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00:00.
00:04From its earliest days, Britain was an object of desire.
00:21Tacitus declared it pretium victoriae, worth the conquest,
00:26the best complement that could occur to a Roman.
00:32He had never visited these shores,
00:34but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold.
00:41Silver was abundant there, too.
00:44Apparently, so were pearls,
00:46although Tacitus had heard they were grey,
00:48like the overcast, rain-heavy skies,
00:51and that the natives only bothered to collect them
00:53when they were cast off on the shore.
00:59As far as the Roman historians were concerned,
01:02Britannia might well be off at the edge of the world,
01:04but it was off at the edge of their world,
01:06not in some howling barbarian wilderness.
01:09And if those same writers had been able to travel in time
01:13as well as space to the northernmost of our islands,
01:16to the Orcades, our modern Orkney,
01:19they would have seen something much more astonishing
01:21than heaps of pearls,
01:23the unmistakable signs of a civilization thousands of years older than Rome.
01:29The End
01:30The End
01:31The End
01:44The End
01:48The End
01:51The End
01:56The End
02:18There are the remains of Stone Age life dotted all over Britain and Ireland,
02:24but nowhere as abundantly as Orkney.
02:27With its mounds, graves, and above all its great circles of standing stones, like here
02:33at Brodgar, vast, imposing and utterly unknowable.
02:41But Orkney boasts another Neolithic site that is in its way even more impressive than Brodgar,
02:48the last thing you would expect from the Stone Age, a shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient
02:53domestic life.
02:56Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island, a village called Skara Brae.
03:10Here, beneath an area no bigger than the 18th green of a golf course, lies Europe's most
03:16complete Neolithic community, miraculously preserved for 5,000 years under a blanket of sand and
03:24grass until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm.
03:39This is a recognizable village, neatly fitted into its landscape between the pasture and
03:46the sea, intimate, domestic and self-sufficient.
03:50And although we're technically still in the Stone Age, in the Neolithic period, these dwellings
03:55are not huts, they're true houses built from the sandstone slabs that lie all around the
04:01island and which gave stout protection to the villagers here at Skara Brae from their biting
04:06arcadian winds.
04:12The villages were real neighbours, living cheek by jowl, their houses connected by walled,
04:18sometimes decorated alleyways.
04:20It's not too much of a stretch to imagine gossip travelling down those alleyways after a hearty seafood supper.
04:31We have, in other words, everything you could possibly want from a village except a church and a pub.
04:41In 3000 BC, the sea and the air were a little warmer than they are now, and once they'd settled
04:48in their sandstone houses, they could harvest red bream and the mussels and oysters that were
04:54abundant in the shallows.
05:08Cattle provided meat and milk, and dogs were kept for hunting and for company.
05:14During the Neolithic centuries, there would have been at least a dozen little houses here,
05:18half dug into the ground, for comfort and for safety.
05:22A thriving, bustling little community of 50 or 60.
05:29But the real miracle of Skara Brae is that these houses were not mere shelters.
05:35They were built by people who had culture, who had style.
05:43And here's where they showed off that style.
05:46The fully equipped, all-purpose Neolithic living room, complete with luxuries and
05:52necessities.
05:54Necessities?
05:55Necessities?
05:55Well, at the centre, a hearth around which they warn themselves and cook their food.
06:04A stone tank in which to keep live fish bait.
06:13And since we know that some of these houses had drains underneath them, they must also,
06:18believe it or not, have had indoor toilets.
06:21Luxuries?
06:22Well, the orthopaedically correct stone bed may not seem particularly luxurious, but the addition
06:29of layers of heather and straw would certainly have softened the sleeping surface and would
06:34actually have made this bed seem rather snug.
06:39At the centre of it all, though, was this spectacular dresser on which our house-proud Neolithic villagers
06:46would have set out all the most precious stuff.
06:52Fine bone and ivory necklaces, beautifully wrought and carved stone objects, everything designed
07:00to make a grand interior statement.
07:03Fine Security
07:28Given the rudimentary nature of their tools, it would have taken the villagers countless man hours to build not just
07:35these domestic dwellings, but also the great circles of stone where they would have gathered to worship.
07:43Saskara Bray was not just an isolated settlement of fishers and farmers. Its people must have belonged to some larger
07:51society.
07:52One sophisticated enough to mobilize the army of toilers and craftsmen needed not just to make these monuments, but to
07:59stand them on end.
08:01And they were just as concerned about housing the dead as the living.
08:08The mausoleum at Maze Howe, a couple of miles from Skara Bray, seems no more than a swelling on the
08:15grassy landscape.
08:17But this is, as it were, a British pyramid.
08:20And in keeping with our tastes for understatement, it reserves all its impact for the interior.
08:29Imagine them open once more, a detail from a village given the job of pulling back the stone seals, lugging
08:38the body through the low opening in the earth, up 36 feet of narrow, tight-fitting passageway, lit only once
08:47a year by the rays of the winter solstice.
08:50A death canal, constriction, smelling of the underworld.
09:10Finally, the passageway opens up into this stupendous, high-vaulted masonry chamber.
09:17Some of these tombs would have been elaborately decorated with carvings in the form of circles or spirals, like waves
09:25or the breeze-pushed clouds.
09:27Others would have had neat little stone stalls or cubicles where the bodies would be laid out on shelves.
