The Ancients - The Origins of London

Episode Date: February 6, 2022

London is today one of the greatest cities in the world, and the story of its origins is fittingly spectacular. Founded by the Romans as Londinium in around 47-50 AD, the metropolis served as a major commercial hub and indeed military target until its abandonment in the 5th century. It wouldn’t be until the turn of the following millennium that London regained its eminence under the Anglo-Saxons.Thanks to centuries of astonishing discoveries and decades of key archaeological research, we actually know quite a lot about Londinium; perhaps even why the Romans chose to found it there in what was previously a rural and peripheral landscape under the Celtic Britons.In this episode, Tristan chats to ‘Mr Roman London’ himself Dr Dominic Perring, Professor of Archaeology at UCL, who shares incredible insights into the origins of London and what its artefacts tell us about the very first Londoners.Order Tristan’s book today: Order from Amazon.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hithttps://access.historyhit.com/?utm_source=audio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Podcast+Campaign&utm_id=PodcastTo download, go to Android or Apple store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.historyhit&hl=en_GB&gl=UShttps://apps.apple.com/gb/app/history-hit/id1303668247If you’re enjoying this podcast and looking for more fascinating The Ancients content then subscribe to our Ancients newsletter. Follow the link here:https://www.historyhit.com/sign-up-to-history-hit/?utm_source=timelinenewsletter&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Timeline+Podcast+Campaign

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, you're going to be blown away by this one. We're talking about the origins of one of the greatest cities on earth. If not the greatest city, we're talking about the origins of London,

because London was originally a Roman foundation. And to talk us through today, the rise of Roman London from the mid-first century to the mid-second century, I was delighted to get on the show, Mr. Roman London, Dr. Dominic Pering from UCL. He knows so much about Roman London. He's been studying its archaeology, its history for so many years, and he's a fantastic speaker. You're going to absolutely love it. It was wonderful to meet up with him in person a few days back to record this exceptional interview. Now we're going to be covering big names such as Boudicca and Hadrian and so much more. So without further ado, to talk all about the origins of London, here's Dominic.

Dom, it is great to have you on the podcast today. It's lovely to be with you. Doing it in person as well, which is always a plus. And London, origins of London, Roman London, because not only today is it one of the greatest cities on earth, I think we can all say that, but archaeologically it's been intensely studied for decades. It's incredible. We are really, really lucky as archaeologists to have been able to play here for so long. I mean, firstly, London is one of the places where people started the process of exploration into ancient pasts.

And we go back into the 16th century. People have been digging here. But of course, the city of London has now grown to the extent that underneath every single big building, there's been a lot of archaeological work taking place. And there have been hundreds and hundreds. We are over a thousand, well over a thousand – excavations undertaken. We're not just talking about excavations, we're talking about really intensive excavations. Lots of stratigraphy, lots of archaeologists producing amazing results. When we think of the City of London today, you think of skyscrapers, the Bloomberg building, intensely urban. So, I mean, begs the question, first, basically, how do these archaeological excavations, how do they come about in the centre of this great city?

The first thing is, every time somebody builds, they need to put foundations, they need to put basements in. And one of the things about the city, of course, is that until recently, a lot of buildings couldn't go very far up. They were trying to preserve views of St. Paul's Cathedral, dig big basements. So as you did that, you're always finding stuff anyway. And we go back into a chap called Roach Smith, Charles Roach Smith, who used to pay local schoolboys and workmen on building sites to bring in the bits and pieces they found. And it was Roach Smith who put together a lot of the things that you now find in the British Museum, showing London material as part of Roman British displays. So Roach Smith did a fantastic amount of work just using volunteers. But in the more

recent period, we've had a lot of professional work going on where developers have been able to fund the archaeological works. I mean, helped by the planners and city corporation who've been putting a lot of close constraint on what goes on to make sure that the important discoveries are being looked at and investigated. So much funding has come in because of course, city property is worth a lot of money and people have been able to put money into archaeology. Absolutely. I mean, the quality of some of these discoveries, I'm sure we'll go into them as the chat goes on, but is it important to remember therefore how we think of London, we think of the River Thames, but of course, there are many other rivers. When you think of the soil which you're excavating in the City of

London, has that helped with the preservation of some absolutely remarkable artifacts? The preservation is brilliant. It's a wet place. Days like the last week or so remind us how wet a place it can be. But the rivers have also preserved a lot of organic materials. London's real advantage from an archaeological point of view is that those buried conditions preserve wood in many contexts. And the Port of London is one of our biggest resources. And I can go on and on about the timbers from the Port of London and how the dendrochronology, the tree ring dating we get out of those timbers, gives us such a precise chronology of change. So yes, we've got the

rivers, but those rivers are the Thames, of course, which is tidal up to the area of London, rivers. But those rivers are the Thames, of course, which is tidal up to the area of London. And that creates mudflats. A lot of the early history of London is to do with the crossing of the river, coming through Southwark, getting across London Bridge onto the north side. So the river has an enormous influence on London. And then there are these other rivers around it, the Fleet, of course, and the ancient Walbrook, which bisected the city, coming down from Moorgate to Cannon Street area. We're in London, a great case, a really interesting case in that so many of these ancient cities in the Mediterranean, there's a lot of writing about them, whether it's Cyrene,

Alexandria or Rome. But London, it feels like there's less writing. It's more archaeology based, isn't it? London is a peripheral city. It's out there in a frontier area that Rome conquers quite late in its period of expansion through Europe. So we don't have a lot of good historical material. There are some, and there are some very excellent references, but it's still a very thin framework. We've got 14 or so, I think, clear references to London in ancient sources. So no, we depend on archaeology. And archaeology is telling us a completely new story that historians weren't that bothered to write at the time.

