Constans, Magnentius and Magnus Maximus
The latter part of the fourth century is characterised by more turmoil. Britannia was briefly loyal to the usurper Magnentius (r. 350–353) commander of the Herculians and Jovians, the Imperial Guard units. Magnentius succeeded Constans (r. 337–350) at Augustodunum (Autun in the Saône-et-Loire department) after he had him murdered in response to the army’s homophobic disaffection caused by the emperor’s homosexuality and by the favouritism he showed towards his barbarian bodyguards. Eutropius (Breviarium ab urbe condita) euphemistically says Constans ‘indulged in great vices’; Aurelius Victor (Epitome de Caesaribus) relates that Constans had a reputation for scandalous behaviour with ‘handsome barbarian hostages’. Interestingly, Constans sponsored a decree with Constantius II that ruled that marriage based on ‘unnatural’ sex should be punished ruthlessly.
In 341–342, Constans fought a successful campaign against the Franks, and in early 343 he visited Britain, according to Julius Firmicus Maternus who does not give us a reason. However, the urgency of the crossing and the inherent danger in crossing the Channel in the winter months suggests it was in response to a military emergency, possibly to repel the Picts and Scots.
In the Battle of Mursa Major in 351, in Pannonia (modern Osijek, Croatia), Magnentius led his troops into battle, while Constantius spent the day of battle praying in a nearby church. Despite Magnentius’ heroism, his troops were defeated and forced to retreat back to Gaul. Magnentius was again defeated and subsequently fell on his sword in the Battle of Mons Seleucus (now La Bâtie-Montsaléon in Hautes-Alpes, southeastern France) in 353 after which Constantius II dispatched his chief imperial notary, Paulus Catena, to hunt down Magnentius’ supporters. Catena’s serial cruelty was notorious throughout the Roman world and the mission was nothing short of a witch-hunt with trumped-up charges devoid of any evidence. This forced the vicarius, Flavius Martinus, to get involved. Paulus’ nickname means ‘the chain’ – awarded because he habitually chained people up and dragged them by their chains through the streets. When Paulus retaliated by accusing Martinus of treason, the vicarius attacked Paulus with a sword, with the aim of assassinating him, but in the end Martinus committed suicide. According to Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae), Paulus was condemned to death by Arbitio at the Chalcedon tribunal under Constantius’ successor, Julian the Apostate, in late 361. He was burned alive.
Some contend that Magnentius’ father was a Briton and his mother a Frank. His wife, Justina, later married Valentinian I.
As the fourth century went on, attacks from the Saxons in the east and the Scoti (Irish) in the west kept on coming in wave after wave. A series of forts was built, starting from 280, to defend the coasts, but these failed to cope when a massed assault of Saxons, Scoti and Attacotti, combined with dissension in the garrison on Hadrian’s Wall, left Roman Britain on its knees in 367. This crisis, the Barbarian Conspiracy or the Great Conspiracy, was settled by Count Theodosius with a series of military and civil reforms.
To make matters much worse the empire was in the hands of a dynasty that included the emperor Theodosius I. This family kept political power firmly within the family, Mafia-like, and formed alliances by intermarriage with other dynasties. Simultaneously, they were all the while engaging in internecine power struggles and fending off outside contenders or usurpers attempting to replace their dynasty with one of their own. The effect of these machinations was to starve the empire of both military and civilian resources. Many thousands of soldiers were lost in battling attempted coups by usurpers such as Firmus, Magnus Maximus and Eugenius.
The German tribes were always a problem; relations were sometimes hostile, sometimes supportive, but in the end they were to prove terminal for Rome. By the early fifth century, as a result of severe losses and depleted tax income, the Western Roman Empire’s military forces were dominated by Germanic troops, and Romanised Germans were playing an influential role in the empire’s internal politics. Various Germanic and other tribes beyond the frontiers were able to take advantage of the empire’s weakened state, both to expand into Roman territory and, in some cases, to move their entire populations into lands once considered exclusively Roman, culminating in various successful migrations from 406 onwards. The crossing of the Rhine terrified authorities in Britannia, fearing they might be cut off from the empire by raids on the primary communications route from Italy to the Channel ports.