09:39The grandest of these tombs had openings cut in the wall to create side chambers where the most important bodies
09:46could be laid out in aristocratic spaciousness, like family vaults in a country church.
09:57Unlike medieval knights, though, these grandees were buried with eagles and dogs or even treasure, the kind of thing that
10:06the Vikings who broke into these tombs thousands of years later were quick to filch.
10:14In return, though, these early tomb raiders left their own legacy, these wonderful graffiti.
10:22These runes were carved by the most skilled rune-carver in the western ocean.
10:28I bet it's thorny here.
10:32Ingegirth is one horny bitch.
10:41As for the Orcadian hoi polloi, well, they ranked a space in a common chamber on a floor carpeted with
10:49the bones of hundreds of their predecessors, a crowded waiting room to their afterworld.
11:07For centuries, life at Skara Brae must have continued in much the same way.
11:13But around 2500 BC, the island climate seems to have got colder and wetter.
11:20The red bream disappeared, and so did the stable environment the Orcadians had enjoyed for countless generations.
11:28Fields were abandoned, the farmers and fishers migrated, leaving their stone buildings and tombs to be covered by layers of
11:36peat, drifting sand, and finally, grass.
11:43The mainland, too, of course, had its burial chambers like the long barrow at West Kennet.
11:59And there were also the great stone circles, the largest at Avebury.
12:07But the most spectacular of all at Stonehenge.
12:18By 1000 BC, things were changing fast.
12:22All over the British landscape, a protracted struggle for good land was taking place.
12:27Forests were cleared, so that Iron Age Britain was not, as was once romantically imagined, an unbroken forest kingdom stretching
12:36from Cornwall to Inverness.
12:38It was rather a patchwork of open fields dotted here and there with woodland copses giving cover for game, especially
12:46wild pigs.
12:50And it was a crowded island.
12:52We now think that as many people lived on this land as during the reign of Elizabeth I, two and
12:58a half thousand years later.
13:01Some archaeologists believe that almost as much land was being farmed in the Iron Age as in 1914.
13:13So it comes as no surprise to see one spectacular difference from the little world of Skara Brae.
13:20Great windowless towers.
13:23They were built in the centuries before the Roman invasions, when population pressure was at its most intense.
13:29And farmers had growing need of protection, first from the elements, but later from each other.
13:45Many of those towers still survive, though none are as daunting as the great stone stockade on Arran of Ireland's
13:53west coast.
13:59And they didn't just spring up around the edges of the British Islands.
14:03All over the mainland, too, the great hill forts of the Iron Age remain visible in terraced contours at places
14:10like Dainbury and Maiden Castle.
14:13Lofty seats of power for the tribal chiefs, they were defended by rings of earthworks, timber palisades and ramparts.
14:28Behind those daunting walls, this was not a world in panicky retreat.
14:37The Iron Age Britain into which the Romans eventually crashed with such alarming force was a dynamic, expanding society.
14:47From their workshops came the spectacular metalwork with which the elite decorated their bodies.
14:53Armlets, pins and brooches, and ornamental shields like this, the so-called Battersea Shield.
15:19Or the astonishing stylised bronze horses, endearingly melancholy in expression, like so many Eeyores, resigned to a bad day in
15:29bad days.
15:35And with tribal manufacture came trade.
15:39The warriors, druid priests and artists of Iron Age Britain shipped their wares all over Europe, trading with the expanding
15:48Roman Empire.
15:49In return, with no homegrown grapes or olives, Mediterranean wine and oil arrived in large earthenware jars.
16:02So Iron Age Britain was definitely not the back of beyond.
16:06Its tribes may all have led lives separated from each other by custom and language, and they may have had
16:12no great capital city.
16:13But taken together, they added up to something in the world.
16:17The bustling of countless productive, energetic beehives.
16:21And what the bees made was not honey, but gold.
16:27So the Romans would have known all about this strange but alluring world of fat cattle and busy forges.
16:34Evidence of its refinement would certainly have found its way to Rome.
16:42But along with the glittering metalware came stories of alarming cults,
16:47which might have prompted the usual Roman dinnertime discussions.
16:52But all very interesting, I dare say.
16:55But would we really want to call them a civilization?
17:08Supposing they would have seen an ancient sculpture,
17:11like this haunting stone face with its archaic, secretive smile,
17:17the eyes closed as if in some mysterious devotional trance.
17:22The nose flattened, the cheeks broad.
17:24The whole thing so spellbindingly reminiscent of things the Romans must have seen in Etruria or on the Greek islands.
17:32Would they then have said yes, this is a work of art?
17:36Well, probably not.
17:38Sooner or later they would have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off,
17:42scooped out like a boiled egg at breakfast to hold sacrificial offerings.
17:47And then they would have remembered stories at Rome told about the grisly brutality of the Druids.
17:55Perhaps they would have even taken note of the stories told by the northern savages themselves,
18:00of decapitated heads, who were said to speak mournfully to those who had parted them from the rest of their
18:08body,
18:08warning of vengeance to come.
18:11And then they would have thought, well, perhaps not.
18:14Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads.
18:29So why did the Romans come here, to the edge of the world,
18:32and run the gauntlet of all these ominous totems?
18:37Well, there was the lure of treasure, of course,
18:40all those pearls that Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps.
18:44But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most,
18:49the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier.
18:55And so, in the written annals of Western history,
18:59the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date.
19:04In 55 BC, Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel.
19:14Julius Caesar must have supposed that all he had to do was land his legions in force,
19:21and the Britons, just howled by the spectacle of all those glittering helmets
19:25and eagle standards, would simply queue up to surrender.
19:30They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome.
19:35Trouble was, geography didn't.
19:40Not once, but twice, Julius Caesar's plans were sabotaged by that perennial secret weapon of the British, the weather.
19:49On the first go-round in 55 BC, a cavalry transport, which had already missed the high tide and got
19:56itself four days late,
19:58finally got going, only to run directly into a storm and be blown right back to Gaul.
20:08A century later, Claudius, the clubfoot stammerer, on the face of it the most unlikely conqueror of all,
20:15was determined to get it right.
20:18If it was going to be done at all, Claudius reckoned,
20:21it had to be done in such massive force that there was no chance of repeating the embarrassments of Julius.
20:27So Claudius's invasion force was immense, some 40,000 troops, the kind of army which could barely be conceived of,
20:37much less encountered in Iron Age Britain.
20:42Claudius did succeed where Julius Caesar had failed, through a brilliant strategy of carrot and stick.
20:53Yes, he would seize the largely undefended opida, or towns, and strike at the heart of the British aristocracy,
21:00its places of status, prestige and worship.
21:05But for those chieftains sensible enough to reach for the olive branch rather than the battle javelin, Claudius had another
21:12plan.
21:13Give them, or rather their sons, a trip to Rome, and a taste of the Dolce Vita, and just watch
21:19their resistance melt.
21:25While they were in Rome, many of them must have begun to notice that life for your average patrician was,
21:32well, exceptionally sweet.
21:34So before long, they naturally began to hunger for a taste of it themselves.
21:39If there were sumptuous country villas amidst the olive groves of the Roman countryside,
21:44why could there not be equally sumptuous country villas amidst the pear orchards of the South Downs?
21:51Just fall in line, be a little reasonable, some judicious support here and there,
21:58and see what you would end up with, the spectacular palace at Fishbourne.
22:10The man who built it was Toggy Dubnus, king of the Ragenses in what would be Sussex,
22:16one of the quickest to sign up as Rome's local ally.
22:20He was rewarded with enough wealth to build himself something fit for a Roman.
22:25Only the extraordinary mosaic floors survive, but the place was as big as four football pitches,
22:31grand enough for someone who now gloried in the name of Tiberius Claudius Coggy Dubnus.
22:39He couldn't have been the only British chief to realise on which side his bread was buttered.
22:45All over Britain, there were rulers who thought a Roman connection would do more good than harm
22:50in their pursuit of local power and status.
22:54The person we usually think of as embodying British national resistance to Rome, Queen Boudicca,
23:00of the East Anglian tribe, the Iceni, actually came from a family of happy, even eager collaborators.
23:07It only took a policy of incredible stupidity, arrogance and brutality on the part of the local Roman governor
23:15to turn her from a warm supporter of Rome into its most dangerous enemy.
23:23In a show of brutal arrogance, the local governor had East Anglia declared a slave province.
23:29To make the point about exactly who owned whom, Boudicca was then treated to a public flogging
23:35while her two daughters were raped in front of her.
23:40In 60 AD, Boudicca rose up in furious revolt, quickly gathering an army bent on vengeance.
23:48With the cream of the Roman troops tied down, suppressing an insurgency in North Wales,
23:54Boudicca's army marched towards the place which most symbolised the now-hated Roman colonisation of Britain,
24:00Colchester.
24:02It helped that it was lightly garrisoned.
24:05After a firestorm march through eastern England, burning Roman settlements one by one,
24:11it was the city's turn.
24:13The frightened Roman colonists then had to fall back to the one place
24:17they were sure that they were going to be protected by their emperor and their gods,
24:22the great temple of Claudius.
24:31If the terrified Romans thought they were going to escape the implacable anger of Boudicca,
24:36they were seriously out of luck.
24:39With thousands of them huddled, terrified, in the temple above these foundations,
24:44she began to set light to it.
24:46They must have been able to smell the scorch and the smoke and the fire coming towards them
24:51as the whole of their spanking new imperial city burned down,
24:56with themselves and everything else here buried in smoking ash.
25:01Thousands died in this place.
25:03Boudicca had her revenge.
25:18But her triumph couldn't last.
25:23The lightly defended civilians of Colchester were one thing,
25:27but now she would have to face a disciplined Roman army,
25:31fully prepared for all that she could throw at them.
25:38Sure enough, when the two forces met,
25:41Boudicca's swollen and unwieldy army was no match for the legions.
25:46Her great insurrection ended in a gory, chaotic slaughter.
26:19Her great insurrection ended.
26:21She could not have died in the former military military military military military military military military military military
26:29Boudicca took her own life, rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.
26:41Lessons have been learned the hard way, at least for some.
26:45And so, when barbarians started attacking Roman forts in the north,
26:49the Romans knew exactly what to do.
26:53In 79 AD, an enormous pitch battle took place on the slopes of an unidentified highland mountain,
27:00which Tacitus calls Mons Graupius.
27:03The result was another slaughter.
27:06But not before the Caledonian general, Calgacus,
27:10delivered the first great anti-imperialist speech on Scotland's soil.
27:17Here, at the world's end, on its last inch of liberty,
27:22we have lived unmolested to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity.
27:30But there are no other tribes to come.
27:34Nothing but sea and cliffs, and these more deadly Romans,
27:39whose arrogance you cannot escape by obedience and self-restraint.
27:44To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire.
27:51They make a desolation, and they call it peace.
28:02Of course, Calgacus never said any such thing.
28:06This was a speech written long after the event by Tacitus,
28:10and it's entirely Roman, not Scottish.
28:13Yet this burning sentiment would echo down the generations.
28:17Like Britannia itself, the idea of free Caledonia
28:21was from the first, a Roman invention.
28:26There was one emperor, Spanish by birth,
28:29who understood that even the world's biggest empire
28:31needed to know its limits.
28:33And he, of course, was destined, in Britain at any rate,
28:37to be remembered by a wall.
28:42When we think of Hadrian's Wall,
28:44we tend to think of the Romans rather like U.S. Cavalermen,
28:47deep in Indian country, defending the flag,
28:51peering through the cracks,
28:52and waiting nervously for war drums and smoke signals,
28:55a place where paranoia sweated from every stone.
28:59But it wasn't really like that at all.
29:01As fantastically ambitious as this was,
29:04stretching 73 miles from coast to coast,
29:08from the Solway to the Tyne,
29:10and although Hadrian probably conceived it
29:13in response to a rebellion
29:14on the part of those people
29:16whom the Romans loftily referred to
29:18as Britankily, nasty, wretched little Brits,
29:21almost certainly he didn't mean it
29:23as an impermeable barrier
29:25against barbarian onslaught from the north.
29:33The wall was studded with mile castles
29:36and turrets and forts like this one at Halstead's.
29:39But as Britain settled down in the 2nd century AD,
29:43these places became upcountry hill stations,
29:47more like social centres and business centres
29:50than really grim, heavily manned barracks.
29:55So the purpose of these forts
29:57became not to prevent people going to and fro,
30:00so much as to control and observe them.
30:02The forts in particular became a place
30:05where a kind of customs scam
30:07was imposed on those trying to do business
30:09on one side or the other.
30:11So maybe it's better to think of the wall
30:13not so much as a fence,
30:15but rather as a spine,
30:17around which control of Northern Britain
30:20toughened, hardened and prospered.
30:25If we can now imagine Hadrian's Wall
30:27as not such a bad posting,
30:28it's because our sense of what life was like at the time
30:32has been transformed
30:33by one of the most astonishing finds
30:35of recent archaeology,
30:37the so-called Vindolanda tablets.
30:40They are scraps of Roman correspondence,
30:43jottings, scribblings and drafts of letters
30:45thrown away as rubbish by their authors
30:47almost 2,000 years ago.
30:50For 25 years, archaeologists here
30:53have been digging up these letters,
30:551,300 of them from 7 metres below the ground.
30:59Up they've come, lovingly separated
31:02from dirt, debris and each other,
31:04and painstakingly deciphered,
31:07at once poignantly fragile
31:09and miraculously enduring,
31:11the voices of the Roman frontier
31:13in the windy north country,
31:15loud, clear and strong.
31:19Decorian Masculus,
31:21to Tribune Serialis, greeting.
31:23Please give instructions
31:25as to what you want us to do tomorrow.
31:27Are we all to return with a standard,
31:29or only half of us?
31:30My troops have no beer.
31:32Please order some to be sent.
31:34I've sent you two pairs of socks,
31:36two pairs of sandals,
31:37and two pairs of underpants.
31:39Greet Elpis Tetricus and your messmates,
31:41with whom I pray that you are getting on well.
31:43He beat me,
31:43and threatened to pour my goods down the drain.
31:46I implore your mercifulness
31:47not to allow me an innocent man from overseas
31:50to have been beaten by rods
31:52as if I were a criminal.
31:53I warmly invite you to my birthday party
31:55on the third day before the Ides of September.
31:58Please come,
31:59as the day will be so much more enjoyable to me
32:01if you were here.
32:05A world of garrisons and barracks
32:08had now become a society in its own right.
32:17And from the middle of the 2nd century,
32:18it makes sense to talk about a Romano-British culture,
32:22and not just as a colonial veneer
32:24imposed on the resentful natives,
32:27but as a genuine fusion.
32:35And nowhere was this clearer
32:38than here in Bath.
32:54Bath was the quintessential Romano-British place
32:58at once mod-con and mysterious cult,
33:02therapy and luxury,
33:04a marvel of hydraulic engineering
33:06and a showy theatre of the waters of healing.
33:10This bar was an extravaganza of buildings
33:13constructed over a spring
33:15that gushed a third of a million gallons
33:18of piping hot water into the baths every day.
33:54When you soaked yourself at Bath,
33:56you were washing your body and your soul,
33:58ablution and devotion at the same time.
34:02Much of the bathing,
34:03as well as the flirting,
34:04the gossip and the deal-making,
34:06went on in this austerely grandiose great bath.
34:14But the spiritual heart of the place
34:16was the sacred spring,
34:18a ferny grotto where water collected,
34:21and where the devotees of the presiding goddess,
34:25Sulis Minerva,
34:26could look through an especially constructed window
34:29at the altar erected in her honour
34:32and occasionally could throw gift offerings in her way.