Interesting indeed. Well, let's delve into the chronology. The timeline is where I don't go to the start. What did this area look like, the area of what is now London, before the Roman conquest? The key thing is the river, the Thames. The river we know to have been tidal probably a little bit further up river than London, probably up as far as Westminster thereabouts. We can tell that because you can work out the kinds of snails that are on the foreshore and the diatoms, which are either saltwater or not saltwater. So we know about the tidal reach. And the tides then meant that the river flooded across a much wider area than it does now. We've embanked the river, we've closed

in on it, we've reclaimed bits of the river. But the wider Thames, its tidal reaches meant that you had some mudflats. But emerging out of those mudflats, a few of the iots But the wider Thames, its tidal reaches meant that you had some mudflats. But emerging out of those mudflats, a few of the iots, as we call them in London, the little islands that are formed by the gravels banked over. And the Thames had these really important gravel iots below what's now Suffolk, in the area of Borough Market, that part of town. You've got these higher bits of land that could be used as stepping stones to get to the north bank. But otherwise, farmers were farming the area, so we've got evidence of aardmarks and the pollen from grain cultivation, cereal cultivation, and trees. We know a fair bit

about the landscape, but it's a farmed rural landscape with a big river. Well, you mentioned all these features, so therefore begs the question, when, why, how do the Romans decide that they're going to construct a settlement right here? As far as we can tell, the Thames area was pretty peripheral in the period before the Roman conquest. We know of a kingdom minting coins set up by the Catechvalorni in Colchester, and they have a big king, Cenoernobelin who's conquering bits and pieces around the area. Some of the bits of Kent came within his sway. We also know that another kingdom area, another major polity, existed to the southwest based on Silchester near Reading.

Those separate territories had the Thames as a borderland between them. Not necessarily always a frontier, but certainly a borderland. And that's sometimes perhaps a frontier. So where London is, we're sort of between these other areas. And we know their extent through coin distributions, burials, and other bits of settlement. So London was a borderland, a peripheral area, perhaps sometimes contested, other times a bit sleepy and out of the way. We know a few farmsteads. And what's great about the intensity of archaeological research in London is we've picked up bits and pieces which show where small farms were based. There's probably one in the Suffolk area, one at Bermondsey. We think there's a little farmstead there.

So we've got these sites that were occupied probably on the edges of the Kentish territories, largely run from Colchester. But it's a backland, so there's no city here. And it only becomes a place where you want a city when you can cross the river and when you can unite what were previously competing territories into a single country, as it were. And that's what Rome does. Rome, by conquering Britain, makes London suddenly the middle of things rather than the edges of things. And so where does Roman London begin?

That's a contested and debated issue. Until very recently, people felt that London probably was a creation of around 50 AD. That's when our first major timber structures are dated. And that's when the port of London begins to kick off, slowly in stages, but from the late 40s into the 50s. But over the years, some earlier things have begun to emerge. And only piecing them together now, does it look as if there might be something underneath the city of the 50s and 60s. And that could be a conquest period fault. We've got ditch systems found at now three sites in the city. When they were dug, very difficult to make sense of them. Bottom of the excavated sequences,

duck in a bit of a hurry at the end of the excavations, not much dating material from them. But we've now got three sites where it looks as if we've got a double-ditched enclosure, very military type of architecture, V-shaped ditches with square, what's called ankle breaks at the bottom, just cleaning slots stuck on the bottom, but associated with late Iron Age finds, not much Roman material coming from them, and distinctly earlier than what we know is going on at the back end of the 40s into the 50s. And that does look likely to be a military encampment planted on the north bank of the

Thames in the very conquest period. And if that is the case, that would suggest that perhaps London is where the Roman legions, centred by the Emperor Claudius in AD 43, perhaps this is where they crossed the Thames. Can't be sure of it, but that's where the evidence is now perhaps pointing. Well, there you go. There you go. Beat that, Tilbury. Dom, you mentioned how in the 50s there's this more focus on the port. Is it therefore that this initial evolution, if it does begin in let's say the early 40s with the conquest, does it quickly become very much focused around the river, around trade, let's say during the 50s, during this Neronian London time?

What Rome has to do is look after its legions. It's got a lot of soldiery based in Britain. It's got to ensure that it could administer the new province. It's got bureaucrats who are sent out there. It's got people looking after imperial interests. And as they exercise a war of conquest, and that's what's going on, they are seizing lands from defeated peoples. They're trying to get the grain to feed their troops, some of it obtained locally, but some of it early doors has to be imported. When you have a big campaigning army, you can't rely on being able to feed it locally. You can't rely on being able to support it locally. So you've got to have the logistical support mechanism to keep the conquest going. And that logistical

support mechanism requires ships to bring stuff, and it requires people to move. And you're moving lots of goods, lots of people, and you need somewhere where the boats can arrive. Now, initially, the conquest is through the south coast. But as you're moving north, you're aiming initially, the Claudian conquest is aimed at conquering and capturing Colchester, the capital of the biggest kingdom in Britain before Rome arrives, but then further north, the Brigantes, and eventually moving on up through the province. And those stages of conquest require the ships to come somewhere that are bringing the goods in. And of course, the Thames then becomes this beautiful way of moving goods inland.

It's tidal, so the tides bring the ships up. You've got these gravel islands in Southwark, these islets that allow a bridge to be built at the site of London. That bridging becomes the lowest fixed crossing of the Thames. That lowest fixed crossing is where the road network can intersect with a place that ships can come and move goods in. So London is important at the time of conquest, because you're crossing the Thames to move north, but even more important in the decades after, as you are logistically supporting the army

as it's capturing other parts of the province. And then the whole business is just moving the goods back and forward that let Rome exploit its new province, that lets Rome feed its armies here, and give them the luxuries they expect. Soldiers, their loyalty mattered to emperors. Pissed off soldiers is a big, big problem for Roman emperors. So you want them to be fed and happy. And that means the wine that keeps them

happy. It means the oil that they can use for their Mediterranean dining practices, and a lot of grain, of course. Getting the bread here matters too. When you say London is growing, especially say between the 50s, what you're saying there, I mean, is it always from this time that we start seeing from these legendary tablets? We think of the Vindolanda tablets, but the London tablets just as incredible. You have some dating to this period too. Absolutely. The work done at the Bloomberg building and Roger Tomlin's done a fantastic job at making sense of these texts. But these wooden writing

tablets, where people had scratched messages and business transactions, for the most part, onto the wax embedded in these little pine wood writing tablets, are providing us with an amazing set of documents concerning the early bureaucratic arrangements. And of course, these are mostly business documents that have been written in this fashion so that they are sealing a deal of some sort. They're about moving goods. They're about buying and worrying about slaves. They're about making arrangements between important businessmen, a lot of money transactions, banking going on. And of course, when you're running a big new province, the financing of what you're doing matters enormously to the deals that underwrite the administration that sought out the bureaucracy.