Another imperial usurper, Magnus Maximus (r. in the Western Empire 383–388), emerged at Segontium (Caernarfon) in North Wales in 383; he fought a successful campaign against the Picts and Scots the following year. As commander of Britain, he usurped the throne of Emperor Gratian, and by negotiation with Emperor Theodosius I, he was made emperor in Britannia, Gaul and Spain while Gratian’s brother Valentinian II retained Italy, Pannonia, Hispania, and Africa. Maximus made his capital at Augusta Treverorum (Treves, Trier) in Gaul. However, his campaigns on the mainland required troops from Britain, and forts at Chester and elsewhere were abandoned to reinforce Maximus. The inevitable opportunist raids by the Irish followed. In 387, Maximus’ ambitions provoked an invasion of Italy, resulting in his defeat in 388 by Theodosius I in Pannonia at the Battle of the Save (in modern Croatia) and at the Battle of Poetovio (Ptuj in modern Slovenia). He was then executed by Theodosius. His death marked the end of direct imperial presence in northern Gaul and Britain, but it is unlikely that all of the British troops came back given that the military was stretched to the limit along the Rhine and Danube. Some historians believe Maximus may have founded the office of the Comes Britanniarum.
The Comes Britanniarum
The Comes Britanniarum (Count of the Britains) was a military post with command over the mobile field army from the mid-fourth century onwards. It is named in the List of Offices as being one of the three commands in Britain, along with the Duke of the Britains and the Count of the Saxon Shore. His troops were the main field army (comitatenses) in Britain and not the frontier guards (limitanei) commanded by his two colleagues.
The first count in Britain was Gratian the Elder, the father of emperor Valentinian I. A permanent office was created later in the fourth or early fifth century, perhaps by Stilicho who withdrew troops from Britain to defend Italy in 402. The title was transitory and certainly did not have the permanence of the Dux Britanniarum and the Comes Litoris Saxonici.
According to the Notitia Dignitatum, the count commanded six cavalry and three infantry units, probably a force of no more than 6,000 troops. This tiny detachment was charged with supporting the frontier troops in fending off the increasing number of barbarian raids in the period. Some units seem to have been transferred from the Duke of the Britains’ or Count of the Saxon Shore’s armies.
In the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae written c. 540 by Gildas, we learn that Maximus ‘deprived’ Britain not only of its Roman troops, but also of its ‘armed bands ... governors and of the flower of her youth’, never to return.
With Maximus’ death, Britain came back under the rule of Emperor Theodosius I until 392, when the usurper Eugenius would successfully bid for imperial power in the Western Roman Empire, surviving until 394 when he was defeated and slain by Theodosius. When Theodosius died in 395, his 10-year-old son Honorius succeeded him as Western Roman Emperor. The real power behind the throne, however, was Stilicho, the son-in-law of Theodosius’ brother and the father-in-law of Honorius.
Around 396, there were more barbarian incursions into Britain against which Stilicho led a punitive expedition. In 401, Stilicho had to deal with wars with Alaric and the Ostrogothic king Radagaisus. Needing military manpower, he withdrew troops from Hadrian’s Wall for the final time. AD 402 is the last date of any Roman coinage found in significant numbers in Britain, suggesting either that Stilicho also stripped the remaining troops from Britain, or that the empire could no longer afford to pay the troops who were still there. Meanwhile, the Picts, Saxons and Scoti persisted with their raids, which presumably were increasing all the time.
Honorius and the Withdrawal from Eboracum
Child emperor Honorius had a lot on his mind when, in around 410, he recalled the VIth Legion from Britannia to protect Rome and bluntly told the Britons to look after their own defence from now on (Zosimus 10, 2). Honorius replied to a request for assistance in defending Britannia with the Rescript of Honorius.
The early life of Flavius Honorius (r. 393–423) has something of the Caligulan about it: he was Western Roman Emperor from age 10 (having been consul at age 2) and it was on his watch that the empire in the west fell to the barbarians and Rome was sacked.
The date 31 December AD 406 was significant for the Roman Empire, for Roman Britain and for Eburacum: this was when the Alans, Vandals and Suebi living to the east of Gaul crossed the Rhine and began a programme of widespread devastation. The Romans failed to respond so when the remaining Roman military in Britain heard of this they naturally feared that a Germanic crossing of the Channel into Britain was next. Accordingly, they shrugged off and dispensed with imperial authority – an action made easier since it is likely that the troops had not been paid for some time. The British plan was to elect a commander who would lead them out of their predicament: their first two choices, Marcus and Gratian, failed to impress and were butchered (Zosimus 612). Their third choice was Constantine III.
