All language subtitles for 1. Roman Britain - The Work of Giants Crumbled

Sometime in the eighth or ninth century,
somewhere on the island of Great Britain,

an unknown British poet clambered
through the rubble of an overgrown ruin.

Like so many people from this age, which
has been called the Dark Ages, we don't

know this poet's name. We don't know when
they were born or when they died,

even where they're from. But they wrote a
poem in the language of Old English that

has survived to this day and that poem
gives us a glimpse into the lost and

decaying world they inhabited. It was a
world of mystery scattered with the

enormous crumbling ruins of a bygone age.

How wondrous this wall-stone,
shattered by fate.

Castles are smashed; the work of giants
crumbled. Ruined are the roofs, tumbled

the towers, broken the barred gates; frost in
the plaster ceilings a-gaping,

torn away, fallen, eaten by age.
This poem is known simply as 'The

Ruin' and it's thought the ruin it
describes is that of the British Roman

town of Bath. The poem itself has come
down to us as something of a ruined

object, too. It was damaged by fire at some
point in history so that its words break

off and cut out just like the shattered
masonry it describes.

But what we have is enough to picture
the crumbling ruined buildings and the

effect they had on its poet. You can
almost feel the light falling through

the broken roof and smell the still
water where luxurious baths once stood.

You can picture the solitary figure of
the poet clambering over the piles of

masonry and you can almost hear them
wondering who built this place? How did

they construct the vaults of these
cavernous halls and why, after everything

they'd built, did they leave it all
behind?

My name's Paul Cooper and you're
listening to The Fall of Civilizations

Podcast.
Each episode I look at a civilization of

the past that rose to glory and then
collapsed into the ashes of history. I

want to ask what did they have in common?
What led to their fall and what did it

feel like to be a person alive at the
time who witnessed the end of their

world? In this episode of Fall of
Civilizations, I want to look not at the

collapse of a whole empire but at just
one part of it; the island of Great

Britain as it was under the rule of the
Roman Empire. I want to show how a great

civilization was built almost overnight
and endured the test of centuries

against overwhelming odds. I want to
explore its fatal flaws and describe

what happened after its final dramatic
collapse.

At the time the poetry of The Ruin was
written, Roman Britain was already a

distant memory.
It was remembered as a time of giants

and legends, but for nearly four
centuries until its fall, Britannia had

been one of the Roman Empire's most
enduring possessions. To get to the start

of this story, we have to rewind back
through the centuries to the first

century BC when the power and confidence
of the Roman Empire was at its height.

This was the very twilight of the period
we call the Roman Republic and in this

period, Rome was still a kind of
democracy. While power was concentrated

in the wealthy and land-owning classes,
Rome did hold elections and the power

of the Senate acted as a check on the
might of its rulers. Under this system

Rome had conquered vast swathes of
territory across Europe, into Greece and

Turkey, and along the North African coast.
Its empire was vast and constantly

expanding but at this point, the ragged
chalk coasts of the British Isles was

still the frontier of what the Romans
called 'the known world'. Britain for Rome

was a mysterious and frightening place.
According to Plutarch, some even believed

the island of Britain was a legend. The
island furnished much matter of dispute.

Some argued that its name and story had
been fabricated, that it had never

existed.
Although the crossing from mainland

Europe to the British Isles is only
thirty kilometres at its narrowest point,

it's a body of water exposed to the
harsh weather systems of the North Sea

and North Atlantic. The Roman historian
Ammianus Marcellinus describes its

dangerous and unpredictable nature. A
narrow space of sea that swells with

dreadful surges and then sinks again to
be as flat as a little plane.

By the middle of the first century BC,
this treacherous and unpredictable

crossing had already defeated the
ambitions of several generals and

emperors. Julius Caesar famously invaded
the British Isles twice, in 55 and 54 BC.

Both of these campaigns did little
more than sink Roman life and treasure

into the marshy lands of Kent and the
Thames Valley. Caesar would go on to

gather all of the power of Rome's
institutions to himself and he would

pass Rome on to his successor Caesar
Augustus as a dictatorship. Augustus, who

ruled as the first Roman emperor, planned
three separate invasions of Britain that

each fizzled out uselessly.
Generations later, the notorious mad

Emperor Caligula even amassed a great
invasion force of 200,000 men on the

Normandy coast, poised to take the island
of Britain for Rome. This attempt

might have been successful had Caligula
not been the mad Emperor. On a whim, he

reportedly ordered his men to give up
the invasion of Britain and gather

seashells from the Normandy beaches
instead. Britain for the Romans was an

unobtainable prize. It was a land of
mystery peopled by wild and

unpredictable barbarians. After returning
from his failed invasions, Julius Caesar

wrote with palpable horror about the
British inhabitants. Most of the inland

inhabitants do not sow corn; that live on
milk and flesh and are clad with skins.

All the Britons dye themselves with woad
which gives them a bluish color and a

terrifying appearance in battle. They
wear their hair long and have every part

of their body shaved except the head and
upper lip. It was the Emperor Claudius

who finally enveloped this wild and
dangerous place into the Empire of Rome.

Claudius successfully landed four
legions; that's 20,000 men, on the British

coast.
He waited behind on the continent,

perhaps wisely considering the
failures of his predecessors, and he must

have listened eagerly as every new
report came back to him as his man

landed in Kent, crossed its chalk downs
and valleys, and marched north to the

river estuaries of the Thames. There, an
enormous mass of British fighters

awaited them. The battle went on for two
days; an incredibly long battle in an era

that was mostly characterized by short
and brutal confrontations. After a

fierce resistance, the British forces
retreated to the banks of the River

Thames. The Romans followed, wading and
swimming through the marshes of Essex,

using their engineering expertise to
build bridges across the swampy ground.

After a final bloody clash, British
resistance was crushed.

It wasn't until victory was all but
assured that the emperor Claudius

himself arrived on British shores.

Famously,
he brought with him a terrifying symbol

of Roman power; a tamed war elephant
brought from Africa. To the poor

Britain's witnessing the arrival of
their conquerors, the sight of this

animal, the heavy thuds of its footfalls,
and the rattling of its mighty chains

must have ended any thought they had of
successful resistance. From there, Roman

troops swept across the rest of the
country with ruthless efficiency; into

Wales and the British Midlands, subduing
tribes as they went. But when they

reached the rugged heath and hills of
Caledonia, that's modern Scotland,

the Romans met their match. These lands
were ruled by fierce confederations of

tribes, among them powerful warrior clans
like the Picts and the Maeatae.

The Roman historian Cassius Dio writes
about these peoples with particular

contempt.
These tribes inhabit wild and waterless

mountains and desolate and swampy plains,
possessing neither walls, cities, nor

tilled fields. They dwell in tents, naked
and unshod, and are very fond of

plundering. We don't know what the Picts
called themselves since almost nothing

of their language has survived. The word
'pict' is what the Romans called them and

it comes from the same root as the
English word 'picture'. It means painted,

referring to the brilliant war paint
they wore into battle. Today we know them

by the beautiful ritual standing stones
they left across Scotland, decorated with

mesmerizing whorls and curls.

But whatever else we know about them, we
know that these tribal people fought

with enough ferocity that the Roman
advance was halted. The Picts knew their

land well and they were well-versed in
what we today would call guerrilla

warfare. The Romans knew when to quit.
They ceased their advance and declared

the border with Caledonia to be the
final limit of their empire. They built

forts along a jutting cliff that ran the
whole width of the country, a shelf of

igneous dolerite that formed a natural
barrier between the Roman lands and the

lands of the Picts. One rare writing
tablet found in a rubbish heap in one of

these forts and dated to the year 92 AD,
shows the Roman frustration with their

ongoing battles with this bunch of
ragtag natives. The Britons are

unprotected by armor. There are very many
cavalry; the cavalry do not use swords,

nor do the Brittunculi take up fixed
positions to throw their javelins. The

word Brittunculi is interesting
because it has never been seen in any

other Roman source. It's a kind of slang
that loosely translates to nasty little

Britons,
and it gives you a sense of how the

Romans felt about their new subjects. In
the year 120 AD, the Emperor Hadrian

visited Britain and he was dismayed to
find the Roman troops there still beset

with rebellions and raids. But he was
impressed with the natural fortification

given by this ridge of volcanic stone
they were camped on. He ordered this

barrier to be made more fortified with
the construction of what would become

the largest Roman artifact in the world,
a mighty wall stretching 135 kilometres

from coast to coast.
This border wall would be known as

Hadrian's Wall and the Romans defended
it with garrisons of infantry and

cavalry stationed in a string of forts
all the way along its length. The

Romans weren't satisfied with this
border; they would make multiple attempts

to push it further north into Caledonia,
but all of these attempts would fail. At

one point they even built another wall,
known as the Antonine Wall, 160

kilometres further to the north at the
narrowest point of the British Isles.

It spans 63 kilometers from coast to
coast but it turned out to be useless.

The land of Caledonia was ungovernable
and the Antonine Wall was abandoned each

time it was tried; it's stones left to
crumble into the peaty earth of the

Scottish moors. But Hadrian's barrier
stood. Rome led occasional scouting

parties out into the space between the
two walls. They went to barter for truces,

exchange hostages, and initiate trade.
The Romans knew when to spot a bargain;

vast hordes of Roman coins found north
of Hadrian's Wall suggest that for at

least some of the time, Rome was paying
the Picts to hold back their attacks.

Meanwhile, south of this snaking line of
stone, Roman Britain settled into a

restive peace. There were uprisings at
first; the most famous of these led by

the warrior Queen Boudicca of the
Iceni tribe only seventeen years after

the conquests of southern Britain.
Rome crushed this adventure brutally and

with it, some of the last organized
resistance to their rule. But the

province of Britannia would never quite
be pacified. Everyone knows that old

saying that Rome wasn't built in a day,
but in Roman regional capitals like

London and Colchester, these cities
really did seem to go up overnight. If

you compare Singapore or Dubai to photos
of those cities in the 1980s, you might

get a sense of how it must have felt to
live in London in the decades after the

Romans arrived. A small marshy fishing
town suddenly transformed in the space

of only a few decades into a glittering
metropolis. Despite their colorful

pantheon of gods, the real religion of
the Romans was the religion of urbanism,

the cult of the city. They replicated
the structure of Rome in every city they

built; in London, Rome built an ornate
forum and a theater, enormous public

buildings with marble fronts and tiled
roofs unlike anything the Britons had

seen before. A new elite of Roman
governors, civil servants, and statesmen

poured in and their luxurious villas
went up around the countryside. These

residences were resplendent with mosaics
and baths, even underfloor heating.

Each city they built became another hub
in a network of roads along which

imperial commodities moved. Urban Britons
could now enjoy inscenses and perfumes,

amphoras of wine, and red gloss pottery
from Gaul, olive oil from Spain, along

with pepper and spices brought from as
far as India. In exchange, Britain

supplied precious metals to the Roman
world; gold and silver, as well as lead and

iron.
Perhaps most importantly, the shores of

Cornwall and Devon were a rich source of
tin, a rare metal in the ancient world

that was crucial for making bronze.
But despite these benefits, Britannia was

always a costly possession. Records show
that larger amounts of resources were

poured into the island than were ever
taken out and some at least must have

realized that the Empire couldn't fund
this outpost forever. Part of the costs

of holding Britain as a colony was due
to its countryside; a hotbed of rebellion.

Native Britons lived in small villages
of timber turf-walled roundhouses that

dotted the land and here, tribal
loyalties held greater sway than any

loyalty people felt to their Roman
governors. A good way to think about the

situation is to look at the recent
occupation of Iraq by the United States,

Britain, and their allies. In Roman times,
fortified green zones went up across

Britain, too; walled compounds where
foreign administrators poured in to

enforce the new structure of Imperial
Society. Tomb inscriptions from York show

Imperial officials coming from as far as
Africa, France, Sardinia, and Greece. A

rotating cast of governors came and
went, too. These figures often stayed in

their post for only three years or so
and none of them were native to Britain.

Although we don't have complete
records, there's also no evidence of

native Britons ever rising to the social
rank necessary to govern. This is a

situation quite different to other Roman
colonies like Gaul where Rome made some

effort to bring indigenous people on
board with the Imperial project. So, while

some Britons might have felt the
material benefits of Roman rule, it seems

they never really felt part of the
shared destiny that bound the rest of

the Empire together during its height.
Perhaps partly for this reason, it seemed

the British countryside was only ever
one step from anarchy. This threat of

rebellion from within was coupled with
raids by the Picts and the Maeatae on

walled northern border. The rich
traffic of trade coming to and from

Europe also created a booming industry
and piracy. Seagoing tribes like the

Saxons became increasingly bold, braving
the stormy waters of the North Sea to

harass shipping, and even make incursions
onto the British coast. So, even in this

first century of Roman rule in Britain,
the pressures that would eventually

crush it like a tin can
began to bear in from every side.

One of the key measures that
archaeologists use to track the cycle of

peace and war in the ancient world is to
look at the frequency of buried coin

hoards. Put yourself in the position of a
person living in the ancient world. When

times are good, you feel secure enough to
store your silver coins or your gold

jewelry in your home or in the family
vault or even in an early form of bank.

But when times are bad, you can't risk
that; you might bury your silver as an

extra precaution or you do so in a panic
when you see the first plumes of black

smoke begin to show over the horizon.
In times of mild unrest, people would

come back to dig these up again later
once the danger had passed. But if the

unrest is serious enough, there might not
be anyone left to retrieve it. In that

case, the coins remain in the ground with
the dates and emperors stamped

meticulously on their surface. This is
bad news for their owner of course, but

it's good news for archeologists who
want to track a region's history of

unrest.

I'm going to pick up our story again at
a point where people in Roman Britain

were once again burying their coins in
record numbers, right as the second

century draws to a close.

Since the end of the Roman Republic, Rome
had undergone nearly two centuries of

constant expansion and the constant wars
on its borders had been matched by a

relative peace within its lands, a period
known as the Pax Romana, or the Roman

peace. But as the Year 200 approached,
this relative peace in the Roman

Empire's interior was beginning to
shatter. Plague had ravaged Rome's lands,

a devastating disease brought back from
the east by soldiers on campaign. It

killed 2,000 people a day in Rome at its
height and it decimated the Imperial

Army, leading to as many as 5 million
deaths across Europe. Trouble had

reigned in the political world as well.
Since the time of Julius Caesar and his

successor Augustus, the Roman Emperor
had been a dictator with supreme power.

The Senate and Judiciary were nothing
but agents of his command rather than

representing any kind of popular will.
Wherever absolute power exists, there

are always men who will risk everything
to claim it. Against the backdrop of

plague and famine, civil wars began to
erupt across Europe over rival claims to

the total power of the Imperial throne.
In these wars,

it was quite often the generals
stationed in Britannia, the Empire's

farthest and bleakest province, who would
hear the drums of war beat the loudest.

To understand why Britannia was such a
source of trouble, you only have to look

at the particular paradox that Roman
Britain presented. All of the threats

facing it from outside and within meant
that the land required the constant

presence of an enormous army to defend
it, as many as 40,000 soldiers at its

height. That's about one-eighth of the
entire Imperial Army, just to put that in

perspective.
This meant that any one man put in

charge of Britannia's defense force was
automatically one of the Empire's most

powerful men.
The paradox might not seem apparent at

first but this was one of the fatal
flaws that led to the repeated humbling

and the final fall of Roman Britain.

When discussing the Romans, it's easy to
get bogged down in the endless chain of

colorful characters; the schemers and the
drunks and the zealots, the charlatans

and the soldiers that leap out at us
from the histories. I want to avoid

getting dragged too much into relating
the stories of each and every person who

had a role in the collapse of Roman
Britain, but I think it does help us to

zoom in on some of these personalities
so we get a sense of the kind of person

responsible for what happened next.
The first character in this story is

a man named Clodius Albinus. That's
because Albinus is one of the first

generals to make what I will call the
British mistake. He will be the first, but

by no means the last. Born in Tunisia to
a humble family, Albinus was African but

the name albinus means white. He was
given this name due to the extraordinary

paleness of his complexion. On his birth,
his father wrote a letter about this

strange phenomenon. A son was born to me
on the seventh day before the Kalends of

December and so white was his body at
birth that it was whiter than the linen

clothes in which we wrapped him. Albinus'
unusual physical appearance doesn't

seem to have held him back. He grew up a
promising soldier and rose through the

ranks of the Roman military on the basis
of his skill. When he was appointed

governor of Britannia, Albinus stayed
for longer than many before him and we

have a good account of his physical
appearance in the Historia Augusta. He

was tall of stature with unkempt curly
hair and a broad expanse of brow. His

skin was wonderfully white. He had a
womanish voice almost as shrill as a

eunuch's.
The life of governor seemed to suit

Albinus and he might have spent the rest
of his life in Britannia governing well

and rising through the ranks of Roman
society were it not for the events that

were about to unleash blood and chaos
across the wide expanse of the Western

Roman Empire.
The beginning of these events was the

death of the tyrannical Emperor Commodus
in the year 192 AD. You might remember

him if you've ever seen Russell Crowe's
Gladiator. When Commodus died without

an heir and left multiple claimants
behind, the whole Empire descended once

again into chaos. This is the period that
would cause the historian Cassius Dio to

write his famous lament. Our history now
descends from a kingdom of gold to one

of iron and rust. The name given to this
time, 'the year of the five emperors', might

give you some idea of the ensuing
pandemonium. These five claimants to the

Imperial throne fought and died. They
burnt cities to the ground, they

slaughtered vast armies, until there were
only two credible candidates left. One of

these was Albinus, the pale Tunisian
stationed with his legions in Britain

who was a favorite of the Roman senate.
But the other claimant was the man

sitting on the throne in Rome, the
ruthless Emperor Septimus Severus.

Back in Britain, Albinus gave a
dramatic speech before his British

legions, addressing them in that
high-pitched but piercing voice. He

announced that he wanted to restore the
ancient democratic power of the Roman

senate, a radical statement for a
prospective ruler to make. Albinus'

soldiers cheered him and they announced
that he was the only emperor they served.

It was a clear declaration of rebellion.
The senate soon sent Albinus messages of

support and with his men's loyalty
secured, Albinus decided to march on

Rome. He knew he would have to act
decisively and he couldn't spare a

single man. He took three legions, every
last soldier in Britain, and sailed for

the mainland in the year 195. He must
have been buoyed up by such a sense of

destiny on that voyage and it would have
been an inspiring sight, those tens of

thousands of legionaries in their bright
armor, the sea thick with ships all

sailing to Rome to restore its ancient
Republic. But Albinus would not succeed.

Despite being popular in Gaul and
amassing a vast following, he was finally

defeated two years later at the Battle
of Lugdunum. It was a bloody and

drawn-out affair lasting over two days.
Again, an excruciatingly long battle in

this era. The clash involved as many as
300,000 soldiers and for a time, it

looked like Albinus would win. But then
the tide turned; his men began to flee

the battlefield and Albinus realized
that all was lost, that all his

sacrifices had been for nothing.
He ran himself through with his own

dagger and the Emperor Severus wasn't
kind in victory. He rode his horse over

Albinus' mangled body and then
paraded his head on a pike. He beheaded

his family and purged his followers.
The power of the Emperor as supreme

dictator remained and the senate got
quietly back into line. Albinus had lost

everything but his dash for Rome had
also cost his province dearly. Over the

long two years he had been at war,
Albinus had left Britannia completely

undefended and with no garrison, the land
had descended into anarchy. At this time,

a huge part of Britain's economy was
driven by the constant presence of a

Roman army,
so people employed to supply these men,

to make them bread and forge them swords,
repair the leather of their stirrups. All

these people suddenly had no job and no
way to support themselves. Local

rebellions spread across the country
while outside forces raided and

plundered with impunity. Picts from
Scotland, Scottii from Ireland, and Saxons

from the sea all combined to ravage the
land that Albinus had left behind. Rome

would eventually return to take back
control but even ten years later, in the

year 207, the Roman statesman put back in
charge still wrote with fear about the

dire situation the country faced.
Barbarians there are in revolt; over-

running the country, carrying off
treasure, and destroying most things. So,

that's the heart of what I'm calling the
British mistake. The paradox is that any

sufficiently large force able to occupy
Britain also presented an irresistible

temptation to its commander. Any force
that could hold Britain could also take

Rome and so the moment the Imperial
crown was up for grabs,

Britain's governor would pile all his
soldiers onto ships and march on the

Eternal City, leaving Britain undefended.
The Emperor Septimus Severus,

soon after trampling Albinus' body
beneath the hooves of his horse, sailed

to Britain to ensure that never again
would another challenger arise. In

response to attacks from the north,
he led a huge army

into Scotland to drive the attackers back
into their lands. But Severus didn't have

Albinus' way with the native Britons.
It seems this ill-conceived adventure

achieved nothing, with the border exactly
where it had always been. But for good

measure, he split the province of
Britannia in two to limit the power of

any one governor, but it wouldn't last.
For Roman Britain, the clock was ticking.

Although Albinus was one of the
first generals to make this mistake, he

was far from the last.