Critical, fascinating material. Absolutely. Absolutely fascinating. Especially where they found Bloomberg. You know, who'd have thought these administrative tablets, 2,000 years old, under Bloomberg. Going on from that. So London seems to be growing very rapidly at the start of the Roman occupation in Britain. But of course, we can't talk about London and not mention 60, 61 AD,

because, Dom, what happens to London during this time? The fascinating thing is that by then, by 60-odd, London is easily the biggest settlement in Britain. We think it's about twice the size of Colchester. But it's not a formally recognised city. It doesn't have an official status. Tacitus, who tells us about the Boudiccan revolt, tells us it's a place of businessmen and of supplies, really. It's not a traditional Roman colony. It's not a town established by a local aristocracy who wish

to enjoy the profits of the land in an urban setting. This is somewhere that's there for supply and support. And that's what Tacitus points out to us. So of course, it makes it a key target. If you are rebelling against Rome, you go where Rome is exercising its power from. You go to where the treasure houses are, to where the stores are, to where the oppressors are based. And Boudicca and her rebels are busy to take out London. It's a key target. Archaeology is lovely on this because it's one of those rare moments when history and archaeology come together in absolute precision coordinated fashion. We have Tacitus and other people's description of the revolt, placing it in that 60-61 period. We have in the City of London, a bright red burnt horizon where the clay walls of buildings have been fired

red in there when torched, a bit of charcoal underneath the burnt walls, and underneath it, timber buildings that have been put up in AD 60. So we know that people are busy building just before the revolt hits town. And then we've got other timber buildings dated AD 62 and AD 63 being built with new piles set through the debris. And London is very quickly re-established because although Rome loses it, and Rome has to abandon the site at the start of the revolt because they just don't have the forces to look after it, but once Rome has got its act together, it's busy stomping out the rebellion

and rebuilding London is a critical part of the exercise of regaining control of this restless province. And the 60s period, 63 AD primarily, is when we start to see some really big, chunky constructions going on on London's waterfront. And there's a pretty good chance that we've got soldiers coming in here. We have a fort that's planted in the middle of town, and a big new waterfront is built with massive timbers shipped downriver, used to build new quays, new warehouses, new stores, solid buildings. Rome is very much back in business. Maybe it's one of those impossible questions, but if this is in the wake of an absolute horrific destruction, there's a question, who's doing the building? Who are building these big constructions? London is always a mix because it needs its administrators and they are working

something directly for the emperor, their imperial slaves, those sorts of people. It needs its soldiers. The governor, although he's busy campaigning elsewhere, is still using London as the main entrepot, as the place where goods have been moved to and through. So you've got a military presence. You've got a military presence. You've got a bureaucracy, which is not entirely military. But you've then got all of the people who come in the wake of Rome, the businessmen who are making the money, supplying the goods on which Rome relies. If you've got a busy campaigning army, and we see this today as well as then, you don't

want your soldiers to be busy manning stores and bean counting, if possible. You want them out there at the front lines. You want them organizing the engineering of the newly won territories. So behind the army of advance, you've got a whole range of contractors who are busy profiting from the opportunities that Rome's advance offers. And they are converting conquest to profit, but they're feeding the troops, but they're also raising the taxes. They are sorting out what happens behind the front line, as it were. And those exercises bring on a whole raft of people from primarily Gauls, but they're coming from the Rhineland. They're coming from all parts of the Roman Empire,

sooner or later represented. We have North Africans, we have Greeks. So there's a whole mix of people coming in Rome's wake. And so London is being populated by a very mixed community. And a lot of the work being done now on the skeletal remains, where we have isotopic analysis and DNA analysis, are showing how varied Londoners were. Some would have been native Britons, but the native Britons are not very visible here. This is primarily a place of people who've come in the wake of Rome. I'm going to ask about the cemeteries in a bit, but we'll go back to what you're saying about the waterfront after the Boudiccan revolt. From what you're saying, and please do elaborate, is this really this period from the 60s onwards in the first century where you do start to see

bigger constructions making an appearance in Roman London? start to see bigger constructions making an appearance in Roman London? To a modest extent. London is very much a working city in its early decades. It gains bathhouses quite early doors, but we don't know much about them. We know about the early bathhouses mainly because of bits of broken hypercoarse tiles and flue tiles, but the in-situ remains haven't really been explored in those early days. But they're likely to be quite small establishments. Otherwise, people are living in relatively modest timber built buildings. And the important structures are actually big graveled areas where wagons can be loaded and unloaded, some stores, yes, some waterfront activities. But London doesn't really move into the business of building splendid architecture until a

little bit later on. And it's primarily after Nero's overthrow, after the Civil War of AD 69 with the arrival of Vespasian, that's when we start to see a lot more attention being given to the infrastructure of public architecture and its related temples and whatever. That's a Flavian rather than a Claudian-Neronian thing. Does that really emphasise, therefore, during that Neronian period, the immediate revival of London, the importance, the main focus on London, the number one priority, it was around the port, was it? That was the area. When they first build London, actually, the port starts out as simply being places to beach

ships. It's gravel surfaces, a bit of hard standing. They actually invest early doors in a big graveled piazza in the middle of the settlement, but they don't put much effort into the buildings around it. It's actually the hard surfaced area that matters because that's where you're moving goods. And shipments would be coming into London. And of course, the goods that come in, some of them would be for local consumption, but some would be sent off west, some would be going north, some would be going east. So there's probably quite a bit of moving things around. So the businessmen are busy organising in those open areas. But it's the Flavian period, as I say, after Vespasian, when things kick off in a different way, where a lot more has been put

into making it a structured place. Is this cemeteries? Do we start seeing them, I'm guessing, spring up around this time too? Yes. And one of the fun things is that we've got, although quite small, Claudio-Neronian cemeteries, they're quite striking. And we've got, to the west, east, and south, some very impressive burials. Some of our very best burials actually come from

this early, early period. On the west side of town, not far from the Old Bailey, there are these cremations. And we've got this amazing porphyry urn. It's on display in the British Museum with some lead canisters next to it. And these are very high status luxury items that the porphyry is important from Egypt. It's a style of vessel used for only the highest status people. How important is the person here? There are some early Roman governors who die in Britain. Could we be seeing the burial of one of those? Don't know.

But they are fascinating as objects. See them in the VM. Brilliant. So they're in a small cemetery by the old Bailey on the west side of town. On Tower Hill, near the Tower of London, we've got the impressive funerary monument of one of the earliest important government officials we know to have been based in London. And that's the procurator, Clascianus. And the procurator is an imperial servant.

