Rob Collins, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation
1 Roman Britain was more than just one province
After the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, Britain was named a province and given its first governor, Aulus Plautius. However, Septimius Severus, or possibly his son Caracalla, split the province of Britannia into two by AD 213: Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior. Later, under Diocletian (reigned 284–305) or Constantine (reigned 306–337), Britannia was made a diocese consisting of four provinces: Maxima Caesariensis (south-east England); Flavia Caesariensis (eastern England and the Midlands); Britannia Prima (Wales and south-west England); and Britannia Secunda (northern England). Each time a new province was named, it was given a governor and staff to manage its affairs on behalf of the emperor.
2 It’s only thanks to the Romans that we know the names of native gods
Religion did not mix with literacy in Iron Age Britain, so it is only thanks to the spread of Roman religious practices, in which the names of gods and goddesses were inscribed on altars, that we actually know the names of any native British deities. It can be challenging to identify these gods with any certainty, but there are a number who only seem to have been recorded and worshipped in Britain.
Perhaps the most famous is Sulis, worshipped and commemorated along with Minerva at the huge bathing complex in modern Bath, but there are others. Antenociticus, sometimes called ‘the Geordie god’, is known mostly from a few inscriptions at a temple outside the Hadrian’s Wall fort of Benwell, west of Newcastle.
Other native gods that were worshipped along the wall included Coventina, who was commemorated at her sacred well-shrine at Carrawburgh, and a warrior or hunter god named Cocidius, who was worshipped widely by soldiers along the wall and across north-west England, with his cult centred on Bewcastle.
A possible local god of the Cambridgeshire area, Abandinus, is only known from a single votive object.
3 The Romans mined gold, silver and other metals in Britain
