who in more than a literal sense translated the works of Roman wisdom for Anglo-Saxon consumption.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15Through Alfred, England got something it hadn't had since the legions departed -
0:54:15 > 0:54:20an authentic vision of a realm governed by law and education.
0:54:20 > 0:54:25A realm which, since Alfred commissioned a translation of Bede into Anglo-Saxon,
0:54:25 > 0:54:32understood its past and its special destiny as the Western bastion of a Christian Roman world.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38First he had to win those battles.
0:54:38 > 0:54:45He took the throne of Wessex when, despite recent victory, the collapse of his kingdom seemed imminent,
0:54:45 > 0:54:50and with it the entirety of Anglo-Saxon England.
0:54:50 > 0:54:52It was on Athelney Island
0:54:52 > 0:54:57that the heroic legend of Alfred, fugitive on the run,
0:54:57 > 0:55:00finally turning the tide against his enemies, was born.
0:55:02 > 0:55:05By the spring of 878
0:55:05 > 0:55:10Alfred had managed to piece together an alliance of resistance,
0:55:10 > 0:55:15and at King Egbert's stone on the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset,
0:55:15 > 0:55:18near the site of this 19th-C folly built to celebrate it,
0:55:18 > 0:55:25he took command of an army which two days later fought and defeated Guthrum's Vikings.
0:55:30 > 0:55:36His victory, a holding operation, forced the Vikings to settle for less than half the country.
0:55:38 > 0:55:43But when in 886 Alfred entered London, rebuilt over the old Roman site,
0:55:43 > 0:55:46something of a deep significance did happen.
0:55:46 > 0:55:53He was acclaimed "The Sovereign Lord of all the English people not under subjection to the Danes."
0:55:53 > 0:55:56So it appears that during Alfred's lifetime
0:55:56 > 0:56:03the idea of a united English Kingdom had become conceivable and even desirable.
0:56:07 > 0:56:13The Alfred jewel, found not far from Athelney, has inscribed on its edge,
0:56:13 > 0:56:18"Aelfred Mec Heht Gewyrcan" - "Alfred caused me to be made".
0:56:18 > 0:56:22The same might well be said of his reinvention of the English monarchy.
0:56:23 > 0:56:31The enormous, haunting eyes which dominate the figure are said to be symbols of wisdom, or sight -
0:56:31 > 0:56:35apt qualities for a ruler whose ambitions were so lofty.
0:56:35 > 0:56:38Alfred's special gift was indeed
0:56:38 > 0:56:43to be able to see clearly England's place in the scheme of things -
0:56:43 > 0:56:48the debt of his realm to antiquity and his bequest to posterity.
0:56:51 > 0:56:58With his realm transformed, Alfred made possible a true Anglo-Saxon renaissance in the 10th century,
0:56:58 > 0:57:03creating stunning works of Christian art and architecture.
0:57:03 > 0:57:07But the long shadow of Rome still fell over all this brilliance.
0:57:07 > 0:57:15Alfred's grandson would be crowned "the first King of England," in a great Roman style coronation.
0:57:15 > 0:57:20And where did this momentous event happen? Well, where else but Bath?
0:57:26 > 0:57:32We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. England's been conceived, not yet born
0:57:32 > 0:57:38and to the north, Pictland has even further to go before it's recognisably a kingdom of Scotland.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42But for a generation or two, it did look as though
0:57:42 > 0:57:49the grafting of Anglo-Saxon culture onto the legacy of Roman Britain had produced an extraordinary flowering.
0:57:49 > 0:57:54But the shoots were still green, the buds were tender and vulnerable,
0:57:54 > 0:57:58and before this new kingdom had a chance to mature
0:57:58 > 0:58:03it would be cut down by the devastating blow of an invader's axe.
0:58:25 > 0:58:30Subtitles by Valerie Maguire BBC - 2000
0:58:30 > 0:58:33E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk