The Ancients - The Rise and Fall of Roman London

Episode Date: October 2, 2022

In 43 AD, the Romans set up temporary forts along the banks of a river to wait for their Emperor, Claudius, to march onto the enemy capital of Camulodunum (Colchester), and eventually conquer Britain. The river was the River Thames. At the time, it was an area of marshy low-lying land, mostly composed of little islands. A far cry from the wall enclaved mercantile seat of authority it would become.In today’s episode, Tristan is joined by Professor Dominc Perring, Director of the UCL Centre for Applied Archaeology, to discuss what the archaeology and history can tell us about the rise and fall of Roman Britain’s capital, Londinium.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!For your chance to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books (including a signed copy of Dan Snow's On This Day in History), please fill out this short survey.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancient 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. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, we are talking once again with Mr. Roman London, with Professor Dominic Pering, this time about the rise and fall of this incredible ancient city. We're going to be looking into its Roman archaeology in detail today

because we recorded this as part of a special live event at the London Mithraeum a couple of months back. And here is the podcast version of that. Sit back, relax, enjoy, because Dominic, he's such a wonderful speaker and in this episode he talks you through centuries of London's Roman history from its rise in the first century to its demise in the early fifth century. So I hope you enjoy without further ado to talk all about the rise and fall of Roman London. Here's Dominic. Here's Dominic. And thank you for the intro. You're more than welcome. Now, as mentioned, we are doing this live from just above the London Mithra. In the story of Roman London, this is really one of those great hidden gems of Roman London.

We're near the Bank of England. We're at the centre of modern London, the city, but it's also very close to the centre of a lot of the Roman city. And we're above the ancient Warbrook river with all its mud and exotic archaeological finds in it and dug into those the Temple of Mithras. And you mentioned the archaeological finds, just before we go on to that you might be able to hear some drumming in the back. We'll call it atmospheric, basically some people decided to turn up and are currently doing some drumming, hopefully they'll be over soon. But we've got this wall of objects behind us too and Dominic these are also a collection of some really extraordinary Roman London artifacts. These excavations that took place to rebuild as it were the Roman Mithraeum. The Roman Mithraeum was found in 1954 by Professor Grimes and it sat on a pedestal and was a bit unloved as a part of the

architecture of the area. It was disassembled and then reassembled and made beautiful again when they built the Bloomberg building that we're now sitting in and it was at that rebuilding phase that these finds behind us came up. Museum of London did some wonderful excavations with all these wooden writing tablets and all of this. It's so rich, it's glorious. And there are so many stories to learn from these artefacts about Roman London art there and we will get into those as we talk along. But first of all, when looking at archaeology of London and excavating here, this is almost like a playground. There's so much stuff that has survived, isn't it? There's nine meters of stratigraphy and things like the Thames and these rivers that feed into the Thames, like the Warbrook, create these anaerobic conditions where organic materials survive, the wood and other things. So there's a lot of it to start with, but of course

we're in the City of London and it's not just there was a lot to start with, there's a lot that gets dug up and the rebuilding of London, the creation of new office blocks and basements has created and fueled archaeological research that goes back four or five hundred years. That's absolutely brilliant. You mentioned the Woolbrook there, so first of all what is the Woolbrook? We think of the River Thames with London, but the Woolbrook is another. It's one of these hidden streams that's feeding into the Thames. It's now entirely covered over and within drains. But we have the Fleet River, the Warbrook River, and other small tributaries.

When the Romans arrived in Britain at that time, these were important parts of the landscape and sources of fresh running water. Well, let's delve into that next bit now, the rise of London, of Roman London. So what do we know? Let's go to the beginning about the foundation of Roman London. There are quite a few different arguments about how and why London comes into existence. What we know is it appears in history in AD 60, 61, at the time of the Boudiccan Revolt, which I think we'll chat about shortly. But prior to that, the archaeology shows there is an earlier Roman settlement. Most recent research is pointing towards this being the site of a fort built in AD 43,

at the time of the Claudian conquest. That is the time of the Roman conquest of Britain. Aulus Claudius arrives, sent by Claudius to conquer Britain. Claudius can big it up and show he's every bit as good as Caesar, who'd conquered Britain before. Claudius can big it up and show he's every bit as good as Caesar, who'd conquered Britain before. And we know that the Romans, in their conquest of Britain, waited somewhere on the banks of the Thames for the Emperor Claudius to arrive, before marching on the enemy capital, which was then Camulodunum, Colchester. Where on the Thames was long unknown, and people have been speculating about different locations.

But some excavations just opposite where we're sitting, I mean almost within sight if there weren't a modern building on top of it, an excavation came across a pair of what looked like defensive ditches of Claudian date, this is about 10-15 years ago, and then piecing together other discoveries in the area we now think we can trace the outline of the Claudian fort. And it's just the right spot for it, because the Thames needs crossing. We are on hills. There are islands across the river in Southwark underneath the Shard that create a nice stepping point towards the crossing here. And it's a logical place to cross the river. And we know from the historians, dear Cassius, who writes

about it, says that Claudius, who joined his armies in Britain, was only in the country for 16 days. He arrived, marches quickly to Colchester, and then he's off again. And he just wouldn't have had time to be in Britain for 16 days if he'd landed on the south coast. He's landed somewhere, not at all far from where we are. The first year that Roman London is a thing, an emperor could have been there with his elephants, with his Praetorian Guard, and marched from here to Colchester. That's what I would argue. I have colleagues who are still not convinced that those ditches are a Roman fort, a place where the troops have bivouacked in tents. The problem is that they didn't leave very much evidence. Apart from a

couple of ditches, people who are in tents are using mess kits, they're not breaking pottery, they're not engaging in lots of exchange, and it's not a town. It's a temporary place waiting for just a few weeks in the summer of AD 43. So do we know what was in this area of London, let's say central London, or the area where you believe that fort was established? Do we know of any Iron Age activity settlement there beforehand? We've got several farmsteads in the area, not lots, they're the sites where later on Roman villas were established. The most exciting of those is actually in Southwark and again back near Borough Market, near the Shard, there is

