Original subtitles

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 responses on Twitter so please come and

tell me what you thought. You can follow me @Paul.MM.Cooper and if you'd like

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and thanks for listening.