Flavius Claudius Constantinus, Constantine III, (d. 411) was co-emperor with Honorius from 409 until 411. He surged to power during a bloody power struggle in Britain and was acclaimed emperor by the local legions in 407. He promptly crossed over to Gaul where the legions declared for him, taking with him all of the troops from Britain, to confront the various Germanic invaders – the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Alans and the Sueves – who had crossed the Rhine the previous winter, near Mainz, and overran the Roman defensive works in a successful invasion of the Western Roman Empire.
Constantine won several engagements with the Vandals and quickly secured the Rhine. An increasingly nervous Honorius ordered Stilicho, his magister militum, to dispense with Constantine. Sarus the Goth, a commander of Honorius, defeated two of Constantine’s generals, Iustinianus and the Frank Nebiogastes, who were in the vanguard of his forces. Nebiogastes was first trapped in, then killed outside, Valence (Zosimus 6,2,3). Constantine dispatched another army headed by Edobichus and Gerontius, and Sarus retreated into Italy, needing to buy his passage through the Alpine passes from the brigand Bagaudae, who controlled them. With these advances, Constantine commanded all of Gaul and garrisoned the Alpine passes into Italy. By May 408 he had made Arles his capital, where he appointed Apollinaris, the grandfather of Sidonius Apollinaris (the poet, diplomat and bishop), as prefect.
By the summer of 408 the Roman forces in Italy had regrouped to face Constantine. Constantine struck first at Hispania having summoned his eldest son, Constans, from the monastery where he was living, elevated him to Caesar, and sent him with the general Gerontius to Hispania where they easily defeated the cousins of Honorius (Zosimus 6, 2, 5). Constans returned to Arles to report to his father while the loyalist Roman army mutinied at Ticinum (Pavia) followed by the execution of Stilicho. Sarus and his men abandoned the western army. This left Honorius in Ravenna without any viable military power, and facing a Gothic army under Alaric that roamed unchecked in northern Italy. So, when Constantine’s envoys arrived to parley, an anxious Honorius recognised Constantine as co-emperor: the two were joint consuls for the year 409.
Things could only go downhill for Constantine; some of his forces were tied up in Hispania, disqualifying them for action in Gaul, and some of those in Gaul were persuaded against him by loyalist Roman generals.
While he had been fighting Honorius’ armies, some of the Vandal tribes had overrun Constantine’s Rhine defences and spent two years and eight months burning and plundering their way through Gaul. The tribes reached the Pyrenees, where they broke through Constantine’s garrisons and invaded Hispania. Constantine prepared to send Constans back to deal with this crisis when word came that his general, Gerontius, had rebelled, raising his relative, Maximus of Hispania, as co-emperor. Despite Constantine’s best efforts, the feared attack from Hispania came the following year, when Gerontius advanced with the support of his barbarian allies.
Constantine took a final desperate gamble: he marched on Italy with what troops he had left; they wanted to replace Honorius with a more capable ruler. Constantine, though, had insufficient forces and retreated back into Gaul in the late spring of 410. His position became untenable; Gerontius defeated his forces at Vienne in 411 where his son Constans was captured and executed. Constantine’s Praetorian prefect Decimus Rusticus, who had replaced Apollinaris a year earlier, abandoned Constantine to be caught up in the new rebellion of Jovinus in the Rhineland. Gerontius trapped Constantine inside Arles and besieged him.
Britain, now without any troops for protection and having suffered particularly severe Saxon raids in 408 and 409, viewed the deteriorating situation in Gaul with renewed alarm. Feeling helpless and hopeless under Constantine, both the Romano-Britons and some of the Gauls expelled Constantine’s magistrates in 409 or 410. In the opinion of Zosimus, the Britons blamed Constantine for the expulsion, saying that his inertia had allowed the Saxons to raid, and that the Britons and Gauls were reduced to such straits that they had no choice but to secede from the Roman Empire, and they ‘rejected Roman law, reverted to their native customs, and armed themselves to ensure their own safety.’
Meanwhile Honorius enlisted a new general, the future Constantius III, who arrived at Arles and put Gerontius to flight. Gerontius committed suicide and many of his troops deserted to Constantius, who took over the siege. Constantine held out, hoping for the return of Edobichus, who was raising troops in northern Gaul amongst the Franks. But Edobichus was defeated in an ambush. Constantine, his hopes ever fading after his troops guarding the Rhine abandoned him to support Jovinus, surrendered to Constantius who had him beheaded on his way to Ravenna in September 411. His head was presented to Honorius on a pole and was later displayed outside Carthage.