a potentially quite a small but reasonably high status site that may have been there at the time of the conquest. And talk to me how this could potentially link in. Potentially, we're going in another theory now, but lots of theories around Roman London, because of the great archaeology, about the name, how London gets the name Londinium. The latest suggestion about that name is it's low-lying land. Londinium comes from land, and Londinium, flat, low-lying-lying land in the city we're on hills and it's not that low-lying but if you cross the river into the south bank there it's all marshland with these little ayats we call them in London these little islands rising out of the Thames in the floodplain and so this is a low-lying area and these late iron age settlements one at Bermondsey

one in Southwark, are perhaps these places from which London got its first name. I love that, because it's one of those great stories, is that how did London actually get its original name? And it could have been from an Iron Age settlement on the South Bank. And we have to say could have been, because of course there are different ways in which the name can be deconstructed. It's a Celtic name, so these are just the latest arguments, the latest theories, and I'm sure will be challenged and reinterpreted as well. Well, absolutely. That's one of the fun joys of it all, isn't it? Now, you've already mentioned AD 60-61. We're going

to get there soon. But first of all, when we're talking about the rise of Roman London, to set the context of the Boudiccan Revolt, AD 60-61, how does London transform from this initial military establishment into more of a town between 43 and 60? The first thing to note is that if the ditches just across the road from here are part of a defensive enclosure, they're backfilled very quickly. There's no silting, there's no rainwater sediment. And that makes sense. If you've got an army that's moving on to conquer Colchester, to move into other parts of Britain, they don't want to leave behind nice defensive outworks, whatever. So they're backfilled. And we don't really know what's going on for the next five years. There's a hiatus period. But we do know that the Romans are building roads to the site of London about five years later. And in AD

48, we've got drains being built. The real clue to understanding Roman London is tree ring dating. So dendrochronology. Dendrochronology. And it's all the bits of wood that people built London out of. And those bits of wood, as far as we can tell, are being felled on demand, coming out of managed woodlands, being brought to London for construction projects. And so when they're used, they're usually used fresh.

They don't have the shakes and cracks of seasoned, aging timbers. And we get piles underneath buildings. we get timber lined drains, and we get the waterfronts that the ships could berth against along the foreshore. And all of those provide an amazing range of dates and that's the glory of Roman London is we have all of these dated construction programs. So when I say AD 48 I'm not just making up a number or drawing on some historical source. It's because there was a tree ring dated timber being used to lay a drain that was part of the original construction

of these first roads leading to the site of London. So Roman roads being built, AD 48. And you're absolutely right, Tyler, that we should have mentioned that at the start because we are going to be getting really, you know, because you can be so precise. And London, Roman London's history, this is almost 400 years, isn't it? So the fact that with the archaeology that survives that wood, you can go to particular years, particular time of the years. It's incredible for trying to tell the story of how the city evolved.

And what's wonderful is because we've got so many of these construction activities, hundreds and hundreds of different building activities that we can precisely date, it's also exciting when you have gaps. People are not building. It's sometimes just as important as when people are. Very true. Well, let's keep going then. We got to AD 47 in the drains. 48.

48 in the drains. My apologies. Very good there. And so we're going over. So 12 more years, we get to this great revolt. So what happens then? The fort had been mothballed, then the site is being redeveloped, perhaps just as a supply base.

It's to start moving equipment in to help the armies on its campaigns. A few years later, AD 52, 53, that sort of period, we get a new governor in the province who's doing a lot of work on setting up the southern part of Britain to make it a functioning, governable Roman province. And London may be being made into something more than the supply base, perhaps into a town at about that date. Not a formally established town. London, weirdly and perversely, has no formal status. Because when it is destroyed, AD 6061, which we're just about to get to, when it is destroyed, Tacitus goes out of his way to tell us that it's not a colony. It's not a municipium. It doesn't have that formal status.

It's not the capital at that time either, is it? It's the leading site from which the province is being governed. And I guess it depends on what you mean by capital. The chap in charge of the Roman emperor's property, the chap in charge of feeding and paying the property, the chap in charge of feeding and paying the army, the chap who's managing the estates is called the procurator. And the procurator is probably based in London by the time of the revolt or immediately afterwards. The governor, who is in charge of the province, would of course be moving around on campaign

and visiting other centres in the province. So if the procurators here, that's kind of the effective centre of administration, even if it isn't called the capital. Well, fair enough. It's not officially the capital, but it is the largest settlement in Roman Britain at that time, isn't it? So we've been hinting at it, but talk us through what we know about it, 1661 AD, this great destruction of London. And it is, as an archaeologist, a lovely thing because London is built out of mainly clay buildings early on, it's earth-built

architecture. All of those clay wall buildings get fired red. The burning leaves this lovely red band which is a very attractive visual signal. These fires create very clear markers. People then sometimes dig over it, you can get confused because the debris can be redeposited. And archaeology is always trying to work out, is this an in situ fire horizon or a disturbed fire horizon or whatever. But that AD 60, 61 destruction is when the Boudiccan rebels

descend on London. Tacitus describes it. Other Roman historians describe it. And we know that London at that time is this busy place of goods arriving, ships are coming in here. Commiatum is the word used in the text, which is the supplies. It's a place of supply. Could be called trade, and merchants were involved, but it's also because the Roman administration and army have an incredible appetite for the imports that help support military campaigns.

And this is a great snapshot into Roman London's history, its story, isn't it? Because you have the literary accounts and you also now have that archaeology, that incredible burnt layer which affirms it and really does say that at this time, London, this growing city, was razed to the ground. It was absolutely destroyed. And the extent of the debris allows us to speculate that London at that time probably had 10, 12, 14,000 people in it, which at that time is a substantial settlement. And by that date, we know that the foreshore is already beginning to see preparations for creating berth locations, hard standings where the ships can arrive.

