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From its earliest days, Britain was an object of desire.

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Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae", worth the conquest,

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the best compliment that could occur to a Roman.

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He'd never visited these shores but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold.

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Silver was abundant there too. Apparently so were pearls,

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although Tacitus had heard they were grey, like the overcast, rain-heavy skies,

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and that the natives only bothered to collect them when they were cast up on the shore.

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As far as the Roman historians were concerned, Britannia might well be off at the edge of the world,

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but it was at the edge of THEIR world, not a barbarian wilderness.

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If those same writers had been able to travel in time to the northernmost of our islands,

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to the Orcades, our modern Orkney, they would have seen something more astonishing than heaps of pearls.

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The unmistakable signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome.

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There are remains of Stone Age life dotted all over Britain and Ireland.

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But nowhere as abundantly as Orkney, with mounds, graves and, above all, great circles of standing stones,

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like here at Brodgar, vast, imposing and utterly unknowable.

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But Orkney boasts another Neolithic site, in its way even more impressive than Brodgar.

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The last thing you would expect from the Stone Age.

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A shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient domestic life.

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Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island, a village called Skara Brae.

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Here, beneath an area no bigger than the eighteenth green of a golf course,

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lies Europe's most complete Neolithic community, preserved for 5,000 years under sand and grass

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until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm.

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This is a recognisable village,

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neatly fitted into its landscape between the pasture and the sea.

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Intimate, domestic, self-sufficient.

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Although technically still in the Stone Age, in the Neolithic period,

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these dwellings are not huts, but true houses built from the sandstone slabs that lie all around the island

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and which gave stout protection to the villagers here at Skara Brae from their biting Orcadian winds.

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And the villagers were real neighbours,

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their houses connected by walled, sometimes decorated alleyways.

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It's not too much of a stretch to imagine gossip travelling down those alleyways after a seafood supper.

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We have, in other words, everything you could possibly want from a village, except a church and a pub.

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In 3000 BC, the sea and the air were a little warmer than they are now,

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and once they'd settled in their sandstone houses

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they could harvest red bream and the mussels and oysters that were abundant in the shallows.

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Cattle provided meat and milk. Dogs were kept for hunting and company.

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During the Neolithic centuries there would have been a dozen houses here,

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half dug into the ground for comfort and safety -

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a thriving, bustling community of 50 or 60.

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But the real miracle of Skara Brae is that these houses were not mere shelters.

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They were built by people who had culture, who had style.

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Here's where they showed off that style.

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The fully equipped, all-purpose Neolithic living room, complete with luxuries and necessities.

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Necessities? Well, at the centre, a hearth around which they warm themselves and cook their food.

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A stone tank in which to keep live fish bait.

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Since we know that some of these houses had drains underneath them

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they must also, believe it or not, have had indoor toilets. Luxuries?

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The orthopaedically correct stone bed may not seem particularly luxurious

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but the addition of layers of heather and straw would certainly have softened the sleeping surface

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and would actually have made this bed seem rather snug.

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At the centre of it all was this spectacular dresser

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on which our house-proud Neolithic villagers would have set out all their most precious stuff.

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Fine bone and ivory necklaces. Beautifully wrought and carved stone objects.

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Everything designed to make a grand interior statement.

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Given the rudimentary nature of their tools,

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it would have taken countless man-hours to build, not just these domestic dwellings,

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but the circles of stone where they worshipped.

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So Skara Brae was not just an isolated settlement of fishers and farmers.

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Its people must have belonged to some larger society,

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sophisticated enough to mobilise the army of toilers and craftsmen needed

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not just to make these monuments, but to stand them on end.

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They were just as concerned about housing the dead as the living.

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The mausoleum at Maes Howe, a couple of miles from Skara Brae,

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seems no more than a swelling on the grassy landscape

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but this is a British pyramid.

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And, in keeping with our taste for understatement, it reserves all its impact for the interior.

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Imagine them open once more,

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a detail from the village given the job of pulling back the stone seals,

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lugging the body through the low opening in the earth,

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up 36 feet of narrow, tight-fitting passageway, lit only once a year by the rays of the winter solstice -

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a death canal constriction smelling of the underworld.

