Roman History

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I don't sense that the "Roman influence" trickled very far toward the consciousness of the "regular people" during Roman times.

It did extend to the monasteries a couple of hundred years later, though.

The monasteries, and the clergy in general, were the main agents which kept what is termed "literacy" alive.

Thus, it can be said, that the Roman influence, through the clergy, was considerable later on in British history.

Roman influence was "massive"

Prior to Caesar setting foot on the shores of Dover - Britain was virtually a stone age culture

Where do you start? roads, buildings, weaponry, boats, carts, channeled waterways, sanitation, architecture, clothes, language, calendar...could go on

This of course is not suggesting there wasn't an indigenous culture before that still able to express itself through art and spiritual nature/religion and did trade with other cultures but that spiritual connection to land was lost when the Romans imposed their religion

But all that pretty much went away after the Romans split, wouldn't you say?

At least amongst the "common folk."

Then, the Anglo-Saxons invaded. They were a pagan and non-intellectual people at the outset of their English existence. Some of the kings in Anglo-Saxon England had respect for the "knowledge." But the "common folk" really seemed skeptical of it.

The monasteries were the agents which kept the "knowledge" alive.

I would guess that the Roman influence was great while they were there---but that it dissolved pretty quickly once they left.

I know we're trying to get back to the original idea of the thread, but allow me to just add: Kaiser Wilhelm was himself very Anti-Nazi in his later years in exile, while Hitler despised the Kaiser.

This is aimed at kids but gets the point across
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z2dr4wx


Some element of truth here given it ushered the era called the dark ages but remember the Anglo-Saxons were "invited" by Romanised Celts to subdue pagain celtic tribes. They too were likely Romanised and even though the dark ages supposedly saw stagnation they consolidated and absorbed Roman culture over time. The big influence was christianity which saw the rule of law and ethics (judeo-christian). The early Anglo-Saxons were mercanaries and not too much unlike their cousins the vikings who came later. So this process had to take time.

Yes i know! but Kaiser Wilhelm was still a nationalist, if you take away the racial ideology you simply have empire building with German branding...Hitler tricked the German people by offering them a chance to have a second opportunity to rebuild the empire the Kaiser tried to build back in 1914

The leaders might have been Romanized—but the common folk weren’t.

Yes, of course. But my point was that Wilhelm was hardly the monster that Hitler was. In fact, while he had been suspicious of Hitler from the beginning, he became very Anti-Nazi following reports of Kristallnacht.

The common folk began speaking a latinised form of Anglo-Saxon thanks to Romanised christianity
By the time of Chaucer in the 1300 in a period over 300 yrs English language become completely unintelligible to German

True although his cousin Edward seemed to be enamoured with Nazism

Nothing to do with the Roman occupation of Britain.

Not trying to take sides between you and them about the overall influence of the 400 years of occupation of Britain, but one thing is clear. The occupation left virtually no direct linguistic legacy.

The problem is that the folks who were occupied by Rome were largely kicked out of the parts of Britain now called "England" by the Anglo Saxons who were barbarians from outside of the roman empire. So English was not invented by the British subjects of Rome but by these outsiders who came in as Rome left.



The Romans ruled all of Europe south of the Danube, and west of the Rhine, and the ruled what is now England and Wales (but not Scotland and Ireland).

The Romanized subjects took to speaking Latin in the mainland provinces and Latin based Romance languages took root in what is now France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy where Latin based languages are still the living languages. But for some reason no Romance language took root in Britain. And that's true of both groups of British folks: those descended from the Germanic invaders (the English) and those descended from the refugees who fled the Germanic invaders (the Celtic Welsh, Cornish, Manx, and the Breton of France). Niether group speaks a Romance language today.

Centuries after the Romans left, and after the Anglo Saxon migrated in... Britain was invaded again... by the Vikings from Norway and Denmark. The Vikings were a different branch of the same Germanic family as the Anglo Saxons. So that caused a melding of the two types of Germanic languages that caused English to change a lot from its north German/Netherlands roots. And then in 1066 England was conquered again... by the Norman French and the official language of England became French (though only the Aristocray spoke French most of the time).

HERE is when the Latin influence came into English. Indirectly by way of French (though monastaries had kept Latin going as in all of Christian Europe, but that Latin was for the learned, not for the common man).

The main latin influence was indirect by way of the living Romance language of the French rulers of Chaucer's own time, not as a legacy of the earlier Roman occupation of Britain.

The overlay of French upon the Germanic native language combined with the fact that the native Germanic language was itself already a bastard hybrid within the Germanic family caused English to have become quite different from mainland German by Chaucer's time.

Although Britain doesn't have so many direct legacies from the Roman Empire,the indirect legacies and existence of Roman historical sites are significant,even in Scotland which was only temporarily part of the empire for a relatively short time.Scots law has a basis in Roman law and there are remains of bath houses etc in once-occupied areas (with modern streets having names such as Roman Road to acknowledge them) and marching camps over a hundred miles north of the empire's permanent border at Hadrian's Wall.When the legions were called to defend mainland Europe,
the border was in danger from the native Picts,the Scots who were originally from Ireland and the Germanic Anglo Saxons.
I've always been intrigued how the Romans managed to run such a vast empire without the use of computers,phones etc.The idea of trying to do that nowadays seems impossible.

Yes.

Folks (someone even asked about it above in this thread) obsess about "why Rome fell?". But its amazing that it lasted as long as it did. The Roman empire was vaster than the Persian Empire (the largest in the middle east prior to Rome). Conquered huge areas that were never part of the civilized world before. Western Europe was like darkest Africa was in Victorian times. The Romans ruled Gaul (now France) the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and even Britain longer than the colonial powers of modern Europe ruled the interior of Africa (and they had railroads, guns, and telegraph lines that the Romans didn't have).

China was unified at about the same time as the rise of the Roman Empire. It was a comparable achievement . Had at least as large a population as the Roman Empire. But China then didn't have the physical size of the Roman empire.

Old English (the language of the Anglo-Saxons) resembles German much more than it resembles Modern English. Even Chaucer’s English (Middle English), while considerably closer to Modern English, still sounds quite “German” when it was spoken. The Modern English pronunciation of things came about because of the Great Vowel Shift of the 1400’s.

Britain does have legacies of the Roman occupation. One of them is a little town called that you mighta heard of called "London".

"Londonium" , and all of the English cities that have names that end in "Chester" (Colchester, Winchester, Chichester), and a city that was a mecca for locals who had adopted the Roman custom taking in public baths that is still called (oddly enough) "Bath", were all founded by the Romans.