The Thames would have been absolutely crowded with vessels coming in. And actually in the immediate period just before the revolt, there's quite a lot of building work going on in London. And this is because campaigns have been planned to move the frontier forward, campaigns into Anglesey, North Wales, we know about. Those campaigns are reflected in what we see in the archaeology of London, building activities preceding it, and also perhaps part of the cause of the revolt because to pay for campaigns you've got to squeeze people a bit harder, the taxes are being raised and we know of the attempt to take over the estates of the Iceni that provoke the rebellion itself.

Well it is an amazing story in the history of Roman London I think, but let's keep moving on because there's a lot more in the story of the rise and fall of Roman London which we need to talk about. And so Boudicca finally defeated the end of the Boudiccan Revolt after London is destroyed. But in the following decades, let's say the end of the first century AD, London, it bounces back. It revives really quite quickly. There is a clear need for a city from which to administer the province of

Britain, to ensure that the supplies that the army needs are coming in. So London is rebuilt very rapidly after the Bulletin Revolt, and it's rebuilt with military engineering. And indeed, this particular site we're on now, the Bloomberg building, many of the documents found here, these little wooden writing tablets where people carved into wax to write their contracts and their letters of commissioning. Many of those found here refer to the auxiliary units that are coming in in the post-revolt period. And when you're locating a number of auxiliary units of soldiers in this site, they're going to have periods of idleness where better to get them busy doing things. So they're busy building new waterfronts,

they're improving the infrastructure, they're using military labor to get things moving along. And London sees a fort built here and new waterfronts in the immediate post-revolt period. And you get this brief, vigorous period from about 63 through to the mid-60s, and then it all goes a bit quiet. And it's going quiet perhaps because, and it's reputed that the Emperor Nero began to worry about, really, should I be hanging on to Britain? Is it worth the candle? We've got troops being redeployed elsewhere. The auxiliary units have moved out. And we get this quiet period where London begins to see fewer building activities, less going on. And all of that changes in 1869, 1870. This is the beginning of the monumental architecture, isn't it? It starts very soon after Vespasian has seized control of the Roman world. Nero has gone his way. And Vespasian sets out a new firm agenda for the empire.

He needs to do so because he has no dynastic legitimacy. He doesn't arrive on the throne because his uncle or his father brought him to power. He has to show he's there in command and he depends on the troops for his position. And Britain is the clever place to show yourself to be a player, important in Roman politics. And he does that in London. We see straight again from our dendritological dating, from our tree ring dating, he's building monumental architecture, and in particular, the amphitheater. What would have gone on in an amphitheater, in the amphitheater at London? I mean, gladiators are a part of it, but they are under Vespasian, who of course is the patron of the Colosseum in Rome. This is someone who is big on amphitheatres.

And London's amphitheatre is a direct contemporary of the Colosseum in Rome, which is lovely that this new regime is establishing the visual architecture of its presence in Rome. Big star. What we have here is a more modest thing, but a direct contemporary of it. And the amphitheatre here, it's a place where people can gather to watch the games, but those games are themselves part of celebrating the emperor himself, it's about celebrating important feast days, all of the temples would have icons that be carried in procession to the amphitheater, games would start, and a key part of those games is not just gladiatorial combat. It's the whole bloodletting, imperial power being writ large.

Place of public execution, games involving slaying of beasts. So there's a lot going on there as part of this celebration of Roman power, violence, control, bloodthirsty. A bloody place, yes. And it's quite interesting because you can still go and see it today, can't you? You can see the remains just under Guildhall. And it's one of the more stunning displays of Roman archaeology still visible in London. Where we are now, the Mithraeum, which we'll talk about, wonderful, do visit it. Guildhall Yard, the same.

It's in the library there and the amphitheatre is very atmospherically presented. Museum of London excavations there produce the drains and a part of the banks and a gateway. It's not the foundations of a gateway, but you can see it to be a gateway. It's part of the entrance into the amphitheater. And talking about other architecture that's still surviving from Roman London, my mind instantly actually goes to, I believe it's dated to this period or perhaps a bit later, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you go into a barber shop in Leadenhall Market, you can see a small remnant of another of these great monumental constructions around this time.

But what is this construction? Well, the remains are in the barber shop. And yes, they are. And if you go for a clothes shave, and I've had a clothes shave in that barber shop, if you go downstairs for a clothes shave, you are next to a pillar from what was then the later Forum. The Forum complex starts life as a smaller building. And that's not part of what you can see

in the barber shop. And that's probably a little bit later in the amphitheatre. It's more likely to be under the Emperor Domitian when the governor here was Agricola. But the dating of it is a little bit imprecise. But there is an early Forum complex. Also contemporary with that, and again, right next to where we sat, the building of water mills. There's a little bit of the contraption, which looks to be part of the gearing mechanism for such a mill from this very site where we are now. And there are millstones from elsewhere on the Warbrook River, and a river where we are is to power the water mills. So you've got this program of building works in the late first century. And then the Forum in London sees its big, massive expansion in the early second century.

And I suspect it to be Trajanic in origin, 102, 104, because that's a time when we've got new water supply being arranged, when we've got new keys being arranged. We can't date the Forum itself. But it looks to have been started by Trajan. And so you have to start thinking. And again, I'm sorry I've compared our amphitheater here to the Colosseum. I'm about to compare our Forum here to Trajan's Forum in Rome, which is a bit unfair because, again, it's not anything like that in scale. But it's a very massive building. It's the largest complex. It's north of the Alps. The building itself, the Basilica there, built perhaps started by Trajan, finished by Hadrian, is as big as St Paul's,

as long as St Paul's. And quickly, what is the basilica again? That's law courts. It's a combination of offices, law courts, treasury, tax registration. So yes, it's where magistrates are based. London, by the Hadrianic period, probably has its own magistrates. But when we're not quite sure, this is going back to what London's original status was. And there's this real chance that London remained without a town council, as it were, until comparatively late, that it remained under military administration. But by the time the Forum is up, a large complex, it would have had shrines in it to the imperial cult, it would have had law courts, it would have had a prison perhaps attached to it, there's a whole series of things,

most of which I'm afraid we only know about by saying it's what they're doing elsewhere. So London probably has it too. So let's say by the time of the Emperor Hadrian, so 118, 119 AD, London, although less than 100 years old, is already this very rich administrative and mercantile hub. Indeed. And we're still looking at somewhere that is really plugged into the supply of the administration, be it bringing in the oil and the wine that has been consumed by the soldiers and the administrators, be it grain, and also exporting tax revenues when they're available. So the port of London is what's driving it. It's central. And some of it's trade. Some of it is official consignment and cargo. The city, as a consequence, requires an enormous amount of labor.

When you are loading and unloading boats in a pre-modern era, everything has to be manhandled up gangways, into warehouses, then manhandled onto the oxcarts. And the Forum is a big handling depot. And it's got the money lenders, it's got the scribes, it's got all of these things going on. And it is driven by the administration. And that gives London a very significant population. And estimates, again, by looking at the number of houses we found here, by looking at the extent of the settlement and the density of settlement and the number of bedrooms and buildings, there's an estimate that London

probably has 30,000 to 35,000 people by that date, which is very big for that period of time. Absolutely, indeed. Roughly 60 years after the Budokan revolt. And it seems to be doing so well. But what happens? Well, indeed, we've mentioned, we've hinted already that there are two fire horizons in London. And the second of those fires, what's called the Hadronic fire, because it dates to this period, looks likely to be a fire of about AD 125, 126. A drain that's cut through the fire debris in rebuilding along the waterfront suggests that rebuilding is underway by 128. And that fire has long been seen as a horrible accident, like the Great Fire of London. The city just got swept away by an uncontrolled fire. And that still may be the case. We don't know exactly what kicked that fire off. We don't have any historical sources that describe it. So we have to rely on the archaeological

evidence. But that archaeological evidence for what goes on in 125-126 shows curious echoes with what went on in 60-61. After the Burdickan Revolt, a fort is built on the edge of London. After the Hadrianic Fire, a fort is built on the edge of London. After the Burdickan Revolt, we start seeing evidence of corpse abuse. There's a few skulls that have been knocked around that are thrown on the foreshore beneath the new keys built in AD 63. In the 120s, 130s, we have a lot of Walbrook skulls, they're called, these rolled, water-rolled heads that start cropping up. So there's a kind of echoing pattern, fort, rebuild the waterfront, some new military roads are built, both periods. And if you look at the 125-126 fire as perhaps being a rebellion rather than an accident,

it kind of makes sense with what we'd seen going earlier on. Hadrian's reign has often been described as a period of prosperity and peace in the empire, but actually it wasn't. We know of the wars in Judea, the masses of casualties there. The tutor of Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius Fronto, writes in a letter about the deaths in Judea and in Britain under Hadrian. And we have some tombstones and some inscriptions referring to perhaps people being sent here in detachments to quell a revolt. So we actually know there's a revolt in Britain under Hadrian. But where and when, we're not so sure.

Tying that to the fire in London is a bit speculative, but it's a fit. It is interesting. 3,000 reinforcements sent to Britain or something like that at that time, Savinus and the like. And you did a thing a long time ago on the 9th Legion, and I know there's some of the... Where does it go? That's a whole different cast of the fish.

We're not going to get into that. Not going to go down that way. Absolutely, we're not going to go down there at all. But it is interesting. You have this, as you say, this fire, and there could potentially be a military link to it, but there may not be as well, which also, I guess, begs the question,

if you do see some similarities with the Bouds the question, if you do see some similarities with the Boudiccan revolt, do we therefore see some similarities with what happens next as London once again bounce back? It does bounce back. And I've mentioned this fort that's built and the Cripplegate Fort is one of the monuments that you can still visit and see. It's got walls that you can walk past. The Museum of London itself in its present building is located on London Wall. And the waterfront is being rebuilt as well. So there's some busy, vigorous rebuilding. And we've also got some timber dating for new houses being built in the period 180, 128 onwards. So yes, it bounces back very quickly. And London then goes through its period of most evident prosperity. It's not necessarily quite

as populous as it was before the Hedonitic fire, but we start seeing a number of quite handsome townhouses being built. There are changes in how people are showing off their wealth and displaying themselves, in particular true also under Hedon's successor, Antoninus Pius. And we've got these larger properties with porticos and courtyards and lavish dining rooms, handsome mosaic pavements. A lot of this is being driven by new ideas about how people live successfully and prosperously in towns. And we also see some beginnings of the traditions of monumental temple architecture in this period as well. London certainly had temples all the way through, but the early shrines were probably more open-air shrines, wet places into which you could make votive offerings. But that begins to change in the

course of the second century as well, as you start to see some slightly more monumental temple architecture. What do we know about the population at this time? What does the archaeology reveal? Do we know anything about the ethnic makeup of London? Most of what we know about the ethnic makeup of London is from a variety of different periods. And that Antonine, Hadrianic period, we're still looking at most burials being through cremation. Inhumation as a burial practice starts around this period. And that is an interesting issue as to how, when, and why people shift from cremating to inhuming. Once they start burying people in inhumation, we get a lot more evidence about who

they were because their bones are still there. We can start to look at their isotope analysis in their teeth to work out where they grew up. We can start to look at other forms of palaeopathology and biometric evidence and skeletal evidence to describe people. And what we do know is that London is constantly seeing injections of new populations. We know in the later city there are North Africans. We have probably some Chinese. Really? Yeah, and certainly people who grew up in the Mediterranean.

And London is constantly seeing periods of population restoration as new settlement occurs. Possible evidence of people from Eastern Asia coming in? In the cemetery at Land Street in Southwark, we've got people who do look to be Chinese. Now, I'm not a dead bodies specialist, so I have to rely on the works of colleagues who understand better how to tease that evidence out of the skeletal remains. OK. This seems to be a very, I say,

the most prosperous period in Roman London's history, the middle of the 2nd century. But let's talk about what happens next as we get into the latter half of the second century. We seem to have another disaster which befalls London. What we've got is evidence of properties and houses being abandoned. Archaeology is very difficult at things that don't happen. We can measure construction and change gaps.aps, one can say, oh, well, maybe they're just carried on using what they've got, or maybe we just can't see it. And so there's a lot of argument about how big the problems of the late second century are.