He manages the fiscal issues. He looks after the emperor's property, which is a big deal in Britain. But he's also responsible for supply and the like. And his tomb was reused in a late Roman bastion, but we know it's on that eastern hill, near Tower Hill. And he's probably an aristocrat from the Trier area. In Southwark, third burial, triangulate it, we've got a completely different early, early burial, but again, high status.

And this is a, I say a woman, her DNA is a bit odd and she has some odd chromosomal structures, but essentially a woman buried in more Iron Age fashion with a mirror and a talk, but also with Roman goods. And this is perhaps one of the rarer instances of an aristocrat of pre-Roman aristocracy who's been absorbed within the new Roman segment. Because it is actually on the South Bank that we've got some of these, as I say, late Iron Age inter-Roman farmsteads. I've mentioned the one in Bermondsey and on Southwark Island. They're fascinating, these early settlements, because is this a woman who was one of the families who lived

in one of these pre-Roman farmsteads? What's the relationship then between these pre-Roman farmsteads and the Roman conquest? One of the arguments in my book is that Southwark actually is really where London gets its name from. London is born out of these farmsteads that were part of these Kentish territories where the kings might easily have switched allegiance to Rome early doors. Best way to avoid having your lands confiscated by the conquering Romans is to become an ally of Rome. We're on your side now, don't bother us. So perhaps these farmsteads in the Southwark-Bermondsey area are where some of the elite society was based that sided with Rome, and therefore perhaps London even gets its name. Because of course, London, Londinium, it's a Celtic name, but there isn't a site on the north back of the river. So is this a connection? Could that Iron Age settlement actually have been called Londinium before London? Well, not necessarily, but the area in which it's located. These are farms,

they're small establishments. This isn't a city of any sort at all, but they are places which would have had a name. And one of the arguments is that Londinium comes from the name Lander, low-lying lands. And of course, low-lying lands fit Southwark quite well, doesn't fit the city so well because the city's got a couple of hills,hill Ludgate Hill and maybe this woman is part of that Iron Age aristocracy that did side with Rome early doors totally speculative of course but a fun speculation that's what we love about ancient history though right especially the archaeology stuff when you can make those oh well do you want other speculations oh cool run run with this argument you've got this farmstead in Southwark, near

Borough Market. It's next to the river. There's actually a little creek running up, which boats can come up. We know that the Emperor Claudius arrived to take command of his conquering armies in Britain. We also know from historical accounts that he couldn't have been in Britain long enough to have landed on the south coast because it would have taken too long to move overland to conquer Colchester and get away in the time he's supposed to have spent in Britain. So we know he arrived by boat somewhere closer to his army to march on Colchester. And we know that his army was based on the banks of the River Thames, and I now suggest City of London. But the City of London, north bank of the Thames, not yet a port, not yet a safe place. Did he land at

Borough Market? Because we know that there's this Iron Age settlement there. There's a bit of water up there. Did he bring his elephants to Borough Market? He arrived with elephants. If he came to Borough Market, he would then have crossed the river with the people who accompanied him. And that is actually described by Dio in the historical accounts of the crossing of the river. So a pontoon bridge, probably boats lashed together, built, Claudius arrived, Borough Market. That's where I reckon the Emperor Claudius arrived with his elephants. There you go.

Well, next time you're in Borough Market near Southwark, near London Bridge, you'll be like, well, right here, 2000 years ago. Summer of AD 43. Well, that's brilliant. But we're going to go on from the Claudian period now. We talked about Neronian, but we've kind of tantalized about Flavian London. It seems like this big time for London. So talk us through London, what happens to London, the development of it during the Flavian

period. This again comes back to the splendid dating we get out of dendrochronology, the tree ring dating. We've got two big structures being put together in London in the very early 70s, 70, 72, that sort of period. And these are the amphitheatre on the north side of town. And back where I've just said Claudius may have arrived, back in Southwark, near Borough Market, a large public building, say public buildings, it's too strange a shape and form to see as being a private house. It could perhaps have been one, but it's more likely a public building. Also being built at exactly the same time over a two-year period.

And these therefore date to these very early years after Vespasian has assumed control of the Roman Empire after the Civil War. London had gone through a bit of a quiet period in the late 60s leading up into the Civil War. Nero's attentions were elsewhere, but it livens up, bang, on the money, Vespasian's just taken over. And Vespasian, new emperor, new dynasty, is not relying on his inheritance for his power. He's got to prove himself. And at that time, Britain was still the place, if you wanted to show that you were in charge of a growing empire, if you were looking after your troops, if you were making waves, Britain was still the place to do so. And Vespasian, of course, had built his earlier

career partly in Britain during the Army of Conquest. So Vespasian's early attention to Britain looks to be part of a clear package of, I'm doing things, I'm taking this place somewhere. And London gets its first big public buildings, and the amphitheatre is a splendid token of Vespasian's idea of how power is exercised. These are, yes, for the games, for entertainment, but it's a particular kind of entertainment. We're seeing the imperial cult developing under Vespasian, the idea of using the amphitheatre as a setting for the display of imperial power. Of course, the amphitheatre is where setting for the display of imperial power. And of course, the amphitheater is where you execute people as well. It's a place of ritualized violence. That's

what the gladiator combats about. And this big complex is there to show Vespasian's imperial power. Over on the Warfare podcast by History Hit, we bring you brand new military histories from around the world each week twice a week we release new episodes with world-leading historians expert policymakers and the veterans who served from the greatest tanks of the second world war and so what are you actually trying to get out of your tank you're trying to get maneuverability and you're trying to get a really big gun your tiger and your pamphlet there to dominate the battlefield primarily on the eastern front and in the north africa and all that sort of stuff. But by the time they're actually coming in in decent numbers, that moment has already passed. Through to new

histories that help us understand current conflicts. Any invader, any attacker, any adversary will exploit gaps within society. It was true then, it's true today. But the Finns signaled that they were united and I think that's what the Ukrainians should signal today too. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts and join us on the front lines of military history. It's quite something, isn't it? When you look at Vespasian in Rome

and the Colosseum turns into Vespasian land in one kind of way. It's almost like it isn't it? When you look at Vespasian in Rome, the Colosseum turns into Vespasian land in one kind of way. It's almost like it does the same in London. I know the amphitheatre is nothing like the Colosseum, but similarities still. Whilst it's nothing like the Colosseum, of course you're right, the Colosseum is architecturally somewhat more splendid. But London's early amphitheatre is a timber-built structure with an earth bank. We're talking a much more modest affair. But it's a precise contemporary. He's building these things.