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Finally, the passageway opens up into this stupendous, high-vaulted masonry chamber.

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Some of these tombs would have been elaborately decorated with carvings

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in the form of circles or spirals, like waves, or breeze-pushed clouds.

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Others would have had neat little stone stores or cubicles where the bodies would be laid out on shelves.

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The grandest tombs had openings cut in the wall to create side chambers

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where important bodies could be laid out in aristocratic spaciousness, like family vaults in a church.

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Unlike mediaeval knights, though, these grandees were buried with eagles and dogs, or even treasure,

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the kind of thing that the Vikings, who broke into the tombs, thousands of years later, were quick to filch.

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In return, though, these early tomb raiders left their own legacy. These wonderful graffiti.

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"These rooms were carved by the most skilled room carver in the Western Ocean."

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"Aye, but it thorny here!"

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"Ingegirth is one horny bitch!"

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As for the Orcadian hoi polloi, well, they ranked a space in the common chamber,

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on a floor carpeted with the bones of hundreds of their predecessors.

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A crowded waiting room to their afterworld.

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For centuries, life at Skara Brae must have continued in much the same way.

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But around 2500 BC, the island climate seems to have got colder and wetter.

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The red bream disappeared, as did the stable environment the Orcadians had enjoyed for generations.

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Fields were abandoned,

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the farmers and fishers migrated, leaving their stone buildings and tombs to be covered

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by layers of peat, drifting sand and finally grass.

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The mainland, too, of course, had its burial chambers, like the Long Barrow at West Kennet.

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And there were also the great stone circles, the largest at Avebury.

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But the most spectacular of all at Stonehenge.

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By 1000 BC, things were changing fast.

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All over the British landscape a protracted struggle for good land was taking place.

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Forests were cleared so that Iron Age Britain was not,

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as was once imagined, an unbroken forest kingdom from Cornwall to Inverness.

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It was a patchwork of fields dotted with woodland copses, giving cover for game, especially wild pigs.

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And it was a crowded island.

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We now think as many people lived on this land as during the reign of Elizabeth I, 2,500 years later.

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Some archaeologists believe that almost as much land was being farmed in the Iron Age as in 1914.

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So it comes as no surprise to see one spectacular difference from the little world of Skara Brae.

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Great windowless towers.

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They were built in the centuries before the Roman invasions, when population pressure was intense,

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and farmers had growing need of protection, first from the elements, but later from each other.

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Many of those towers still survive,

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though none are as daunting as the great stone stockade on Aran, off Ireland's west coast.

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They didn't just spring up around the edges of the British Islands.

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All over the mainland too, the great hill forts of the Iron Age remain visible in terraced contours

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at places like Danebury and Maiden Castle.

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Lofty seats of power for the tribal chiefs,

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they were defended by rings of earth works, timber palisades and ramparts.

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Behind those daunting walls, this was not a world in panicky retreat.

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The Iron Age Britain into which the Romans eventually crashed with such alarming force

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was a dynamic, expanding society.

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From their workshops came the spectacular metalwork with which the elite decorated their bodies -

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armlets, pins and brooches, and ornamental shields like this, the so-called Battersea Shield.

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Or the astonishing stylised bronze horses, endearingly melancholy in expression,

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like so many Eeyores, resigned to a bad day in battle.

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With tribal manufacture came trade.

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The warriors, Druid priests and artists of Iron Age Britain shipped their wares all over Europe,

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trading with the expanding Roman Empire.

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In return, with no home-grown grapes or olives,

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Mediterranean wine and oil arrived in large earthenware jars.

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So Iron Age Britain was definitely not the back of beyond.

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Its tribes may have led lives separated by custom and language, with no great capital city,

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but taken together, they added up to something in the world,

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the bustling of countless productive energetic beehives. And what the bees made was not honey but gold.

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So the Romans would have known all about this strange but alluring world of fat cattle and busy forges.

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Evidence of its refinement would certainly have found its way to Rome.