But the gaps are very evident. There are sites where houses which have been built and rebuilt and repaired end up not being repaired, but covered over by demolition horizons or even debris horizons. One of the problems with that is that when land reverts to being open from being built on, soils begin to accrete. And those soils have what is called bioturbation, root and worm action. And that root and worm action is not just that you're building up soil where once a building stood, but it's also eroding into the remains below. So archaeology has had a really big scratch head moment trying to work out really what's going on in the second century and when it's going on and whether this represents contraction or

whether it's later disturbance and we're in argument territory but i in the book i wrote earlier this year have gone through and it looks to me as if between one third and two thirds of the sites that were properties and occupation in 150 by 171 80 have been abandoned, deserted. Sometimes just for a few decades, and then we get new building on top. So it's not as if people have gone away forever. And a third of the properties in London almost certainly do carry on being occupied and continued. So there's continuity on some sites, there's interruption on others. But what that does point towards is contraction. We're looking at a city of 30,000, 35,000 people shrinking. And whether it's a one-third contraction or a two-thirds contraction, you're only going

back to where you were at the time of the British Revolt. You're talking about a city ending up with 10,000, 15,000 people. And that contraction is part of a broader pattern of change. We know that some of the rural settlements around London also look to be contracting. We can't date those changes very precisely from the buildings themselves, because I'm back in my it's not there argument, so how can we date it?

What we can say is that Roman London was a voracious consumer of new bits of timber to build its drains, to put pile foundations down, and to build its waterfronts. And its voracious use of new timbers starts to stop. And we get a gap as you come up to about AD 165, there's some timber piles being used for a new temple. About 10 years later, there was some new waterfronts being built near Guy's Hospital. So we know that people are still doing building activities with procurement chains, bringing in timber, rafting it down river into the 150s, 160s. 165, dendrodating for some temple architecture.

And you then have to wait 15, 20 years to start seeing people bringing newly felled timbers in to build. So if you marry gap in provision of timbers with contraction, we start to say somewhere in the 160s, something has gone awry. And that's reflected in pottery production. It's reflected in industry in the region. Difficult to date, usually. Archaeologists talk about late 2nd century. But in London, we can talk about, oh, 165 plus a bit. So what do we think? Come on, you've been building this up. Yes, I have, I have. So explain, why do you think all of this seems to go wrong at this time?

Right. In the 160s we know of something called the Antonine Plague or the Plague of Gallens. And there's a wonderful book by Karl Harper, and people can argue about the detail of it, but there is no doubt sources and authors are talking about a mass mortality. It's a plague brought back from a war in Parthia. Most believe, although it's not certain, that it's the first European occurrence of smallpox. That's not for me to judge. That's beyond my detailed knowledge. There are arguments about the impact of the Antonine Plague. Antonine Plague is seen by some to be a major economic dislocator in the Roman world. And others think that the evidence has been exaggerated. And this is just some people being ill, sure, but it not having a major influence on the course of Roman

history. I've got some things going on in Roman London that are difficult to understand. And lo and behold, London seems to see a rapid contraction at exactly a date when there's a plague. It may not have been plague. People may have left London for other reasons. But the coincidence of dates points in that direction. And we have a couple of other little pieces

of evidence which really point in that plague direction as well. The sweetest of those bits of evidence is a metal detector is to find on the Thames foreshore. And there was a spell, a scroll with a magic spell written into it, which is using a call to Phoebus the Unshorn, that's another name for Apollo, to save this poor chap Demetrius. And the spell he uses, the language he uses in that spell, is a spell, we know, that came out in Oracle in Anatolia in AD 165, 166, that sort of time frame, against the Plague of Gallens, the Antonine Plague. Interesting. So we have no proof anybody died of that plague because the

dead are still largely being cremated. We don't have plague pits. We don't have the heavens. So I can't say for certain that anybody in London died of plague. I can say that some people were scared of plague and many houses were left empty and people may have run away. London was this port town. This would be where things were coming in from the east, et cetera, at that time. Gloucester, where they've also got a potential example of the plague. There's an argument that a mass burial in Gloucester. A mass burial in Gloucester.

So it's all starting to add up. The Antonine Plague, this maybe first case of smallpox in Europe, did reach London and then spread out, didn't it? It's really interesting. Hello, I'm James Rogers and over on the History Hit Warfare podcast, I bring you cutting-edge military histories from around the world. Why was Sitting Bull such a remarkable leader? What was Napoleon's greatest ever battle?

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of London, perhaps, is Upper Thames Street and Lower Thames Street. Thames Street is the road that's built over the line of the second and third century waterfront. Lots of it's still to be dug, so there's lots of it that we still don't understand in detail. But we've got new timber keys being built very rapidly, not high engineered, in the very late 180s or early 190s, maybe into the mid-190s, not precisely dated. And we then have these bigger keys being built very handsomely in AD198. very handsomely in AD 198. AD 198 is the year in which Clodius Albinus, who had been the governor of Britain and who sets himself up as a claimant on the imperial throne, decides he's got to take his troops off into Gaul to compete with Severus, who's the emperor coming out of other parts of the Roman world, for control of the Roman Empire. And AD 198, in February of that year, the Battle of Lyon, mass mortality.

You mentioned the scale of it in our previous chat. Lots of people are dying. Clodius Albinus has his head stuck on a spike and eventually taken off to be shown to Severus. So he is defeated in the Battle of Lyon. taken off to be shown to Severus. So he is defeated in the Battle of Lyon, and within months of being defeated in February of AD 198, these new waterfronts are being built in London, and that's because Severus needs to ensure that Britain is re-garrisoned, because Albinus has pulled all the troops out of Britain, you need to re-garrison it. And London is a sensible place to bring in loads of ships, supply them, get them kitted out, for the control of the whole province.