A later appeal for help by the British was, according to Zosimus, rejected by Honorius in 410. In the resulting Rescript of Honorius of 411, Honorius told the British civitates to look to their own defence as his regime was still fighting usurpers in the south of Gaul and trying to deal with the Visigoths who were in southern Italy: ‘Honorius, however, wrote letters to the cities in Britain urging them to be on their guard [or: to defend themselves]’ (Zosimus 6, 10). At the time the Rescript was sent, Honorius was cut off in Ravenna by the Visigoths and was unable to do anything about their sacking of Rome. In addition, by 411, it was all up for Constantine III. His son was killed along with those key supporters who had not turned against him, and he himself was murdered.
So what else had been happening in the wider empire to provoke the Rescript of Honorius and necessitate the end of the Roman occupation of Britannia? The withdrawal of the Romans is one of the major episodes in the history of Britain; we should try to put it into some context. It is simply not enough just to record that it happened.
Britannia, though initially well garrisoned and held in some regard in the earlier days, was nevertheless a peripheral province, both geographically and to some extent politically. There were 50,000 or so troops here in AD 150; this fell to 33,500 by the fourth century and possibly as low as 15,000 by then. As a percentage of the total Roman Imperial Army this was a stark decline from twelve-and-a-half per cent to five-and-a-half per cent. The writing was clearly on the wall. Moreover, as time went on the calibre of the troops declined as well, with a preponderance of limitanei, second-rate soldiers as opposed to crack comitatenses.
Things had gone from very bad to much worse for Flavius Honorius Augustus when the Visigoths invaded Italy in 402 under the command of their formidable king, Alaric. Alaric I was the Christian King of the Visigoths from 395 until his death in 410. He burst onto the world stage as leader of a motley band of Goths who invaded Roman Thrace in 391, but was stopped in his tracks by the half-Vandal Roman general Flavius Stilicho. Alaric then signed up to the Roman army, serving under the Gothic general Gainas. In 394, he led a 20,000-strong Gothic army which helped Theodosius subdue the usurper Flavius Eugenius at the Battle of Frigidus. Alaric’s was something of a Pyrrhic victory: he lost a quarter of his own troops.
To add insult to injury, Theodosius was distinctly unimpressed with Alaric’s contribution to his war effort, so Alaric deserted the army and was elected reiks (tribal leader or king) of the Visigoths in 395. That same year Theodosius died of heart failure and the empire was divided between his two sons, Flavius Arcadius in the east and young Flavius Honorius in the west. Arcadius showed no interest in empire building, while Honorius was still a minor – Theodosius had appointed Stilicho magister equitum and guardian of Honorius. Honorius cemented the bond by marrying Stilicho’s daughter, Maria. A disappointed and angry Alaric was passed over in his hoped-for permanent command of a Roman army.
Hoping to win such a command, Alaric marched on Constantinople with an army which snowballed in size as he progressed. But Constantinople was then considered too daunting a challenge. He crossed over to Greece, where he sacked the more vulnerable Piraeus and devastated Corinth, Megara, Argos, and Sparta. Athens capitulated and was spared devastation. To prevent further death and destruction Arcadius appointed Alaric magister militum in Illyricum. Alaric had finally got the command he craved.
Alaric invaded Italy in 401 and laid siege to Milan, but he was later defeated by Stilicho, first at Pollentia (modern Pollenza) and then, accused of violating the treaty signed after Pollentia, at the Battle of Verona the following year. Amongst Stilicho’s prisoners were Alaric’s wife and children, and ten years’ worth of pillaged booty. Honorius moved the western capital from Rome to Ravenna via Milan, believing it to be more secure against attacks from the Goths.
Now there was trouble in Gaul with Constantine III, who had crossed the Channel from Britannia, and with the Vandals, Sueves and Alans who had crossed the Rhine and invaded.
In 408 Arcadius died after a short illness; Stilicho and Honorius squabbled over who should travel east to settle the succession of the Eastern Empire. But Honorius had had enough and reacted. Stilicho took refuge in a church in Ravenna but, faithful to Honorius to the end, was arrested and executed; his son was also slain. Honorius inflamed the Roman people to massacre tens of thousands of the wives and children of Goths serving in the Roman army . Unsurprisingly, this atrocity led to around 30,000 Gothic soldiers defecting to Alaric, joining him on his march on Rome over the Julian Alps to avenge their slaughtered families. En route Alaric sacked Aquileia and Cremona and laid waste to the lands along the Adriatic. In September 408, Alaric was menacingly encamped outside the walls of Rome whence he began his siege of the city and blockaded the Tiber. The hunt was on for scapegoats: one of the victims was Stilicho’s widow, Serena; she was strangled in an act of post-mortem ‘justice’ and became one of ancient history’s most tragic afterthoughts.