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Along with the glittering metalware came stories of alarming cults

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which might have prompted the usual Roman dinnertime discussions.

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All very interesting, I dare say, but would we really want to call them a civilisation?

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Supposing they would have seen an ancient sculpture

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like this haunting stone face with its archaic, secretive smile,

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the eyes closed, as if in some mysterious devotional trance. The nose flattened, the cheeks broad.

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All so spellbindingly reminiscent of things the Romans must have seen in Etruria, or on the Greek Islands.

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Would they then have said, "This is a work of art"? Probably not.

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Sooner or later they'd have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out like a boiled egg,

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to hold sacrificial offerings.

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Then they would have remembered stories that Rome told about the grizzly brutality of the Druids.

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Perhaps they'd have taken note of stories told by the northern savages themselves

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of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully

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to those who had parted them from the rest of their body, warning of vengeance to come.

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Then they would have thought, "Well, perhaps not.

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"Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads."

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So why did the Romans come here, to the edge of the world, and run the gauntlet of these ominous totems?

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It was the lure of treasure - all those pearls Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps.

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But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most,

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the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier.

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So in the written annals of Western history, the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date.

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In 55 BC, Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel.

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Julius Caesar must have supposed

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that all he had to do was land his legions in force,

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and the Britons, just cowed by the spectacle of all those glittering helmets and eagle standards,

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would simply queue up to surrender.

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They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. Trouble was, geography didn't.

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Not once, but twice Julius Caesar's plans were sabotaged

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by that perennial secret weapon of the British - the weather.

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On the first go round, in 55 BC, a cavalry transport,

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which missed the high tide and was four days late, finally got going

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only to run directly into a storm and be blown right back to Gaul.

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A century later, Claudius, the club-foot stammerer,

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on the face of it the most unlikely conqueror of all, was determined to get it right.

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If it was to be done, he thought, it had to be done in such massive force

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that he would not repeat the embarrassments of Julius.

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So Claudius' invasion force was immense, some forty thousand troops.

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The kind of army which could barely be conceived of, much less encountered in Iron Age Britain.

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Claudius did succeed where Julius Caesar had failed,

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through a brilliant strategy of carrot and stick.

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Yes, he would seize the largely undefended oppida, or towns,

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and strike at the heart of the British aristocracy, its places of status, prestige and worship.

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But for those chieftains sensible enough to reach for the olive branch rather than the battle javelin,

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Claudius' plan was to give them, or rather their sons, a trip to Rome and watch their resistance melt.

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While they were in Rome, many of them must have begun to notice

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that life for your average patrician was, well, exceptionally sweet.

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So, before long, they began to hunger for a taste of themselves.

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If there were sumptuous country villas amidst the olive groves of the Roman countryside,

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why could there not be sumptuous country villas amidst the pear orchards of the South Downs?

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Just fall in line, be a little reasonable, judicious support... see what you would end up with.

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The spectacular palace at Fishbourne.

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The man who built it was Togidubnus, King of the Regenses in what would be Sussex -

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one of the quickest to sign up as Rome's local ally.

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He was rewarded with enough wealth to build himself something fit for a Roman.

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Only the extraordinary mosaic floors survive, but the place was as big as four football pitches,

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grand enough for someone who now gloried in the name of Tiberius Claudius Cogidumnus.

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He couldn't have been the only British chief to realise on which side his bread was buttered.

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All over Britain, rulers thought a Roman connection would help in their pursuit of local power and status.

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The person we think of as embodying British national resistance to Rome,

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Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, came from a family of happy, even eager collaborators.

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It only took a policy of stupidity, arrogance and brutality on the part of the local Roman governor

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to turn her from a warm supporter of Rome into its most dangerous enemy.

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In a show of brutal arrogance, the local governor had East Anglia declared a slave province.

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To make the point about exactly who owned whom, Boudicca was then treated to a public flogging

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while her daughters were raped before her.

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In 60 AD, Boudicca rose up in furious revolt, quickly gathering an army bent on vengeance.

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With the cream of the Roman troops tied down, suppressing an insurgency in North Wales,

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Boudicca's army marched towards the place symbolising the hated Roman colonisation of Britain. Colchester.