I say he. His imperial administration has commissioned the construction of these amphitheaters in London and Rome at the same time. They are contemporaries. So the idea behind it is the same, even if the architecture is distinctly different. Quite something, isn't it? And as Vespasian's reign goes on in the Flavian period, into the late 1st century, do we see other key buildings emerging in London at this time? Yes. The Flavian period is London's most expansive period. London reaches

its peak in the early 2nd century, but it's the late 1st century when a lot of the infrastructure has been developed. It grows, new street systems are being put in, and in there, there are other public buildings. We get several big public bathhouses, some of those perhaps being built under Domitian. I have a sneaky suspicion that after Governor Agricola has, in theory, completed the conquest of Britain, Agricola moves up into Scotland. There is perhaps a bit of investment going on in London at around that time by way of Domitian showing that, yeah, we've got Britain under control now. This is a civilized part of their own world. We've completed our conquest. So we've got bathhouses, one near Cannon Street that's often called the Governor's Palace,

but is more likely to be a grand public bathhouse. But also under Agricola, this governor of Domitian's, we've also got the construction of what looks to be several mills. Each of them is a little bit disputed as to quite what the evidence means, but we have, we think, on the fleet, a tidal mill of about that date. But more specifically in terms of dating, we've got a lot of work going on on the Walbrook River, closer to the middle of town, dated AD 78, with revetments being put in, which looks to be canalising the river. And again, at Bloomberg, there were some discoveries of bits of timber fittings that might have come from the gearing of a millhouse.

And we've also got these large millstones. They move about a bit more. We can't date them quite so precisely, but also look to be associated with these mills on the Walbrook. And so there could be two, three, maybe even four mills being built in quite a short period of time under the Emperor Agricola. The Governor Agricola around the 78th period. Not that many years after the amphitheatre. And of course, therefore, allowing me to write a chapter called Bread and Circuses in my book, because the circus is what goes on in the amphitheater. And we've got these mills, a lot of grain been coming in, a lot of bread being made,

and maybe some form of public dole as well. We can't be sure of that. But Rome is known to be caring about food security, keeping its cities fed. And this could be something that the Flavian dynasty is doing, is giving London the mills and bakeries to keep it sweet. Well, a couple of questions from that. First of all, John, I'd like to do a bit of myth-busting quickly, first of all, because you mentioned Cannon Street there. And of course, on Cannon Street, you have the London Stone. Now, some people have said these Roman connections to the London Stone, but what's the whole story behind the London Stone? Could there be a Roman link to it? Yes, there could. Can I add very much to that? No, not really. Yes, it might well be a relic bit of a Roman building, but which Roman building?

Don't say on it. Damn. I was hoping we might solve the mystery there, but the mystery will continue with the London Stone. And also, I guess one other thing to pick up there, you mentioned, of course, the River Walbrook. Now, of course, we think of London, we think of the River Thames, but the Walbrook for Roman London, this is right at the centre of Roman London. This is an important part of it, isn't it? Yes. And we've just talked about the mills and it's a source of power. It also creates an inlet that's suitable for shipping at the base of it. And of course, it provides water and people are taking water off of the Walbrook at various dates. And quite early doors, London gets quite sophisticated water supply with water pipes. We've got quite a few of these wooden

water pipes where they bore a hole through the wood, and they link together to form a series of piped water supply. And again, the 70s, mid to late 70s, there's quite a lot of that going on, and some of it supplying bathhouses like the so-called Governor's Palace, which we now think more likely to be a bathhouse, by Cannon Street. Well, if we then move on, Domitian is dead. We're going to the time of Trajan. We're going to skip over Nerva. Sorry, Nerva. Time of Trajan, we're going to Hadrian. Don't skip Nerva. Do you want to talk about Nerva?

Don't skip Nerva. Does Nerva do anything with London? Come on, quickly. One of the interesting things about Nerva is he's a forgotten emperor. He occupies quite a small slot of time, and his heir, Trajan, gets all the glory and all the fame. But Nerva, we've got building works on London's waterfront, which look to date to Nerva's period. And we know Nerva was setting up a colony we've got, not in London, at Gloucester, where we've got in Rome and in Scripture, which mentions that. So he is quite important in what's going on in Britain, but because he's a short-lived emperor, the glory is taken by his adoptive successor rather than Nerva. But I think Nerva had a lot to say with organized supply of grain and support. He's

building keys and warehouses. His coinage is keen on the Annona, the organized supply grain of Rome, but of other parts of the Roman administration as well. So sorry about that. A word for Nerva. That's quite right. A word for Nerva. And one of my history colleagues will be very, very happy that you mentioned Nerva there because he does like Nerva a lot. So moving on, though, we will go on to Trajan and Hadrian now because once again, it seems like we're going step, step, step because it's going from one to the next to the next. It's getting better. Again, this is going back to what's amazing about Roman London, the dating.

Normally, we get told off for talking about emperors when we deal with archaeology, because our dating's too poor. But actually, we really can talk about what Nerva was doing, and we can talk about what Trajan was doing. It does look likely that Trajan is responsible for the big rebuilding of London's Forum, to start with. London's Forum takes forever to finish. The excavations there by Gustav Miel and Trevor Brigham and others showed that the back end

of the Forum complex, they didn't finish building until Hadrian's times. But Trajan probably kicked it off. And we know there's a big rebuilding of the waterfront in the early second century. I've forgotten the exact date. I'm going to say 103, but I need to go back and check. We've also got new water supplies being organized at that time. So we know a lot's going on in that period. But quite a bit of that isn't finished off until Hadrian.

And another lovely parallel with Rome, because of course, Trajan's column sits in the middle of Trajan's forum. This wonderful complex being built to a vastly excessive scale because Trajan's just won the Megadesian War that he celebrates on his column. And that makes him a bit well off. He's got money to splash. And just as he goes in Rome to build a massive forum complex with his column, so in London, that looks to be, when he kicks off, a massive forum, basilica and forum.