As in many a siege before, Alaric’s greatest ally was starvation. It was not long before the senate capitulated, agreeing in exchange for food to send an envoy to Honorius in Ravenna to urge peace. Alaric agreed, but not before the senate’s failed attempt to unsettle Alaric; their flaccid threats were met with derision and a loud guffaw when the Goth retorted: ‘The thicker the hay, the easier it is cut down!’ The Romans eventually agreed a huge ransom of 5,000 lbs of gold, 30,000 lbs of silver, 4,000 silken tunics, 3,000 hides dyed scarlet, 3,000 lbs of pepper and 40,000 Gothic slaves. According to Gibbon, ‘the Senate presumed to ask, in modest and suppliant tone, “If such, O king! are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?” “Your lives,” replied the haughty conqueror.’ Prodigious as it may seem, the ransom was probably not beyond the deep pockets of some of Rome’s more affluent senators. They made little contribution, however – the bill was paid by the official ransacking of pagan temples.
The senate sent envoys, including Pope Innocent I, to Ravenna to encourage the emperor to make a deal with the Goths. Alaric was much more conciliatory this time and went to Ariminum where he discussed terms with Honorius’ diplomats. He demanded, quite reasonably, the provinces of Rhaetia and Noricum as a homeland for the Visigoths – a 200 mile long, 150 mile wide strip of territory between the Danube and the Gulf of Venice, grain, and, prize of them all, the rank of magisterium utriusque militae – commander-in-chief of the Imperial Army – just as Stilicho had been. Jovius, leader of the imperial delegation agreed, but predictably Honorius refused to see the wider picture and declined. He did not want another barbarian besmirching the imperial hierarchy, and then tried to infiltrate a unit of Illyrian soldiers into Rome. This was intercepted by Alaric and, infuriated by these insults, reacted by besieging Rome a second time and wasting the Roman granaries at Portus for good measure. Starvation loomed again: the high price of relief now was permission from the senate for Alaric to install a rival emperor, a usurper in effect, to Honorius. This was to be the prefect of the city, praefectus urbi – the Greek Priscus Attalus, something of a star in Rome; Alaric took Galla Placidia, Honorius’ sister, prisoner. Usurpers were always sure to concentrate the mind of an emperor.
Alaric, as we have seen, insisted Attalus make him magisterium utriusque militae and his brother-in-law Ataulf, who had arrived with reinforcements, was given the rank of comes domesticorum equitum. They then marched on Ravenna to overthrow Honorius and place Attalus on the imperial throne.
Things took their course and, sensing duplicity on the part of Honorius, an outraged Alaric thundered south with his army and stormed through the Porta Salaria to threaten the very existence of Rome. Some say that Alaric bribed elderly senators inside with the promise of Goth slave boys if they opened the gates to him. In any event, Rome was taken. Jerome lamented: ‘My voice sticks in my throat, and, as I dictate, sobs choke me. The City which had taken the whole world has itself been taken.’ Alaric, a Christian, was busy desecrating a Christian city with his Christian Goths.
Such were the circumstances which forced Honorius to do everything he could to preserve the empire in the face of repeated attacks by Alaric and Attalus. The withdrawal of garrisons at the further reaches of the empire was one obvious way of strengthening his position and the defence of the Roman Empire. Britannia in general and Eboracum in particular were amongst those garrisons.
Alaric
Alaric I was the Christian King of the Visigoths from 395 until his death in 410.
On 24 August 410, as noted above, the Visigoths entered Rome through the Salarian Gate, according to some opened by treachery, according to others forced through hunger, and embarked on a three-day sacking spree.