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It helped that it was lightly garrisoned.

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After a fire-storm march through eastern England, burning Roman settlements, it was the city's turn.

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The frightened Roman colonists then had to fall back to the one place they were sure they'd be protected,

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by their Emperor and their Gods - the great temple of Claudius.

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If the terrified Romans thought they'd escape the implacable anger of Boudicca, they were out of luck.

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With thousands of them huddled in the temple above these foundations, she began to set light to it.

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They must have been able to smell the scorch and the smoke and the fire coming towards them

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as their new imperial city burned down with themselves and everything else here buried in smoking ash.

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Thousands died in this place.

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Boudicca had her revenge.

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But her triumph couldn't last.

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The lightly defended civilians of Colchester were one thing,

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now she'd have to face a disciplined Roman army, fully prepared for all that she could throw at them.

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Sure enough, when the two forces met, Boudicca's swollen and unwieldy army was no match for the legions.

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Her great insurrection ended in a gory, chaotic slaughter.

216
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:40,240
Boudicca took her own life rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.

217
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,800
Lessons have been learned the hard way, at least for some.

218
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:57,080
And so when barbarians started attacking Roman forts in the north the Romans knew exactly what to do.

219
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:05,960
In 79 AD, an enormous pitched battle took place on the slopes of an unidentified highland mountain

220
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,520
which Tacitus calls Mons Graupius.

221
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:15,320
The result - another slaughter - but not before the Caledonian general, Calgacus,

222
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:22,520
delivered the first great anti-imperialist speech on Scotland's soil.

223
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,680
"Here at the world's end,

224
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:30,120
"on its last inch of liberty, we have lived unmolested,

225
00:27:30,120 --> 00:27:35,120
"to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity.

226
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:39,800
"But there are no other tribes to come.

227
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:44,080
"Nothing but sea, and cliffs, and these more deadly Romans

228
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:49,160
"whose arrogance you cannot escape by obedience and self-restraint.

229
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,280
"To plunder, butcher, steal,

230
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,400
"these things they misname "Empire".

231
00:27:55,400 --> 00:28:01,040
"They make a desolation and they call it peace."

232
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:11,680
Of course, Calgacus never said any such thing.

233
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:18,280
This was the speech written long after the event by Tacitus, and it's Roman, not Scottish.

234
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,520
Yet this burning sentiment would echo down the generations.

235
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:29,640
Like Britannia itself, the idea of free Caledonia was from the first a Roman invention.

236
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:34,760
There was one Emperor, Spanish by birth,

237
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who knew even the world's biggest empire needed to know its limits

238
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:46,480
and he, of course, was destined, in Britain, at any rate, to be remembered by a wall.

239
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:54,280
When we think of Hadrian's Wall, we tend to think of the Romans rather like US cavalrymen,

240
00:28:54,280 --> 00:29:01,160
deep in Indian country, defending the flag, peering through the cracks and waiting for smoke signals.

241
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:04,200
A place where paranoia sweated from every stone.

242
00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:07,520
It wasn't really like that at all.

243
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:14,240
As fantastically ambitious as this was, stretching 73 miles from the Solway to the Tyne,

244
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:19,920
and although Hadrian probably conceived it in response to a rebellion

245
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:26,400
on the part of the people whom the Romans referred to as Britunculi, nasty, wretched little Brits,

246
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:33,560
almost certainly he didn't mean it as an impermeable barrier against barbarian onslaught from the north.

247
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:45,040
The wall was studded with mile castles, and turrets, and forts, like this one at Housteads.

248
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:48,960
But as Britain settled down in the 2nd century AD,

249
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:53,000
these places became up-country hill stations,

250
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:58,880
more like social centres and business centres than really grim heavily-manned barracks.

251
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:08,040
The purpose of the forts became not to prevent people going to and fro so much as to control/observe them.

252
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:13,320
The forts became a place where a kind of customs scam was imposed

253
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:17,520
on those trying to do business on one side or the other.