Again, like the amphitheater, we're not comparing like with like. What London sees is a regional, local shadow of what's going on in Rome, built to an architecture familiar in the Northwest provinces, not built in the same way as Trajan's Forum in Rome, but at the same time, and perhaps drawing on the same funding schemes and flows that let Trajan be a rich emperor and endow cities with grand architecture. But Trajan, his plans, I say his plans, his architect's plans, his administration's plans in Rome were such that the Forum wasn't completed until Hadrian's reign. Ditto in London, our Basilica here,

the Forum Basilica in London, is not completed until Hadrian's reign. You mentioned Hadrian's reign because this is one I've been looking forward to getting to because this is very, very exciting. Because it all starts so well, doesn't it? Right at the start, Hadrian's reign, it seems like London is almost entering a golden age, as it were. Thanks to what's gone on in the Flavian period, thanks to how that's then even amplified and enlarged by Trajan, London is now, as we head into the early part of the second century, a pretty impressive place. It's a large city, we guess over 30,000 inhabitants. Difficult to be sure, but it could be quite a bit more than 30,000. A big, big place,

and nothing had been seen like it in Britain before, and much larger than any other towns of Britain. And with its baths, with its forum, with its roads and its port, and it's eating well, it's drinking well, it's looking pretty impressive. And Hadrian is certainly putting spit and polish to that creation. And again, I say Hadrian, I'm referring to his administration. The chap himself wasn't out there with a trowel in hand. I must be careful how I attribute these things to the individual emperor. But his administration is putting resources into London. And this is accompanying the fact that Hadrian, of course, is on his grand tour of the Roman Empire. And Britain is one of the places he visits, AD 122. And his visit to Britain would almost certainly have been used to focus minds and attention

on the buildings that he could visit, that he could sign off on. Any dignitary visiting anywhere expects to see people to have made a little bit of an effort to make things pretty before you arrive. So that is part of London's spit and polish, I call it. But that tidying up of what Hadrian has inherited. As Hadrian's reign goes on, now we have some references, like literary references, like there's trouble in Judea, but there's also trouble in Britain.

And archaeologically in London, I know it's not completely for certain, but there does seem to be some turmoil, some trouble. I'm torn on this. Hadrian has got an awfully good press. People like the fact that he built things. Hadrian's Wall. It was a time of wealth and prosperity. Edward Gibbon goes on about the Hadrian and Antonine periods as being Rome at its peak, its glorious moment. I'm not sure that this is entirely right or fair. Hadrian's reign was characterized by some ghastly wars. And of

course, the wars in Judea are the more famously known ones. And a lot of people die in Judea. There's a lot of nasty things going on. And there are hints that maybe Britain should be seen in the same light, that this is not necessarily sweetness and light and the glories of Rome, but actually Roman power coming up against people who found it hard to stomach. How do we know this? Well, we don't know it, as your question said. We have to speculate here. But we do know that the archaeology of Hadrianic London shows several odd things going on. Now, the first of those odd

things has been long known about, which is the Hadrianic fire. London burns to the ground. It's quite well dated to the mid-120s after Hadrian's visit. There are dendrochronological structures on the waterfront that indicate that the rebuilding is in hand by 126 as well. So mid-120s, London burns to the ground. It could be just like the Great Fire of 1666. And for a long time, because people quite liked the Hadrianic period as being good, they see this as just a horrible accident and a nasty disaster. So fire, put that to one side. We've also got, after that fire, the building of a brand new fort, the Cripplegate Fort. People have said, oh, governor's bodyguard. We've also got something called the Walbrook skulls. And the Walbrook skulls are these rolled crania that sit in the river, but also get thrown into

wells, into riverside ditches, into open quarry pits that have become ponds, disposing of human remains in wet places. Some may have washed out from burials, and that's an argument that's been used to suggest that most of this is just the accidental disturbance of human remains. But quite a lot of these crania are clearly deposited deliberately and are not just washed out of burial grounds. Some date early, some date late, but there is a peak skull period in the Hadrianic period. So if you ally peak skull with fort and with fire, you kind of think, well, can those different Hadrianic events kind of come together in an argument? And I simply draw the direct parallel with the Budikin fire.

When Budikin rebels burnt London down, the consequence was a burnt city. After the burnt city, they put a fort on the ruins of the burnt city and they built some brand new roads to help troops and army move around. And on the borderlands of that burnt Boudiccan city are fragmented bodies found by London Bridge at Regis House. These bits of dead people who are being scattered. Scattering dead people was not a popular idea in the Roman period. I know people talk about Celtic rituals and things like that, but on very weak grounds, we do know that in the Roman Empire, scattering the remains of the dead was something you did to

the dead whom you didn't like, who you wished to eradicate from their afterlife, deny them the chance of proper burial, deny them the chance of being looked after. The rites of Dionysus, where people tore bodies apart, were considered horrific. The frenzy of messing up with people's bodies, not a good thing. So we know that's going on in the period immediately after the Boudicca Revolt. Fire, fort, roads, messed up dead people. We have exactly the same stuff going on in Hadrianic London. So cause and effect. Why are all those things going on? I do suggest that London is being targeted in a revolt in the Hadrianic period. There are hints of that revolt in all sorts of other things that go on. We've got these direct references in the life of Hadrian in the late antiquity. We've got a letter written by Fronto to his successor saying, oh, and under

Hadrian's reign, ghastly things happened in Britain. And we've also got things going on at Hadrian's Wall that people are fairly sure now is indicating a period of warfare. But because Hadrian's Wall is in the north and London isn't, there's a sort of, oh, they can't be the same thing. And a lot of the arguments about what was going on at Hadrian's Wall have seen it as being perhaps quite early on in Hadrian's reign, but the evidence doesn't quite square. And there's a very good chance it's going on a bit later, contemporary with what's going on in London. We've got some coin issues which celebrate a victory. We don't know it's a victory in Britain, so you can't be sure. But there are coin issues celebrating a victory, which we know to be minted in the 124-125

period. So the signs are that there is a war in Britain. The odds are it is happening in the mid-120s. It happens on Hadrian's Wall, but it also happens perhaps in London. And then you start to say, if a province is aflame, if people are targeting the infrastructure of Roman government, copycat episodes. People may be burning London, not in the same orbit, in a follow-on war. Or people could perhaps have come down from up north. I draw a parallel with the Jacobite rebellion