34:39Bath was not the only place
34:42where Romano-Britans could wallow
34:43in the well-being of the province.
34:51In Dover,
34:52the Romans built this 96-bedroom hotel,
34:56now 20 feet below street level,
34:58but the last word in luxury
34:59for any VIP disembarking from Gaul.
35:06By the 4th century, however,
35:09Rome was in deep trouble,
35:11attacked by barbarians
35:13and undermined by endless political turmoil.
35:16Britannia couldn't remain detached
35:18from the fate of the rest of the empire forever.
35:23At some point,
35:24Dover's significance for Britannia changed
35:27from a port of entry
35:28to a defensive stronghold,
35:30and the welcome mat gave way to the keep-out sign
35:33in the shape of massive walls
35:35built smack through the Grand Hotel's lobby.
35:43This is the sort of wall the Romans built at Dover.
35:49This is Portchester,
35:51a Roman shore fort,
35:52a truly colossal structure
35:54that makes all too clear
35:56the scale of threat
35:57the Romans felt the barbarians posed.
36:02Inside it lies a Norman castle
36:05built a thousand years later
36:07and now completely dwarfed by it.
36:12It was one of several such forts
36:14strung out along the southern and eastern coasts.
36:20But not even fortifications
36:21like those of Porchester
36:23or Hadrian's Wall in the north
36:25could work without adequate troops.
36:28As more and more legionaries
36:29were sunk back to fight for Rome on the continent,
36:32and as Picts and Saxons
36:34spotting the weakness
36:35started raids of their own
36:37from the north and the east,
36:38Britannia couldn't help
36:40but feel the chill of vulnerability.
36:44And when in the year 410
36:46Alaric the Goth sacked Rome
36:48and the last two legions departed
36:51to prop up the tottering empire,
36:53that chill developed
36:55into an acute anxiety attack.
37:02This was one of the genuinely
37:03fateful moments in British history.
37:06The legions departed.
37:08No, it was not like Hong Kong in 1997.
37:11There were no flags flying
37:13or pipers piping.
37:15The governor was not driving
37:16around his courtyard seven times
37:18pledging to return.
37:20Now, doubtless,
37:21many of the Romano-British
37:23did hope and expect
37:25to see the eagles back someday.
37:27The tax collectors
37:28and the magistrates
37:30and the town councillors
37:31and the poets
37:32and the potters
37:33and the musicians
37:33and the newly Christian priests
37:36all said to themselves,
37:38well, this couldn't go on forever.
37:40We couldn't always look
37:41to Mother Rome
37:42and Mother Rome is half-infested
37:44with barbarians anyway.
37:45We can handle this.
37:47We've got the Saxon shore forts.
37:49We can hire barbarians
37:51to deal with the other barbarians.
37:53We can handle this.
37:55We can handle this.
38:04For the less confident, of course,
38:06there was only one thing to do.
38:07Bury their treasure
38:09and head for the hills.
38:13Planning, as refugees always do,
38:15to return when the worst was over
38:17and dig it all up again.
38:21But in the case of this particular hoard
38:23of 15,000 coins, gems, medals
38:27and this exquisite silver tigress,
38:29they never did.
38:37It was instead discovered in 1992
38:40at Hoxley in Suffolk
38:43and is now kept in the British Museum.
38:52Some sort of force was badly needed
38:55to stop the barbarians
38:57in the north and west
38:58from exploiting the yawning vacuum of power
39:01left by the exit of the legions.
39:06At first, the warriors from North Germany
39:09and Denmark sailing upriver
39:11in their wavehorses seemed a boon,
39:13not a curse.
39:15When one local despot named Vortigun
39:18naively imagined he could use
39:20the imported barbarians
39:21as his own personal military muscle,
39:23but neglected to pay them,
39:25as per the contract,
39:27he made one of the more spectacular blunders
39:30in British history.
39:32Furious at being stiffed,
39:34the Saxons turned on the local population
39:36they'd been hired to defend.
39:38And when they finished burning and pillaging,
39:40they took land in lieu of pay,
39:43settling down amidst the understandably dismayed
39:46native population.
39:50Dismayed, but not, I think, terrified.
39:53For although the earliest chroniclers
39:55of the coming of the Saxons
39:57thought of Vortigun's faux pas
39:59as heralding some sort of final apocalypse,
40:02it wasn't as though someone
40:03suddenly turned the lights out
40:04on Roman Britannia
40:05and declared the Dark Ages to have begun.
40:09The long process by which Roman Britannia
40:11morphed into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
40:14was gradual, not sudden,
40:16an adaptation, not an annihilation.
40:21For a long time, the Saxons were a tiny minority,
40:25numbered in hundreds rather than thousands,
40:28and they lived in the midst
40:29of an overwhelmingly Romano-British population.
40:33As different as these cultures were,
40:36they were still neighbours.
40:37The vast majority still tried and succeeded
40:41in living some sort of Roman life.
40:46Here at Roxeter in Shropshire,
40:49the Roman Viriconium,
40:50there's wonderful evidence
40:51of this make-do, hybrid, improvised world
40:55poised between Roman ruins
40:56and Anglo-Saxon beginnings.
40:59When the bathhouse stopped functioning,
41:01the citizens here just took the tiles
41:03and used them for paving.
41:05And when the roof of the great basilica
41:08threatened to fall in,
41:09the citizens simply went and demolished
41:11the whole building themselves.
41:12Inside the shell,
41:14they then put up a new timber structure,
41:17spacious and elegant enough
41:18to give them a sense
41:19they were still living
41:20some sort of Roman lifestyle,
41:23although in an increasingly phantom Britannia.
41:29Eventually, though,
41:30the adaptations became ever more makeshift,
41:33the fabric of Roman life
41:35increasingly threadbare,
41:37until it did indeed fall apart altogether.
41:42The island was now divided
41:44into three utterly different realms.
41:47The remains of Britannia
41:49hung on in the west.
41:52North of the abandoned walls and forts,
41:55the Scottish tribes,
41:56for the most part, stayed pagan.
41:59And England,
42:00the realm of the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes,
42:02was planted in the east,
42:04all the way from Kent
42:06to the kingdom of Benicia
42:07in Northumbria.
42:15The Saxon chiefs often built their settlements
42:18on the ruined remains
42:19of old Roman British towns,
42:21not least, of course, London.
42:23Like many invaders,
42:25they hankered after what they had destroyed.
42:29The showier pieces of their armour
42:31often bear startling resemblances
42:33to Roman armour,
42:34and their leaders aspired
42:36to be something more than war chiefs.
42:38They wanted to be known as duks,
42:40a Roman duke.
42:43But in one crucial respect,
42:45the Germanic tribal societies
42:47were utterly different from the Romans.
42:50Theirs was a culture based on the blood feud
42:52and punishment by ordeal.
42:55It was an entire social system.
42:58Its plunder was the glue of loyalty.
43:10But the Saxons were no more immune to change
43:13than the Romans had been before them.
43:17To look at the relics recovered
43:19from the Sutton Hoo burial site
43:21is to be teased by a powerful question.
43:24Did the Saxon lord buried here
43:27find his resting place
43:28in a pagan Valhalla
43:30or in a Christian paradise?
43:35The history of the conversions
43:37between the 6th and the 8th centuries
43:39is another of those crucial turning points
43:41in the history of the British Isles.
43:50But while the legions had long gone,
43:53the shadow of Rome fell once again
43:55on these islands.
43:57This time, though,
43:58it was an invasion of the soul
44:00and the warriors were carrying Christian gospels
44:03rather than swords.
44:09The process began in the country
44:11that had never been touched by Roman rule
44:13in the first place,
44:14the land the Romans called
44:15Hibernia, Ireland.
44:19We have to remember that the most famous
44:21of the early missionaries to Ireland,
44:23St Patrick,
44:24was in fact a Romano-British aristocrat,
44:28the patrician,
44:29or Patricius, as he called himself.
44:31So there was nothing remotely Irish
44:33about the teenager
44:34who was kidnapped and sold into slavery
44:36by Irish raiders
44:38sometime in the early 5th century.
44:44It was only after he'd escaped,
44:46probably to Brittany,
44:48been ordained,
44:49then visited by prophetic dreams,
44:52that he returned to Ireland,
44:53this time the messenger of the gospel.
45:01Patrick understood
45:02that the monastic ideal of retreat
45:04was perfectly matched
45:06with the needs of local royal clans.
45:11So monasteries like Arran
45:13off the gull-swept Irish coast
45:15with their beehive cells
45:16and encircling stone walls
45:18look like a stronghold,
45:21an encampment for God.
45:31But what about the dragon slayers
45:34on the mainland
45:34who converted them?
45:42One man gives us the answer.
45:47To all schoolchildren
45:49of my generation
45:50growing up in the 1950s,
45:52he will always be
45:53the venerable Bede.
45:57Bede was not just
45:59the founding father
46:00of English history.
46:01Arguably,
46:02he was also
46:03the first consummate storyteller
46:05in all of English literature.
46:07He was not exactly well-travelled.
46:10He spent virtually
46:10his entire life
46:11here in Jarrow.
46:13But in a few luminous lines,
46:15he could conjure up
46:17not just the world
46:18of holy men and hermits,
46:19but the world
46:20of the great timbered halls
46:22of the Saxon kings
46:23with their firelight
46:24and roasting meat
46:25or the death throes
46:27of a great war horse.
46:28It was this masterful grip
46:31on narrative
46:31that made Bede
46:32not just an authentic historian,
46:34but also a brilliant propagandist
46:37for the early church.
46:41Bede sees,
46:42without any starry-eyed sentimentality,
46:45what could overcome
46:46the deep mistrust
46:48of the pagan kings
46:49when asked to abandon
46:50their traditional gods.
46:52according to the most touching speech
46:54in Bede's entire history,
46:56the clinching moment
46:57of persuasion
46:58for one noble
46:59was nothing more
47:00than a gambler's bet.
47:03It seems to me,
47:05my lord,
47:05that the present life
47:06of men here on earth
47:07is as though
47:08a sparrow in wintertime
47:10should come to a house
47:11and very swiftly
47:12fly through it,
47:13entering in at one window
47:15and straightaway
47:16passing out through another
47:17while you sit at dinner
47:19with your captains
47:20in a hall made warm
47:21with a great fire,
47:23while outside
47:24there are the raging tempests
47:26of winter, rain, and snow.
47:28For that short time
47:29it be within the house,
47:31the bird feels no smart
47:33of the winter storm,
47:35but soon it passes again
47:36from winter
47:37back to winter
47:38and escapes your sight.
47:40So the life of man
47:42here appears
47:43for a little season,
47:44but what follows
47:46or what has gone before
47:47that surely we do not know.
47:49Wherefore,
47:50if this new learning
47:52has brought us any certainty,
47:53methinks it is worthy
47:54to be followed.
47:59It's typical of Bede
48:01to put these words
48:02in the mouth of a nobleman,
48:03for the church
48:04in Anglo-Saxon England
48:05was just really a branch
48:07of the aristocracy.
48:09St Wilfred,
48:10the aristocratic bishop of York,
48:12deliberately used
48:13part of Hadrian's Wall
48:14to build at Hexham
48:16a basilica worthy
48:17of Roman authority.
48:20For Bede and St Wilfred,
48:22it was crucial
48:23that it was the Roman,
48:24not the Irish Celtic church,
48:26that won over Britain.
48:28For what they passionately desired
48:31was the reconnection
48:32of a converted country
48:34with its Roman mother,
48:35a true homecoming.
48:39The authority
48:40of the Roman Saxon church,
48:42though,
48:42didn't guarantee protection.
48:45Bede himself
48:46had had forebodings
48:47before he died in 735.
48:50Sure enough,
48:51half a century later,
48:52in 793,
48:54the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports,
48:56dire portents
48:58appeared over Northumbria.
49:00Immense whirlwinds
49:01and flashes of lightning
49:02and fiery dragons
49:04were seen flying
49:05through the air.
49:06A great famine followed.
49:08And a little after that,
49:10on the 8th of June,
49:11the ravages of heathen men
49:12miserably destroyed
49:14God's church
49:14at Lundersforn.
49:19The heathen men
49:20were, of course,
49:21the Vikings.
49:33If you look long enough
49:34and hard enough
49:35at almost any culture,
49:36you're going to find
49:37something good
49:38to say about it.
49:39And historians
49:40of the Vikings,
49:42understandably distressed
49:43at the rape and pillage
49:44stereotype,
49:45have asked us lately
49:46to think of things
49:47other than
49:48sail, land,
49:49burn and plunder
49:50to say about the Vikings.
49:51They've said,
49:52look at their metalwork,
49:53look at their ships,
49:54look at the great
49:55poetic sagas.
49:56So now we know
49:57that the Vikings
49:58did come bearing
49:59something other
50:00than a nasty attitude.
50:02They came carrying
50:03amber and fur
50:04and walrus ivory.
50:06But somehow, though,
50:07this vision
50:08of the Vikings
50:09as rapid transit,
50:11long-distance
50:12commercial travellers
50:13singing their sagas
50:14as they sailed
50:15to a new market opening,
50:17I don't think
50:18would have cut much ice
50:19with the priests
50:19here at the cathedral
50:21at Bradwell-on-Sea,
50:22just a crab scuttle
50:24away from the area
50:25where I grew up
50:25as a child
50:26on the Essex shore.
50:33There'd been a church
50:34here at Bradwell-on-Sea
50:35for over 200 years.
50:37It had originally
50:38been built
50:38on the remains
50:39of an old Roman fort.
50:41And I can't help
50:42thinking that the priests
50:43would have found
50:44those stone defences
50:46reassuring
50:47as they waited
50:48nervously
50:49for the Viking raids
50:50that they knew
50:51could strike
50:52hard and fierce
50:54at any moment.
51:00In addition to land,
51:02the Vikings were keen
51:03on one other kind
51:04of merchandise,
51:06people whom
51:07they sold as slaves.
51:10A thousand such slaves
51:12were taken from Armagh
51:14in one raid alone.
51:16A burial dated to 879
51:19contained a Viking warrior
51:21with his sword,
51:22two ritually murdered
51:23slave girls,
51:24and the bones of hundreds
51:26of men, women, and children,
51:28his very own body count
51:29to take with him
51:30to Valhalla.
51:42On the positive side,
51:44though, there was one thing
51:45that the Vikings
51:45did manage to do,
51:46however inadvertently.
51:48They created England.
51:50By smashing the power
51:52of most of the Saxon kingdoms,
51:54the Vikings accomplished
51:55what left of themselves
51:57the warring tribes
51:58could never have managed.
51:59some semblance of alliance
52:01against a common foe.
52:06To push back
52:07the Viking onslaught
52:08to repair some
52:09of the terrible damage
52:10they'd done
52:10would need more than
52:12just a competent
52:12tribal warrior chief.
52:14It was going to need
52:15someone who had a vision,
52:16and a vision not just
52:17of victory,
52:18but of government.
52:19Someone who could harness
52:20Anglo-Saxon energy
52:22and determination
52:23to Roman military discipline.
52:25It was going to need,
52:26in fact,
52:27a local Charlemagne,
52:29someone with the intelligence
52:30and imagination
52:31of a truly Roman ruler.
52:38And he, of course,
52:39was Alfred.
52:42Our cherished image of Alfred
52:44is of the hero on the run,
52:45up against steep odds,
52:47muddling through,
52:48taking it on the chin
52:49when getting scolded
52:50for burning the cakes.