One thing we will learn over the course
of this series is that the fall of a

civilization is rarely simple.
Roman rule ended in different parts of

Britain at different times and under
different circumstances. It came along

with the collapse of Roman authority
across Western Europe and this occurred

after the time of Albinus, a 50-year
period called 'the military anarchy'. This

era saw at least 26 claimants contest
the Imperial throne. Incessant civil wars

and rampant inflation crippled the Roman
economy and German tribes made

incursions into the Empire's territory.
It seemed like a thousand different

pressures rained down from all sides and
in all of this, despite the Emperor

Severus' measures, Britain would
remain a fertile staging ground for

rebellion.
In the year 260 for instance, a

Roman commander called Postumus staged
an insurrection that carved Britain and

Gaul away from the empire for ten years
before it was retaken by Rome. A quarter

century later, in the year 286, a Roman
naval commander called Carausius, a

common man who had risen through the
ranks, declared himself Emperor of

Britain and ruled for seven years before
being overcome himself. It wasn't all

a history of failures; in the year 306,
the man who had become known as Emperor

Constantine the Great was crowned
Emperor in York. He successfully marched

on Rome and although he spent the next
twenty years fighting rival claimants in

a series of bitter civil wars, he was
ultimately crowned Emperor over both the

Eastern and the Western Roman Empires.

For much of the third century, Rome was
at war with itself and the events of

this time changed the Empire forever.
Rome's Emperors were now military

strongmen. Trade across the Empire had
broken down, impoverishing its people,

while at the same time Rome's wealthy
were now an ultra-rich elite, far richer

than they had ever been in history.
Meanwhile, the Empire's enemies grew

stronger and more organized, learning how
to play to Rome's weaknesses, learning

how to win. As the fourth century
dawned, Roman Britain's troubles would

only increase. One event would soon lay
bare just how far the Roman Empire's

power had fallen and it's remembered to
history as the Great Barbarian

Conspiracy. To set the scene, we have to
imagine the winter of 367 on the Roman

garrison at Hadrian's Wall. The winters
in this part of the world are harsh.

Cruel winds and rain would have lashed
the men stationed on the wall, their

breath visible in the air. This was the
last bastion against the wild tribes of

the north, and conditions here were harsh.
Letters these soldiers wrote at the time

include complaints about the cold that
bit at their feet every day,

the lack of holidays, and not enough beer
provided in their rations. But it's still

hard to imagine exactly what was behind
the decision these men took next. Perhaps

it was hunger, cold, or fear. Perhaps they
were even bribed; there was no shortage

of Roman coin north of the wall, let's
remember. Whatever the reason, the

soldiers tasked with defending the
Empire's northern border mutinied. They

changed sides and allowed a waiting army
of Picts from Caledonia to cross the

wall. This horde swept down on the towns
and villages of Northumbria. Villages

burned, men and women were put to the
sword, but before the Romans could send

the usual reinforcements to quash this
invasion, something astonishing happened.

Immediately, waves of tribesman of the
fierce Attacotti from the outer isles,

Scottii from Ireland, and Saxons from
Germania began to land on Britain's

coasts. At the same time, parties of
Franks and Saxons landed on the mainland

in northern Gaul. These didn't seem
like random attacks; they seemed to be

coordinated raids like nothing else the
so-called barbarian tribes had ever

attempted before.
They completely overwhelmed the Roman

defenses. Everywhere Roman towns burned,
cities were sacked, and amid the chaos,

slaves escaped, and whole units of
soldiers deserted in terror, all of these

gathering together into bands that
roamed the countryside, resorting to

theft and murder to support themselves.
The historian Ammianus Marcellinus

paints a scene of pure chaos.
Nectaridus, the commanding general of

the seacoast, was killed, and another
general, Fullofaudes, was ambushed by

the enemy and taken prisoner. The
Attacotti, a warlike race of men, and the

Scots were ranging wildly and causing
great devastation while the Gallic

regions were harassed by the Franks and
their neighbours, the Saxons, with cruel

robbery, fire, and the murder of all who
were taken prisoners. For two whole years,

anarchy ruled in northern Europe until
Rome sent its best general, Flavius

Theodosius, to march on the roaming
barbarian bands. Theodosius defeated some

in battle and he offered an amnesty to
others.

Order slowly returned to the region, but
the damage was done. The attack of the

great conspiracy had come as a complete
surprise, and when we think about the

effect this might have had on the people
at the time, it wouldn't be too far off

to think of this as something like the
September 11th attacks on the United

States.
These were coordinated, brutal strikes

calculated to cause maximum fear and
damage and they shook the very core of

the Empire.
Rome's confidence in the face of the

barbarian threat would never recover.

The Empire's reduced ability to protect
itself was one factor in the collapse of

Roman Britain, but it was only one of
many. Britannia's economy had been in

decline for decades, with reduced trade
to other parts of the Empire disrupted

by the century of civil wars, by
barbarian invasions, and piracy on the

sea. Pottery produced in Britain began to
drastically reduce in variety and

decoration around this time, and iron
production in the south plummeted. Whole

kilns were abandoned and the price of
iron skyrocketed. Around the Year 350, the

Roman sewers and Canterbury started
clogging up and no one bothered to clear

them. A thick layer of silt also began to
build up in the public baths that

everywhere stood as a symbol of Roman
civilization. This decline was beginning

to seep into every aspect of British
life but it was one man, an ambitious and

hot-headed general called Magnus Maximus,
who would play a pivotal part in tipping

the land over into its final fall.

It's often said that history repeats
itself.