And 8198 suggests that these earlier waterfronts might well have been the waterfronts built by Clodis Albinus himself as governor of Britain, who needed to move his troops to Gaul. So that cross-channel traffic causes new waterfront constructions in London. That is brilliant to see that. Combining the architecture with the literary record that we know of, is that Bathory did an incredibly bloody battle, one of the biggest battles in Roman history, if I'm not mistaken. And then ultimately, Severus, he is the winner from that.

You see the legacy of Severus even today walking near the Tower of London. Let's say the Severan dynasty, because Severus goes off and does various other things before coming back here with his sons, very early 3rd century, Severus is back trying to re-establish control of Caledonia. It's around 210 AD, so early 3rd century. Yeah, there we go. And campaigns taking place in the north are aimed at the reconquest of the entire British Isles,

something very briefly achieved by Agricola under Domitian earlier on. And he dies whilst campaigning. He dies in York. And his son Caracalla is busy re-establishing his claim to be heir to Severus. And Caracalla, who's in Britain at the time, makes a quick peace. And he says, we're not carrying on this war. He's off doing other things. Britain at the time, makes a quick peace. And he says, we're not carrying on this war. He's off doing other things. But in making that quick peace, he also looks to put in train the reorganization

of what's going on in Britain. Britain becomes divided into two separate provinces. There's a province ruled from York. There's a province ruled from London. And as part of that reengineering of control, we have London's town war. And we can't prove that it's exactly this date, but all of the clues we've got of other things going on would suggest that the likeliest date for the construction of London's Town Wall is somewhere around AD215. I'm out on a bit of a limb there because it isn't precisely dendro-dated, but that fits with what we see going on elsewhere in terms of the keys being built to take receipt of the building materials they're using for the construction wall we do have reasonably good data suggests it's early third century my bet is 8215. 8215 and let's

keep going then from 8215 to 8250 i love these ones where you can go you know from one date to another to another but from 8215 to let's say AD 250, is this another period where the port is once again prosperous? You've got the Severans and then the end of the Severans, but London is still this centre, this thriving, could you almost say, this thriving centre of Roman London in the early third century? London has been restored and in the early third century it goes through another of its busy building periods. There's quite a lot of interesting architecture and archaeology in that period. Never returning to the scale it was under Hadrian. We are looking at a landscape with more open space in it,

but the town wall itself is built to a very ambitious line. They're following the line of the Antonine city and in a sense it's a slightly overblown, overambitious project, because that town that is being rebuilt in the early third century is never as densely populated. Interesting. So it's actually the population, it never reaches those same heights again, but it's still a very, you know, the monumental architecture is still there and visible and being improved. London shifts from being a place that had all of its attention on the river and the river mattered above all and its key sides were where you invested. You built new keys,

you built new warehouses, to one in which its status begins to change. And the early third century is that beginning of this change of status towards it being a walled enclave of administrative power. The walls put around London, who built them we're not quite sure. Is this an imperial benefaction? Is the city itself expected to deal with it? But they're importing vast quantities of building material. They must be using some military support as part of that mechanism. Ragstone being shipped up from the Medway to build it. And that is the beginnings of the shift towards being this walled place of authority. Always authority, but now less about moving goods through and more about showing force.

Well, let's now delve into the chaos. Okay, I want to get more chaos because this is a chaotic time in the Roman Empire as we keep going through the third century. This is the period that I really want to get into detail now. Because third century crisis in the Roman Empire it's a time of crisis is this reflected in London when we get to the late third century the latter half yes is the short answer and the place we learn most about what's going on is again the waterfront I talk about the waterfront all the time but we have this very very curious and novel change London's waterfront had

been restored in the early third century, late second, early third century. London's waterfront had always been the place that mattered. Somewhere in the mid third century, the timber quayside are being pulled away. People are hacking into them and pulling those timbers away. And what had been a perfectly serviceable, successful open waterfront is made into a bank. And that bank has in front of it perhaps a ditch or perhaps just a water-chased course. But it looks like a crude exercise in converting a port into something a bit more defensive. When does that happen? Well, we're back in this issue of it's negative.

People are cutting things away. They're not building. It's hard to date. But we do know, again, back to our timber supply into London, other things going on, that London had been busy in the 230s. It had been busy in the 240s. People were building happily, felling trees, doing architecture and engaging in London. And somewhere in the 250s or early 260s, probably the 250s, that ceases and we

start to see fewer timbers being brought into London. But we actually see changes in the forests outside London, because timbers used later on in London show that people were not continuing to coppice and fell trees in the forests in this particular period. And the dating we're getting from that is pointing to the 250s. The 250s is the front end, as it were, of the third century crisis. Other things are going on. The Gallic Empire establishing itself, and that interrupts lines of communication, it interrupts supply. All of the amphora that have been imported with its olive oil, with its wine, we start to see those imports dry up. And so what is the Gallic Empire? Is this this separatist state of the Roman Empire almost? Along the Rhine, there are military troubles that the central empire is inefficient at dealing with,

and so a Roman general sets himself up and Postus creates a command network that becomes the Gallic Empire. It incorporates Gaul, it incorporates Spain, it incorporates the Germanists, and it incorporates Britain. So you could say that the big changes going on in Britain reflect on something to do with the Gallic Empire, because that's happening at the time.

What we do know is that the Gallic Empire means that some of the imports that were coming into Britain ceased to come in. London's role in supply drops away. The troops in Britain who are still here are being much more dependent on local supply mechanisms, and lines of communication supply change much more coastal, much less through London's port. So you could argue it's just they don't need a port in quite the same way. But the date is suspicious. And that date takes me back into plagues again. Yes, go on. No, we got it. So we got a second play. We talked about two fires, and now there's a second play. Two fires, two plagues. And you cannot prove cause and effect, so it is speculative. But we do have a

plague of Cyprian, so named by Bishop of Carthage, who writes about it, and that is coming through the Roman Empire in the 250s. Just as in the earlier Antonine plague of Gallens, we can't directly show the plague mattered in London, but we've got all of this circumstantial evidence of things changing at an important date. And the key issue here is not mortality. The key issue here is manpower. And there are other signs that manpower is becoming in short supply in this period. A lot of the extraction industries around London start to see contraction and change in the 250s. There's a lot of iron extraction going on in the Weald and the Weald and iron extraction. We've got good coin dating evidence to suggest these places are still being busy.