of the 18th century, where the Bonnie Prince Charlie's forces only reached Derby, but they were heading for London. They could have got to London. They didn't. They turned back because they lacked the strength of their convictions or whatever. Not my point of view. It's a strange history. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they bottled out is the phrase I would use, but that's perhaps not the technical term. But there's no reason why forces who had attacked Hayden's War could not have come down into the south of the province and targeted London. We can't prove it. There's no trace of them having burned other sites, which is a bit of a nuisance because good archaeology, you'd be able to trace the movement of a rebel army. So perhaps it's not the same people. Perhaps this is a separate outbreak of unrest, a city in flames, simply because they've heard of what's going on elsewhere and people are

doing what unfortunately happens in those moments. But there is one little clue that I find fascinating, and it has this city with a question mark attached to it. But in the crossrail work, where they came across some of these crania, these Warbrook skulls, they sampled four of them for their isotopes, looking at the teeth and animal, seeing where these people had grown up. Good science, splendid science. Only sampled four of them. These are skulls that weren't in a graveyard where you could say it was a family put together, because these had been water rolled before. They'd probably been fished out of the wall brook and then placed in bags and put along this roadside ditch. So removed from context, of those four skulls, two of those people had grown up in a granitic environment. They'd grown

up with a background of solid geology that you do not get in England at all. Where do you get granitic geology? Which is the closest granitic geology to London? Scottish Highlands. We have no idea where those people exactly came from, but those skulls are from people who are not native to London and who ended up being denied burial, ended up being water rolled and their crania get put in that ditch in the period after this supposed Hadrianic episode. There you go. How interesting. I love all that ancient Scotland stuff whenever it comes up, from bros to skeletons to skulls and all of that. I mean, Dominic, we've gone through so many different eras of London and we're only in the mid-second century AD. I know as London's

time goes on, it gets even more fascinating, doesn't it? So I will try and get, I don't want to spoil too much of the book, but we'll talk a bit about that in a bit. But let's talk about post-Hadrianic troubles, potential Hadrianic troubles, because whatever has happened, London, once again, like with the Boudiccan revolt, bounces back. Once again, it seems to reach its zenith after this. Because London matters so much to the administration, this is the place of most effective government. This is the place where goods are being marshaled against need. It commands the resources of Southeast Britain. The whole chapter goes on about the timber and the iron working in the wheel and all the sorts of things in the Southeast. This is a productive region. London matters. And when Rome is responding to a violent episode, it does so violently, it does so decisively. And Rome's re-establishment of order requires London to be a working, functioning place.

And they therefore invest in building London. Just as after the Vatican Revolt, it bounced back very quickly because of, and I'm sure of this, a direct commitment of the ruling authorities. The same is happening in the Hadrianic period. This is therefore where we get the Cripplegate Fort from. There is a fort built, a stonewalled fort, because that is now what is the fashionable way of building forts at that time. But also a whole new urban district is established. Up in the upper Walbrook, we've got roads being laid out. We've got a lot of new industry. There's some pottery kilns being established on the banks of the Walbrook. There are glassworks. Some of this perhaps feeding

and supporting troops in the new fort, but also the city as a whole. And this is again a vital and vibrant period. London is made strong again. This is what Rome did. It's how Rome established. You don't mess with Rome. We are here. We're in command. I know this is something you've been doing a lot of work on recently. I'm going to tie in your most recent work on villas and all of this, like the development of the townhouses themselves. Because in the second century, do you start seeing an evolution and development of the villa, of the townhouse in places like London? What we get is that the public sector, as it were, has been the focus of attention in the late first and early second century.

Big buildings. As you move into the second century, you get much more evidence of the investment going into private houses and properties. You see a shift towards more expensive forms of domestic architecture. Baths, more stone walls, handsome wall paintings, mosaics. And this happens progressively through late antiquity. But the kickoff period for that is this sort of Hadrianic Antonine period. And in particular, the early Antonine period into the 140s, we're seeing wealth being displayed in the domestic arena and less attention being given to public buildings. The public buildings you've got are being restored and maintained.

Some of the Hadrianic stuff immediately after the Hadrianic fire is very handsome. The amphitheater is rebuilt in stone as well, whatever. But as you move into the latter part of the middle part of the second century, it's happening in houses. This is reflecting on very sophisticated ideas of what elite social behavior involves. Dining rooms, porticos, bathhouses being attached to private houses. There's another podcast of quite the ideas of why people are doing that. But these ideas, I think, are influenced by the philosophies of the time.

Are they reading your book, Am I? So doing the prep for this and looking at London in the Roman world. As you say, it's very difficult to do all in one podcast because there is so much. So it might have to be to talk about later London, we do a separate podcast. But I would like to talk about a bit later Roman London for a little bit. I know there's so much amazing stuff from this time in London's ancient history, but are there any really, really interesting parts in London's later history that you'd like to bring out or like to point out that you find especially fascinating? As you say, it's a whole other podcast entire, but the city goes through an amazing contraction in the course of the second century.

It all gets tied up with this very difficult archaeological phenomenon called Dark Earth. And Dark Earth is just black dirt. It is what it says on the tin, as it were. It's dark and it's Earth. But it does attend a contraction of settlement. When that contraction occurs is a much more difficult issue to resolve. But because of all our wonderful dendro dating from London, you can start to talk about gaps in the record. If people are repairing

their drains and building their new wells and putting piles into the ground and building new waterfronts, and then they stop doing it, we can see the stopping. So it's an absence of evidence, but it's an absence of evidence because there's a lot been going on. And that helps us pinpoint a major shift in what's going on in London's architecture in the 160s. And we've got some temples being built up until about AD 165, some lovely temples going up in London in the earlier Antonine period, following on from these prosperous townhouses I've been mentioning. But by the time you get into the late 160s and into the 170s, there is a dearth of such evidence. And we also have forestry management, woodland management changing, because timbers used in later Roman London suggest there's less coppicing going on in that period as well. So woodlands are being

differently managed. People are not building in the same way, and we have this dark earth suggestive of contraction. I've gone through all of the excavation reports from London over the last 20, 30 years, and it looks to me as if about a third of the sites we've got show evidence of abandonment in this 16th, 170s period. Very difficult to be precise about it, because absences don't mean to say that people aren't continuing using things. So to try and convert the fact that we don't see change happening doesn't mean to say people aren't living there. So it's a difficult argument. But there is, I think, sufficient to argue that London is contracting significantly in scale. Of course, I've mentioned how big it was, 30,000 plus people. A city that contracts by a third has still got 10,000, 20,000 people in it.