We're told that if we study its lessons
we can avoid making the same mistakes

twice, but I think that happens a lot
less than people realize.

Events are so complex that nothing ever
really happens the same way twice, but

just occasionally in the flow of history,
you do get these eddies and whirlpools

where it really does feel like people
keep doing the same thing over and over,

like the rerun of a movie we've seen
before. If Magnus Maximus had been a

reader of history, if he had read the
story of that previous governor of

Britain, Albinus the white Tunisian and
his ill-fated march on Rome, he might

have done things a little differently as
the fourth century entered its final

decades.

Like Albinus, Maximus was a distinguished
general. He was from the Gallaecian region

of northern Spain and he had served in
fearsome campaigns in Africa and against

German tribes on the Danube River. He had
also been among the army of Flavius

Theodosius which had returned order
after the events of the great conspiracy.

Maximus was also interesting for being a
devout Christian, a religion that was

outlawed in the Roman Empire only one
lifetime before. Maximus was assigned as

the governor of Britain in the year 380
and in his first year, he faced down an

army of Picts and Scots that had
overrun Hadrian's Wall, perhaps

emboldened by Rome's recent weakness.
After crushing this threat,

Maximus celebrated by building a huge
church on London's Tower Hill. But like

other governors of Britannia before him,
Maximus had ambitions greater than simply

commanding a garrison in the Empire's
wettest and windiest dominion. For the

last decade of his life,
Maximus had watched from afar as an

incredibly unpopular Emperor had sat on
the Imperial throne. This Emperor was a

young man named Gratian and he is one of
these particularly colorful characters

that leap out of the Roman histories.
Gratian loved to hunt and bizarrely, he

spent all his time in the company of a
band of Scythian archers. These were men

from beyond the Danube River, outside the
bounds of the Roman Empire. That is to

the Romans, they were barbarians.
The young Emperor loved the culture of

his Scythian friends. He even used to
appear at court dressed in the full

traditional garb of a Scythian warrior,
an ornately patterned overcoat and furs.

The Roman people seemed to tolerate
this eccentric Emperor for a while, but

in the year 378, Rome would suffer a
horrifying blow. The Emperor Valens, who

ruled over the eastern portion of the
Empire, had brought a massive army of

30,000 men to crush a rebellion of Goths
and Huns barely more than 10,000 strong.

Confident in his coming victory, the
Emperor Valens attacked them without

waiting for reinforcements. These Goth
rebels stood and fought and

astonishingly, they won. The Emperor
Valens was killed along with 20,000 of

his men and his body was never recovered.
This loss shook Rome to the core.

Barbarian armies were now causing havoc
across Rome's eastern territories,

flouting the authority of the Empire.
Suddenly, the Emperor Gratian dressing up

like a barbarian didn't seem quite so
acceptable. The people of Rome turned on

him and around the Empire, all other
claimants to the throne sensed their

chance. They began to gather their armies
and once again, the British paradox came

into play. The hot-headed zealot Magnus
Maximus, just like Albinus before him,

commanded a vast army in Britain and he,
liked his predecessor, resolved to march

on Rome.
Just like Albinus, he knew he couldn't

spare a single man. He took the entire
Roman garrison of Britannia, piled it

onto a fleet of ships, and set sail for
Gaul in the year 383.

With Maximus on his way to Rome, Britain
was once again left undefended. We can

never know if any of Maximus' advisors
told him about the story of Albinus, the

pale skinned Tunisian who had marched on
Rome. Did no one on that creaking ship

sailing its way to the continent, not one
of them mention to Maximus what had

happened nearly 200 years before when
the last Governor of Britain had tried

to become Emperor? I find this hard to
believe but that's part of history's

spell. It teaches us lessons even as it
convinces us that these lessons don't

apply to us, that we will be the ones to
break its endless chain. For Maximus at

least, nothing mattered to him except
reaching Rome and seizing the purple

robes of the Emperor for himself. The
zealous Maximus did seem to be blessed;

everywhere he went, legions that were
sent to fight him instead joined his

cause. Enraged, the Emperor Gratian met
his army outside Paris and Maximus'

forces won the day.

The young Emperor fled with his Scythian
bodyguards and he was killed soon after

while Magnus Maximus declared himself
Emperor. But this is where the luck of

Maximus runs out. Before he'd even begun
to rule, his support slowly collapsed and

it did so in part because of the anarchy
he left behind in Britannia. Just like

Albinus, he had left his home province,
the heart of his supporters, completely

undefended. Just as before, raiders and
pirates now devastated the coasts and

northern towns. The departure of the
lands garrison had caused an economic

collapse, too, Maximus had also taxed
Britain brutally to pay for his wars. Now

rebellions spread like a fire through
dry heather.

The date of Maximus' departure, 383, is
the last date ever to be found on a

Roman coin in Wales. It's the last date
too for any archaeological trace in the

northern Pennine hills. In these places,
it marked the end of Roman rule in

Britain. The 6th century British cleric
St. Gildas put it more bluntly in his

searing rant entitled 'On the Ruin and
Conquest of Britain'.

Britain is left deprived of all her
soldiery and armed bands, of her cruel

governors, and of the flower of her youth
who went with Maximus but never again

returned. The Scots from the northwest and
the Picts from the north, like hungry and

ravening wolves, rushed with greedy jaws
upon the fold which is left without a

shepherd. From this point, the British
economy was in freefall.