52:53But the story
52:54which really tells you
52:56all you need to know
52:57about Alfred
52:57isn't set in the swamps
52:59of Somerset,
53:00but on the Palatine Hill
53:01of Rome,
53:02and is much more startling
53:05and illuminating.
53:06And it happens
53:08to be true.
53:10As a small boy,
53:12Alfred's father,
53:13King Aethelwulf,
53:14sent him on a special mission
53:15to Rome
53:16to see Pope Leo IV,
53:18probably to ask
53:19the Pope's help
53:20in the struggle
53:21against the Vikings.
53:23In a ceremony,
53:24the Pope dressed
53:26the little fellow
53:26in the imperial purple
53:28of a Roman consul
53:29and wound a sword belt
53:31around his waist,
53:33turning little Alfred
53:34into a true
53:35Roman Christian warrior.
53:41On a second trip,
53:43Alfred spent a whole year
53:44in the Eternal City
53:45along with his father,
53:47walking the ruins
53:48of the Empire
53:49and the sacred sites.
53:51It was surely
53:52this experience
53:53which made him
53:54what he was,
53:55a philosopher prince,
53:56and someone who
53:57in more than a literal sense
53:59translated the works
54:00of Roman wisdom
54:01for Anglo-Saxon consumption.
54:04Through Alfred,
54:06England got something
54:07it hadn't had
54:08since the legions departed,
54:10an authentic vision
54:11of a realm
54:11governed by law
54:13and education,
54:14a realm which,
54:15since Alfred commissioned
54:17a translation of Bede
54:18into Anglo-Saxon,
54:20understood its past
54:21and its special destiny
54:23as the Western bastion
54:25of a Christian Roman world.
54:30But first,
54:31he had to win those battles.
54:32He took the throne of Wessex
54:34at a time
54:35when despite a recent victory,
54:37the collapse of his kingdom
54:38seemed all but imminent
54:39and with it,
54:41the entirety of Anglo-Saxon England.
54:44It was here,
54:46amidst the reeds
54:47of Athelny Island,
54:48that the heroic legend
54:49of Alfred,
54:50fugitive on the run,
54:52finally turning the tide
54:53against his enemies,
54:54was born.
54:58By the spring of 878,
55:00Alfred had managed
55:01to piece together
55:02an improvised alliance
55:04of resistance,
55:05and at King Egbert Stone
55:06on the borders
55:07of Wiltshire and Somerset,
55:09near the site
55:10of this 19th century folly
55:11built to celebrate it,
55:12he took command of an army
55:14which two days later
55:15fought and defeated
55:17Guthrum's Vikings.
55:25Alfred's victory
55:25was a holding operation,
55:27forcing the Vikings
55:28to settle
55:29for less than half
55:30the country.
55:32But when in 886,
55:34Alfred entered London,
55:36rebuilt over the old Roman site,
55:38something of a deep
55:40significance did happen.
55:42He was acclaimed
55:43as the sovereign lord
55:44of all the English people,
55:46not under subjection
55:47to the Danes.
55:49So it appears
55:50that during Alfred's lifetime,
55:52the idea
55:53of a united English kingdom
55:55had become conceivable
55:56and even desirable.
56:02The exquisite Alfred jewel
56:04found not far from Athelny
56:06has inscribed on its edge
56:08Alfred Mechhechtgewirken,
56:11Alfred caused me
56:12to be made,
56:13and the same
56:14might well be said
56:15of his reinvention
56:16of the English monarchy.
56:18The enormous haunting eyes
56:20which dominate the figure
56:22are said to be symbols
56:23of wisdom or sight,
56:25apt qualities for a ruler
56:27whose ambitions
56:28were so lofty.
56:31Alfred's special gift
56:32was indeed
56:33to be able to see clearly
56:35England's place
56:36in the scheme of things,
56:38the debt of his realm
56:39to antiquity
56:40and his bequest
56:42to posterity.
56:45With his realm transformed,
56:48Alfred made possible
56:49a true Anglo-Saxon
56:51Renaissance
56:52in the 10th century,
56:53creating stunning works
56:55of Christian art
56:56and architecture.
56:57But the long shadow
56:59of Rome
56:59still fell
57:00over all this brilliance.
57:03Alfred's grandson
57:04would be crowned
57:05the first king of England
57:06in a great
57:07Roman-style coronation.
57:09And where
57:10did this momentous event happen?
57:13Well, where else
57:14but Bath.
57:21Well, we shouldn't get ahead
57:23of ourselves.
57:24England has been conceived,
57:25not yet born.
57:27And to the north,
57:28Pictland has even further to go
57:29before it's recognizably
57:31a kingdom of Scotland.
57:33But for a generation or two,
57:35it did look as though
57:36the grafting of Anglo-Saxon culture
57:38onto the enduring legacy
57:40of Roman Britain
57:41had produced
57:42an extraordinary flowering.
57:44But the shoots
57:45were still green,
57:46the buds
57:47were tender
57:47and vulnerable.
57:49And before this new kingdom
57:50had a chance to mature,
57:52it would be cut down
57:53by the devastating blow
57:55of an invader's axe.
58:00I'm gonna lose
58:02this world
58:03and you is my son's
58:06I'm gonna come
58:08this place
58:10and you is my son's