Many of the city’s great buildings were pillaged, including the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian; the ashes of the urns in both tombs were scattered to the winds. Anything that could be moved was pillaged throughout the city. The invaders stole a massive, 2,025 lb silver ciborium (a gift from Constantine) from the Lateran Palace. The Gardens of Sallust were burned and never relaid. The Basilica Aemilia and the Basilica Julia were also torched. Many Romans were taken captive, including Honorius’ sister, Galla Placidia. Some were ransomed, others sold into slavery, and others raped and killed. Pelagius, a Roman monk from Britannia, survived the siege and wrote an account (Jones, 1838) of the shocking experience in a letter to a woman called Demetrias:
This dismal calamity is but just over, and you yourself are a witness to how Rome that commanded the world was astonished at the alarm of the Gothic trumpet, when that barbarous and victorious nation stormed her walls, and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of birth, and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees leveled at that time and promiscuously huddled together? Every house was then a scene of misery, and equally filled with grief and confusion. The slave and the man of quality were in the same circumstances, and every where the terror of death and slaughter was the same, unless we may say the fright made the greatest impression on those who had the greatest interest in living.
Other Romans were tortured into revealing the locations of their valuables. One was 85-year-old Saint Marcella, who had no hidden wealth – she lived in poverty. She was a close friend of St Jerome, and he detailed the incident in a letter to a woman, Principia, who had been with Marcella during the pillaging:
When the soldiers entered [Marcella’s house] she is said to have received them without any look of alarm; and when they asked her for gold she pointed to her coarse dress to show them that she had no buried treasure. However they would not believe in her self-chosen poverty, but whipped her and beat her with cudgels. She is said to have felt no pain but to have thrown herself at their feet and to have pleaded with tears for you [Principia], that you might not be taken from her, or owing to your youth have to endure what she as an old woman had no occasion to fear. Christ softened their hard hearts and even among bloodstained swords natural affection asserted its rights. The barbarians conveyed both you and her to the basilica of the apostle Paul, that you might find there either a place of safety or, if not that, at least a tomb.
(St Jerome, ‘Letter CXXVII. To Principia’ Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VI, The Letters of St Jerome/Letter 127, 13)
Marcella died of her injuries a few days later. The sacking had a profound social effect on other parts of the empire, as reported in Wace:
Refugees from Rome poured into the province of Africa, as well as Egypt and the East. Some refugees were robbed as they sought asylum; St Jerome wrote that Heraclian, the Count of Africa, sold some of the young refugees into Eastern brothels.
Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become also their tomb; that the shores of the whole East, of Egypt, of Africa, which once belonged to the imperial city, were filled with the hosts of her men-servants and maid-servants, that we should every day be receiving in this holy Bethlehem men and women who once were noble and abounding in every kind of wealth but are now reduced to poverty? We cannot relieve these sufferers: all we can do is to sympathise with them, and unite our tears with theirs ... . There is not a single hour, nor a single moment, in which we are not relieving crowds of brethren, and the quiet of the monastery has been changed into the bustle of a guest house. And so much is this the case that we must either close our doors, or abandon the study of the Scriptures on which we depend for keeping the doors open ... . Who could boast when the flight of the people of the West, and the holy places, crowded as they are with penniless fugitives, naked and wounded, plainly reveal the ravages of the Barbarians? We cannot see what has occurred, without tears and moans. Who would have believed that mighty Rome, with its careless security of wealth, would be reduced to such extremities as to need shelter, food, and clothing? And yet, some are so hard-hearted and cruel that, instead of showing compassion, they break up the rags and bundles of the captives, and expect to find gold about those who are nothing than prisoners.
To summarise, the situation in Britain was just as chaotic and intractable as it was in Ravenna and Rome. The British provinces were isolated, lacking support from the empire, and the soldiers supported the revolts of Marcus (406–407), Gratian (407), and Constantine III. Constantine invaded Gaul in 407, occupying Arles, and while Constantine was in Gaul, his son Constans ruled over Britain. By 410 Britain, as we know, was effectively told to look after its own affairs and expect no aid from Rome. Legio XX Valeria Victrix was recalled from Britannia. The absence of coinage from 402 in Britannia may suggest that the army was already going without pay and was in the process of being withdrawn.
Roman Britain, and Eboracum with it, went into a slow but inexorable decline. The city and many of its buildings lived on but in varying degrees of dilapidation. The construction of York churches for one thing benefitted from having a viable quarry right in its very midst. Sacrilegious as it sounds today, the obvious thing for a builder to do then was to recycle all that Roman stone that was lying around in ruinous old buildings – a useful and pragmatic legacy of York’s existence as a thriving Roman colonia.
The chapters above tell the stories behind the story of Roman Britain. They provide the background and context of why what happened with the Romans in York actually happened, explicating the linear progression of events from early commercial interest, Julius Caesar, the Claudian invasion and occupation through to colonia, and eventual departure of the Roman occupying army in AD 410.