Probably the army is using some of this metal for shipbuilding. Classics Britannica uses some of it. And that is changing at this date. Britannica uses some of it. And that is changing at this date. And we've got military discharge certificates, again, suggesting that maybe people were being kept in service longer and fewer were being discharged. So there is perhaps a manpower crisis. And plague doesn't have to kill people for it to generate a manpower crisis. People just have to be aware of the risk of it. There has to be a reaction to the threat. And I think that this helps account for London's contraction, because London port needs labour. It needs lots of labour. We've seen the contraction

in the second century. There's a further potential failure of port activity, leading up to the dismantling of the waterfront. And that last bit to point out with that dismantling of the waterfront is it looks defensive. And if you're defensive at that date, the obvious place to look for trouble is Frankish piracy, because Frankish piracy is beginning to creep into the sources. Rome and London, they're now pirates. They're people sailing up the River Thames looking for plunder, perhaps? Whether or not they ever sail up the Thames, I couldn't say. What I can say is that if you're creating a defensive bank, you might have been afraid of people sailing up the Thames. Frankish piracy, why is it the seas are no longer under Roman control?

Is this again back to manpower? Is it to do with the fact that you haven't got quite the control of the seas because you haven't got enough people to place on the boats? And that's affecting import, oil and wine that previously was being imported that now has to be replaced by local lard and beer and whatever. And is it also the Classis Britannica itself and the forces that are manning the defences along the coast? And the reason for believing that these are big problems at this time is not just references to Frankish piracy,

but also what happens to Britain as you then move into the later third century, which is things like what are called the Saxon shore forts, and a whole series of changes happening, which look to be in response to threat. It's almost as if this becomes, say, that fortress London at this time. It's a base for usurpers as well, as we get into the fourth century, the late third century? Yes. And the reforms that take place in London occur after the collapse of the Gallic Empire. Emperors of Rome re-established control of London. They build a new waterfront wall to show that the earlier bank is now replaced with something a little bit more majestic and important. London is repopulated. Again, we have an influx of new people and the economy is being reorganized. But it's now being reorganized without the port being an

important part of what's going on in London. I mean, there are reasons why the port might have declined, not just to do with plague and reduction of shipping. There are issues about whether the Thames is as tidal as it was. But ships can come up rivers and still berth, and they're not. And we can date most of those changes to that period. And London then has a period of being a centre of political control, which is structured through the command hierarchy. And that opens up Britain to being a place where people staking their claim for imperial purple come to success. And Constantine, of course, is one of the first of those. Constantine is in York with his father, Constantius, who takes the throne. And London sees various things going on at that time, because Constantine is building his power from Britain. London is this power hub for these breakaway figures,

isn't it? It is. One of my favorite periods of Roman history is the Tetrarchy, when the Emperor Diocletian, with his wonderful palace at Split, which is where I have my Easter holidays, Diocletian with this wonderful palace at Split, which is where I have my Easter holidays, the Diocletian establishes a power sharing arrangement. You then get these palaces being built as seats of power at Trier, Thessalonica, Milan, and you get these different sense of power, each being the base of an emperor. And in Britain, you get a chap who'd been sent across perhaps to deal with Frankish piracy, Corosius, trying to model himself as being, you've got a few, you can have one more. I'm here in Britain. I'm doing the same game as you lot.

And his successor, Corosius himself, is probably assassinated, but he's replaced by a chap called Alectus. And we have this vast building complex being put up alongside the River Thames, just south of St. Paul's Cathedral by the Millennium Bridge. That palace complex looks to contain temples, perhaps a circus, and is modelled on what the official emperors, as it were, are doing the other side of the channel. It's so interesting the power that London starts to gain during this later period in Roman London's history with these breakaway figures.

You mentioned Constantine the Great, Constantine I earlier. So there is an end to these usurpers. London comes back into the imperial fold, as it were. But I'd like to talk a bit now, let's say London in the 4th century, I guess perhaps the arrival of Christianity, if we see that at that time, and also a bit of decline in London as the fourth century progresses. A lot of questions there, but take them one by one. London and Britain remains fertile and usurpers, is the textual reference. So we do see other episodes of political challenge because Britain is where legions are based. If you've got soldiers at your beck and call, you're able to set yourself up for competing for power. And these earlier plague events, these earlier wars and barbarian invasions across the Rhine and whatever,

are creating an environment in which Rome is very much a military-run community by now. The Senate in Rome has long drifted into unimportance. And in there, Britain sees sporadic intervention at times when people are either competing for power or when sometimes expeditions are sent back across the Channel to re-establish power. And London's town war is given bastions, perhaps in the 360s, as part of one of those exercises. But all of that begins to see the focus of attention drift further towards the Mediterranean. And these frontier provinces get successively diminished in importance, and Britain certainly suffers from that, and London sees that. A reduction in the range of functions based in London still has a treasury, still has a base of power,

but probably with less personnel involved, doesn't need to be such a large settlement. So London is changing its dynamic. And I'll get to the very latter stages of that in a second, because I need to jump back and answer your question about Christianity, which is, of course, such another argument. But Christianity is probably present in London from a much earlier date. This takes us back to where we're sitting. The Mithraeum is one of these buildings associated with the rise of religious worship that is more focused on ideas of individual salvation than it is on worship of the emperor or worship of place. And the early cults and gods of Rome are very much about place,

and they get transmitted into a very much about Rome as an establishment and the Roman Newman and the household. But these other belief systems, which have always been around, and the cult of Isis and Mithras have earlier origins, but they hold greater sway. And Christianity comes into that mix. And the Mithraeum here is actually probably converted into a place of some other form of worship,

a Bacchic component to it. Sculptures associated with Mithras are decommissioned, and not only are they decommissioned, but they're perhaps richly sacrificed. The head of Mithras from this building here has a cut mark across its throat, it's beheaded. So these cults are being replaced by ever more greater focus on the individual, individual salvation, and the fate of the soul. And that comes back into what I was talking earlier on about changes in burial practice, the idea we get a lot of what are called chalk burials in London, where people are being buried with chalk and gypsum around their bodies, perhaps to preserve the body better for physical resurrection, they're facing east.