After this time, British coffins stopped
being sealed with nails and boots lost

their hobnails. This shows how expensive
iron had become. British people now

slipped on icy ground and rotted in
flimsy coffins. Pottery became a lost art

and the suburbs of the cities began to
empty. The astonishing thing is Maximus

was not even the last governor of
Britain to make this mistake. This

dishonour would fall to a common soldier
called Constantine who once and for all

ended the Roman presence in Britain. He
was named after the great fourth century

Emperor who had been crowned in York a
hundred years before, and now this famous

event would repeat itself as farce. After
the departure of Maximus, a bloody power

struggle had broken out in Britain, with
rival factions tearing it to pieces like

dogs after a strip of meat. This struggle
resulted in the soldiers themselves

choosing the new governor of Britannia,
and they chose one of their own; a common

soldier known as Constantine. The
historian Orosius can barely conceal

his sneer. Constantine, a man from the
lowest ranks of the soldiery, was chosen

simply from confidence inspired by his
name and without any other

qualifications to recommend him.

We can assume that Constantine wasn't a
reader of history. That's because he

would repeat the mistake of Albinus and
Maximus almost exactly. The moment he

sensed weakness in Rome, he took all of
his British legions and sailed for the

continent. Completely overwhelmed by
barbarian invasions and Roman infighting,

the noble-born Emperor Honorius was
forced to buy off this lowly soldier

Constantine. He offered him the position
of co-Emperor and this precarious

situation held for a few years until an
alliance of challenges chased

Constantine out of his capital and
killed him in the year 411. Most of his

soldiers would never return to their
posts in Britannia. For Rome, enough was

enough. The province of Britannia wasn't
worth it. The Empire was now so weakened

that an army of Goths led by Alaric was
now rampaging around northern Italy and

even sacked Rome itself,
the first time a foreign power had done

this for 800 years. The collapse of the
entire Empire now seemed like a

possibility and in 410 AD, the Emperor
Honorius finally declared the end of the

official Roman presence in Britain. He
famously told the British to look to

their own defenses. Rome withdrew all
remaining soldiers and administrators

from Britain. They stopped collecting
taxes in the province and this released

some of the burden on its people
initially, but they also stopped paying

the administrators who ran its cities and
managed its trade routes. They ended

the wages and supplies flowing to the
local soldiers who had fought as

auxiliaries in the garrison. These men
didn't go anywhere;

instead, they began to tax the
populations themselves, demanding money

and supplies in exchange for protection.
These groups would ultimately grow into

the basis of very early medieval society.
These warlords frequently fought their

wars using the services of
mercenary armies from the continent.

Dukes from Denmark, Angles and Saxons
from northern Germany, men who brought

their families and formed the first
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain. The

people forgot Latin as an everyday
language and it survived only in the

churches. They stopped writing as far as
we can tell, since no texts have survived,

and people forgot their Roman identities
too, adopting the cultures of the incoming

peoples. We can see this by burials in
some places that have been found,

matching burial practices in Germany and
Norway even though the genetics of the

buried person are clearly British.
While this great social and cultural

change happened, Britain's Roman cities
fell gradually into ruins. Bit by bit, the

great opulent villas that had once
dominated the countryside were abandoned

and became dilapidated. Small estates
fell first;

some of them absorbed into the holdings
of richer landowners, but the large ones

followed soon after. Mosaiced floors
cracked as roof beams fell in, while

private bath houses became homes for
frogs and water weed. In his fifth

century work, The Life of St. Germanus,
Constantius of Lyon describes coming

across a ruined villa of this kind. Its
roof had fallen in. It was overgrown with

bushes and brambles and among all the
many rooms that it had once contained,

there was scarcely one left that was fit
to live in.

Constantius tells us that the ruined
villa was haunted by the ghosts of evil

men. In the north of Britain, Hadrian's
Wall was finally abandoned and it seems

the soldiers in its forts left in a
hurry.

At one of the most well-preserved sites,
an auxiliary fort called Vindolanda,

archaeologists have found Roman cavalry
swords simply abandoned; dropped on the

ground and left there. These are very
rare finds since in this time, a sword

was an expensive and precious object.
Their owners would no more throw them

away than a modern person might throw
away their mobile phone. All kinds of

objects pertaining to the daily lives of
soldiers have been found left behind, too;

bath sandals and writing tablets, pots
and buckets and buckles. One day, it seems,

everyone at Vindolanda just got up and
left. After the Romans departed and the

border collapsed, local people began to
use Hadrian's Wall as a quarry, taking

its high-quality blocks of stone to
build their own houses and barns, even

churches, so that now the wall is woven
into the fabric of countless medieval

buildings across the region. Near
Carlisle, the medieval priory of

Lanercost, for instance, was built using a
large amount of material stolen from the

wall which runs just half a kilometre to
the north.

You can still see Roman inscriptions on
some of the priory stones, boasting about

which legions were stationed on the wall.
Meanwhile, tribal chieftains and local

warlords, some of whom had been officers
in the Roman army until recently, moved

into the forts along the wall and used
them as private castles. In one fort known

as Birdoswald, it seems the
descendants of the original garrison

still lived there a century after the
departure of Rome, passing down their

uniforms, flying regimental insignia, and
building timber constructions inside its

crumbling ruin. They probably received
pay and supplies from people living in

the area in
exchange for protection, and they

maintained a kind of Roman identity in
order to increase their legitimacy. To

the south, large cities like London fell
gradually into disrepair. Trade at London's

port had been slowing over the past
century but now it finally stopped

altogether. Its suburbs turned into
wasteland or were tilled for farming. The

large church built by Magnus Maximus on
Tower Hill burned to the ground and it

seems people lacked either the knowledge,
the resources, or the will to rebuild it.