20, on the math. 20,000 people would make it a very big city. So contraction doesn't mean to say, whoosh, it's gone. But a significant level of contraction. The Cribble Gate Fort looks to be abandoned at this time. But a lot of the pottery kilns that were serving London also stopped producing at this time. So there's something very major going on. And this is reflected in the countryside, if on a smaller scale. Why is London contracting at that date? Well, a lot hangs on the

chronology and speed with which it contracts. And I do see it happening really quite rapidly in the late 160s. Okay, that's Lucius Verus. Verus coming back from the East time, isn't it? It is. To fill in that, Lucius Verus coming back from the East is the arrival of the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Galens, which is a major mass mortality episode. Carl Harper's written a splendid book about it. There's a lot of argument about the scale of mortality. There's a lot of argument about the cause of the mortality. But the sources leave no doubt that there is mortality. People are dying. And in London, there is someone, Demetrius, who had a spell cast and written onto a metal scroll, which he could wrap up, which got thrown into

the river and has been found on the Thames foreshore. And that uses a spell, an apotropaic spell, that is known to be specifically associated with warding off the plague of Galens from the 166. So we know someone in London was dead scared of this plague. We don't get any dead people. Unfortunately, this is still a period where cremation is a preferred burial rite. We don't see our cemeteries filling with dead. We can't measure mortality. Indeed, you don't need lots of people to have died. Pandemics cause people to decide not to stay in town. They decide not to stay in town and move. They don't necessarily die. So London's depopulation is, I think, a consequence of a fear of plague rather than

necessarily mass mortality. I presume it would make sense from what we've all been saying about how London is really this centre for people coming into Britain from everywhere in the empires. It's this massive emporium, massive trading hub. It almost seems, I hate using the word inevitable, but it seems almost inevitable that something like that would happen, that would be effective. Yeah. I think once you realise how important it was as the portal between empire and Britain, and how significant the military presence was in Britain, and how committed these earlier emperors were to sustaining the army and keeping it fed and happy and supported. That's why we get so much Roman

pottery and Samian and Amper in Britain. Yes, there are other consumers, but having an awful lot of military consumers in the forts matters. And so, yes, that connection with what's going on in the emperor at large, we've got the records of mass losses of soldiery from Aquileia, from this plague. People only have to be worried the same is going to happen to London to move on. I think that there's a lot of moving on going on. Absolutely. I think to leave our listeners on the tend to her for potential future podcasts on the later Roman London, do you think London ever recovers to the height of its zenith in the mid-second century, let's say after the

second century? It does recover. And there are some very exciting late antique phases of building activity going on in London. There's a waterfront building perhaps associated with the usurper Clodius Albinus. And in particular, we can definitely see the waterfront building with the reconquest of Britain following that rebellion. So we've got late antique things going on. There is an imperial palace to Alectus, the successor to Corosius, built by the Millennium Bridge. And some of these periods of late antique revitalization of London, town walls is another example, are quite significant.

And there are periods of repopulation. There are certainly periods of considerable wealth going on. So the fact that London has been badly hit and shrunk in the second century doesn't mean to say it's stopped being an important place, or even at some periods, a populous place. But I don't think it ever reaches the same peaks. I think London, having shrunk a bit, is more moderately and modestly described. And that's not so much because of plague events. That's because different arrangements are being made for supporting the Roman establishment in Britain. We get, once Hadrian's Wall is built, an east coast supply route established to move things up to

South Giles, Arabella. London ceases to be the place where you need to move goods from ship to road. It never needs the same volume of labour to support that shipping hub. It's a place of administration now, rather than the vital supply hub it was in the earlier stages. And that changes the character and shape of London. So late antique London, different beast, much more dependent on its town walls, much more a fortified administrative enclave than it is a shipping hub, but still an important place. Well, I mean, who'd have thought South Shields, Newcastle would take over, would replace London in that way.

Tom, this has been absolutely fascinating. I mean, wrapping it all up, I'm just amazed by how much and how precise, dating-wise, we can look at this stuff, how much we are learning about Roman London from the archaeology that's been done over the past few decades, and presumably how much there is still to discover under the City of London and elsewhere. Absolutely. Because so much work has happened here, a vast amount of it has not yet been properly studied and looked at. I've created a narrative, and my book stretches that narrative as far as I dare take it. And in this podcast, I've dared even a bit further for exciting speculation. But that chronology, that understanding of how and why the city changes through time is only half of our story of London. It's the half

that's about big politics, about emperors, mentioned them an awful lot. What goes on in London is, of course, about the lives of the people who lived here. Their lives are described by the houses they lived in, the rubbish they threw away, the things they ate, and how they interacted, and how different parts of the town worked in different times. Those are stories that are still to be told. The lives of Londoners is a whole new raft of discussion. But you can't unpick those individual stories until you've got the architecture of the bigger stories. When you understand the chronology, when you can place things in their context, we can then see how people responded to plague, how people responded to acts of war, how communities gathered, segregated, desegregated, how immigration

worked in the town. And all of those are such exciting avenues of research that don't even require further excavation. The materials have already been dug out of the ground, but not yet looked at. Add to that all the things still to explore. And on my estimation, we've got about five to 10% of London now dug. Much of the rest is missing because it's already been destroyed without being looked at archaeologically. But there's still much, much, much more to be done in the city. Now, of course, whether or not people want to build large office blocks and pay for archaeologists to look in the basements underneath them, that's a different matter and perhaps things are changing on that

front. But there is still lots, lots, lots to be done in London. Well, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, or Elon Musk, if you're listening, you know you want to build something new in city of London. Well, you can, but just make sure you get the archaeologists in first and we can find more stuff. On a serious note though, Dom, this has been incredible. Last but certainly not least, the book that we've been talking about, this book, it is called? Oh yes, London in the Roman World. There we go. Well, and it's out soon, I'm presuming? It's out in a couple of weeks time. So late January. Late January, 2022. Well,

Dom, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. A pleasure. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Dr. Dominic Pering all about the origins of London. He is such a legend. And I can definitely say that I will never forget that link between Roman London and Nerva ever again. Now, if you'd like more ancients content in the meantime, apart from looking through our huge archive of ancients podcasts now, we've got some 160, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. Well, if you want even more ancient history goodness, then why not sign up to our ancients newsletter, which you can do by the link in the description below. Please, as always, if you can, leave us a nice rating on Spotify, it really helps, or on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from, and I will see you in the description below. Please, as always, if you can, leave us a nice rating on Spotify, it really helps,

or on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from, and I will see you in the next episode.