Where does Christianity sit in all this is a much more complicated argument, because Christianity doesn't go out of its way to proclaim itself. It is a belief system that has links to other belief systems, and there are all sorts of different trends of Christianity and strands of Christianity, some of which become heresies later on. I won't go down the route of Gnostics and where they come to, but Gnosticism is perhaps one of those trends. And so we only really see Christianity coming into clear vision after Constantine has established it as a licit religion in empire. And then later in the fourth century,

as it actually under Theodosius becomes effectively the religion of state. And if you don't believe in it, you're in trouble. And London would have seen that going on but can we see that archaeologically not so easily we have a lovely building near the Tower of London which could perhaps be a cathedral it's a late Roman construction with aisles and and and it looks or it could be another theory there we go Christianity in London at that time, potential architectural evidence for that too. So we get to the early 5th century and the official end of Roman Britain.

What do we know about London at this time? We're back in this dangerous area for archaeologists where if it ain't there, is that because it wasn't there or we can't see it or they just kept what they'd got? or we can't see it, or they just kept what they'd got. But some of the things going on in London do suggest that it is being progressively changed from as early as the 380s. And one of those signs of change is that people are quarrying gravel from the roads that approach London's main bridges. And so you are either no longer having a bridge that functions, or at least you're not expecting ox-drawn carts to trundle across those bridges. Something's happened because

heavily laden carriages cannot cross big holes and bumps in the road. The fact that people cease to maintain the roads is an issue. And that's happening as early as the 380s. We've also got some of these lovely well deposits where people are terminating a well and they're having a feast and they're putting in ritual deposits and those ritual deposits include bronze cauldrons, they include the deer that have been eaten in a feast and these look like rituals of departure. People are actually decommissioning wells as they're decommissioning properties. And we've got some quite reasonably good dating evidence from those. So there are these signs that things are changing in the 380s. But people are still here. It's not as if the town has been abandoned, but some people are going and some

things have ceased to happen. And one of the most telling features of that is we start to see far less coin being imported into Britain. And that's because Rome cares less about Britain. It's not sending over shipments of coin to pay its soldiers. It says, look after yourselves. When that had happened previously, and there have been many other episodes in London's history and in Britain's history, when coin supply wasn't sufficient for need, people started to make local, they're called forgeries, but they're just locally produced small change to allow somebody to pay taxes and port duties when they come into and out of town. They're there to pay a haulier who might be drawing some goods into town. The fact that in the late 4th century, no one sees the need to make up these shortages in supply of official coin is telling. There is less in the way of

transactional activities going on. So I think London is still seen as a place of administrative authority. It is still seen as a place that matters in lists of where people are based and assigned. Rome sees London as important, but it's lost all semblance of economic activity. It's not doing anything particularly useful. And it is probably seeing itself successively reduced into a smaller, shrunken group of officials. And that only lasts the beginning of the fifth century. And you can't actually see their presence into the fifth century. By the time you get to the fifth century, yes, one or two buildings might be being refurbished a bit, but for how long?

And by the middle of the fifth century, nada, it's gone. And London shrinks because it's lost its economic activities earlier on. It's lost its large urban population earlier on. It never had a strong existence from a British point of view. It was invented by Rome and it survived when Rome wanted it to survive. And when Rome didn't see it as being particularly useful, people weren't really that bothered about it. Not the case as you move

outside the walled area. We do have fifth century continuities on some of the villa sites and rural settlement sites around London. Curiously, some of those other sites we think were Iron Age settlements that just outlasted Rome. They were there before Rome arrived, and they're still there when Rome officially goes. And when we say Rome, of course, we're talking about people from all over the Roman Empire, and we're talking about a hybrid world. from all over the Roman Empire, and we're talking about a hybrid world. But Rome as an authority, Rome as a symbol of power, ceases to matter into the 5th century. And as it ceases to matter, London doesn't really have a role to play. Well, there you go, Dom. I love the idea that some Iron Age settlements outlived in its use Roman London itself. If you could pick anywhere

in London to dig, and you had the chance, you have all the money now to get rid of the multi-millionaire skyscraper, wherever it is, and to dig there and to look for Roman archaeology, where would you dig? I guess I go back to what I was saying about Upper and Lower 10th Street. The waterfront is still where we get the real treasures out of London, not just because of the dendrochronology I've been talking about, but also the rubbish that people throw into the river as they're building up their quay sites. So it's got these sorts of things. It's got lots of treasures. It's got lots of good dating. And the roads that go along, for those who know London,

there's quite a busy dual carriageway that used to be the line of the second and third century waterfront. So most of the good waterfront archaeology is still there because those roads have actually preserved it. If you go around most of the rest of the city, the new buildings you see tend to have removed an awful lot of what was once there. Give me a chance and I'll dig up Thames Street. Let's have a car-free country. Let's let the archaeologists loose on that lovely strip of rich treasure. Give me a chance and I'll dig up Thames Street. Let's have a car-free country. Let's let the archaeologists loose on that lovely strip of rich treasure. Give me a chance and I'll dig up Thames Street. I think that's the best, that's the best way to leave this on Dom. Dom, this has been absolutely great. Thank you so much

for taking the time for the interview. We really enjoyed it. It's been amazing to do it at the London Mithraeum. Thank you very much for everyone who's tuned in today. Let us know your thoughts and hopefully we can do more stuff like this in the future professor dominic perring talking you through the rise and fall of roman london at our special live event recorded at the london mythoreum i hope you enjoyed the episode last things from me if you enjoyed the episode and you want to help us out in our mission to share these incredible stories from our distant past with as many people as possible then please do leave us a lovely rating on Spotify on Apple Podcasts wherever you get your podcasts from we the whole team it really helps and we really appreciate it but that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode