Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [171]
It had been made by the great mosaic workshop of Corinium which lay some twenty miles north of Aquae Sulis, and it had been installed by Constantius’s great-grandfather just after the year 300. Its classical theme, with its pleasing allusions to the local flora and fauna was typical of the work which, for four, centuries, had adorned provincial homes of families like the Porteuses all over the empire. “It’s a Roman gentleman’s villa,” his father had always told him. “We’ve been here nearly four hundred years and I dare say we shall be here four hundred more.”
As he gazed at it now, a tear ran down his cheek. The thing was so beautiful; it represented all his Roman culture; he would not let it be destroyed.
It was time for him to pray.
For nearly four centuries Britain had been Roman. Only in the far north, beyond the Emperor Hadrian’s great wall, had the Picts and Scots avoided Roman rule. And for most of that time, the Porteus family at Sorviodunum had enjoyed the pleasant peace of the Roman provincial world. Ordinary freemen had become citizens. Local towns – places like Venta Belgarum in the east, Durnovaria to the south west and Calleva to the north – boasted not only forums and temples, but theatres and arenas too. The baths at Aquae Sulis had been rebuilt several times, each more grandiose than the last. And the Porteus family had always assumed that the Roman Empire would go on for ever.
As the centuries passed however, great strains developed in the empire. It had grown unwieldy; and even though it had been subdivided into four parts – two in the east and two in the west – it still proved difficult to govern. Many times there were rival emperors and civil wars, and the northern island of Britain, with its normal complement of three legions, had sometimes found itself drawn into these disputes, and suffered as a result.
But something else was happening to the Roman world. It was being invaded from the east.
The great barbarian invasions of Europe were a gradual process that began in the third century. Sometimes the newcomers arrived as mercenaries, or settlers; sometimes, like Attila and his Huns they descended like a plague, only to withdraw again. They came from the distant plains of Asia, from the Baltic and Scandinavia; they had names which were to become familiar in European history – Franks, Goths, Burgundians, Lombards, Thuringians, Vandals, Saxons – and no matter how the empire managed to absorb them, there always seemed to be more.
Slowly, very slowly, the mighty Roman Empire had begun to break up.
They were dangerous times, but through the last century the island of Britannia was still prosperous and defended. The legions were there; its towns had stout walls; its shores were defended from the raids of Saxon pirates by a fleet and by fortified ports.
But for how long?
It was probably inevitable that Britain would be separated from the empire; but it is also certain, and sometimes forgotten, that the islanders took every possible action, around the year 400, to break the bond themselves by a combination of greed and bad judgement.
The first action was a manoeuvre by the British legions. Seeing a new emperor in Italy who was hardly more than a boy, they proclaimed one of their own commanders emperor and marched into Gaul to support him. In Italy, young Honorius was forced, for the time being, to accept this usurper as co-emperor. But the only result of this action for the island of Britannia was to leave it without its normal garrison, undefended.
Next, Burgundian and Saxon hordes crossed the Rhine and invaded Gaul, and the legions there lost control of the province. So now Britannia was isolated too.
It was exactly then that the British made their great mistake. They revolted, declared themselves independent from the empire, and threw out the imperial officials.
Constantius remembered it well. Like many of his class, he had approved of the move.
“Taxes have never been higher,” he told Placidia. “The decurions like me are hardest hit of all – because we have property,