London's great Roman forum, too, was
dismantled and quarried for stone and

it's public bath was torn down. Its great
Basilica, which was once the largest

building in northwest Europe, was also
taken apart. People began to be buried

inside the city limits,
something the Roman authorities would

never have allowed. Of these burials,
studies show that four times more have

been found with wounds from stabbing and
slicing weapons than in the previous

period. London's population of nearly
30,000 people began to drift away back

to a simpler existence in the
countryside, to timber long houses and

round houses built of thatch and wattle.
In some places the ancient hill forts of

the pre-roman Britons which had lain
empty for centuries now burst back into

life. Excavations in these sites have
found objects that seemed to have been

looted from the abandoned Roman towns
and villas that now littered the

countryside; dressed stone and glass and
pottery. Amid the slow hollowing out

of London, archaeological evidence shows
that an enclave of the ultra-wealthy

continued to live a somewhat Roman
existence in a kind of gated community.

They enjoyed the same wine and olive oil
they always had, presumably imported at

great expense. They denied the writing on
the wall for as long as they could, but

the decline was unstoppable. The rest of
the city descended into chaos and nature

crept back to reclaim its streets and
alleys. By the end of the 4th century,

everything south of the River Thames had
been abandoned. Large pockets of London's

urban fabric turned into patches of
overgrown wasteland and people began to

grow wheat in the middle of the city. By
the end of the fifth century, London was

deserted.
It was now an uninhabited ruin, a city of

ghosts sinking into the marsh and mud of
the river. By the end of the fifth

century, London was deserted. We can
imagine ivy growing over its crumbling

walls and elder too, young trees pushing
their roots between the bricks and

stones of its buildings. The only people
left in London were scavengers. They came

to find things like iron nails which
could be recycled. The forests around

London would also have been cut down and
so the only source of usable timber

would have been that left in the
decaying city. So, little by little, people

tore London apart. One artifact known as
the Billingsgate Broach, tells the story

of these scavengers. It was dropped
amid the fallen roof tiles of a building

known as the Billingsgate House, perhaps
by a scavenger who had looted it and

feared being robbed or by someone
exploring the ruins who simply dropped

it and couldn't find it afterwards.
Either way, it's a fascinating artifact

that speaks of the afterlife of the
ruined city of London. It wasn't only

London that fell into ruins; in cities
like Bath which inspired the poetry of

the ruin that we opened with, urban life
continued in some form after the

departure of Rome. While it's great
temples crumbled and grand public

buildings fell into disrepair, its city
authorities still managed basic repairs

like recobbling the streets. But without
their links to the Roman economy, the

slow death of Britain's cities was all
but assured.

By the early 5th century, all of
Britain's towns, large and small, simply

ceased to exist. The city of York, where
once the Emperor Constantine the Great

had been crowned, now stood empty and in
ruins,

slowly reclaimed by the seasonal floods
of the river Ouse. We know this because

archaeologists have found the remains of
water beetles, water voles, shrews, and

frog-hoppers inside the city, all animals
that live only in flooded and swampy

ground, vanished by the developments of
the Roman era.

The incoming Saxon people were obviously
impressed by the ruins of Roman cities

but also seemed to have feared them as
places of ghosts and curses. They rarely

came near to the ruins and built their
settlements far away from them. At some

sites like Caer Celemion, there's some
evidence that the wells of the decaying

city were filled in to prevent people
from returning. Ritual objects were also

left behind, perhaps to ward off the
curse that was believed to hang over

these crumbling stones. It's no
coincidence that tales of giants form

such a prominent part of British
folklore. To see why, you just have to

imagine the mighty temples and public
buildings that were left behind in the

wake of Roman rule. To people who no
longer knew how to build these things,

these crumbling walls, these awesome
constructions of bygone centuries, must

have seemed the work of a race of gods
who had once walked England's rolling

fields and ancient primeval forests.
Perhaps to truly understand how it must

have felt to live in the time after
Roman rule, it's best to end the same way

we started, with the Old English poem The
Ruin. As you listen, think about what it

must have felt like to live in this time,
when the foreign occupiers who had

brought so much change finally left. It
was a time when it felt that history was

no longer moving forwards, that tomorrow
would be a darker time than today, a time

when all you had left to remember that
lost golden age is the landscape strewn

with monumental blocks of stone, the
cavernous bathing halls, and the

overgrown ruins slowly and unstoppably
crumbling into the earth.

Far and wide the slain
perished, days of pestilence came,

death took all the brave men away. Their
places of war became deserted places, the

city decayed. The rebuilders
perished, armies into the earth, and so

these buildings grow desolate and
this red-curved roof parts from it's

tiles of the ceiling vault. The ruin
has fallen to the ground, broken into

mounds where at one time shone many a
warrior, joyous and ornamented

with gold-white splendor.
Thank you once again

for listening to The Fall of
Civilizations Podcast. I'd like to give a

special thanks to my voice actors Jake
Barret Mills, Jacob Rowlandson, Shem

Jacobs, and a special thank you goes to
Dr. Rebecca Pina at the University of

East Anglia for allowing us to hear the
poetry of The Ruin in its original Old

English. I love to hear your thoughts and
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