254
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,960
It may be better to think of the wall not as a fence but a spine

255
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:28,320
around which control of northern Britain toughened, hardened and prospered.

256
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:34,200
If we can now imagine Hadrian's Wall as not such a bad posting,

257
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:39,520
it's because our sense of what life was like at the time has been transformed

258
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,040
by a recent astonishing find.

259
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:44,880
The so-called Vindolanda Tablets.

260
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:50,920
They're scraps of Roman correspondence, jottings, scribblings, and drafts of letters

261
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:55,440
thrown away as rubbish by their authors, almost 2000 years ago.

262
00:30:55,440 --> 00:31:00,200
For 25 years, archaeologists here have been digging up these letters:

263
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:04,320
1,300 of them from 7 metres below the ground.

264
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:09,480
Up they've come, lovingly separated from dirt, debris and each other,

265
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:12,040
and painstakingly deciphered.

266
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:16,360
At once poignantly fragile and miraculously enduring,

267
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:23,240
the voices of the Roman frontier in the windy north country, loud, clear and strong.

268
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:29,040
"Decorian Masculus to Tribune Cerrialis, Greeting.

269
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,640
"Please give instructions as to what you want us to do tomorrow.

270
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:39,160
"Are we all to return with the standard, or half? My troops have no beer. Please order some to be sent."

271
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:45,560
"I've sent you two pairs of socks, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants.

272
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:50,920
"Greet Epus Tetricus and your mess mates with whom I pray you get on well."

273
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:56,720
"..I implore your mercifulness not to allow me, an innocent man from overseas,

274
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:03,960
- "to have been beaten by rods..."
- "I invite you to my party on the 3rd day before the Ides of September.

275
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:11,080
"Please come as the day will be so much more enjoyable to me if you were here."

276
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:17,520
A world of garrisons and barracks had now become a society in its own right.

277
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:27,920
From the middle of the 2nd century it makes sense to talk about a Romano-British culture,

278
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:35,040
and not just as a colonial veneer imposed on the resentful natives, but as a genuine fusion.

279
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:45,240
And nowhere was this clearer than here in Bath.

280
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:07,040
The quintessential Romano-British place. At once mod con and mysterious cult, therapy and luxury.

281
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:15,600
A marvel of hydraulic engineering, and a showy theatre of the waters of healing.

282
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:19,600
The spa was an extravaganza of buildings

283
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:27,080
constructed over a spring that gushed a third of a million gallons of hot water into the baths daily.

284
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:06,760
When you soaked yourself at Bath you washed your body and soul - ablution and devotion at the same time.

285
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:11,760
Much of the bathing, as well as the flirting, gossip and deal making

286
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:15,840
went on in this austerely grandiose great bath.

287
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:22,280
But the spiritual heart of the place was the sacred spring,

288
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,920
a ferny grotto where water collected,

289
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:31,160
and where the devotees of the presiding goddess, Sulis Minerva,

290
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:37,480
could look through an especially constructed window at the altar erected in her honour,

291
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:42,080
and occasionally could throw gift offerings in her way.

292
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:50,680
Bath was not the only place where Romano-Britons could wallow in the well-being of the province.

293
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:03,120
In Dover, the Romans built this 96-bedroom hotel. Now 20 feet below street level,

294
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:08,440
but the last word in luxury for any VIP disembarking from Gaul.

295
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:16,360
By the 4th century, however, Rome was in deep trouble,

296
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:21,880
attacked by barbarians and undermined by endless political turmoil.

297
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:28,680
Britannia couldn't remain detached from the fate of the rest of the empire forever.

298
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:35,600
At some point, Dover's significance for Britannia changed from a port of entry to a defensive stronghold,

299
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:39,520
and a welcome mat gave way to the "Keep Out" sign

300
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:47,040
in the shape of massive walls built smack through the grand hotel's lobby.

301
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:52,040
This is the sort of wall the Romans built at Dover.

302
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:59,600
This is Porchester, a Roman shore fort, a truly colossal structure,

303
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:07,720
that makes all too clear the scale of threat the Romans felt the barbarians posed.

304
00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:16,080
Inside it lies a Norman castle, built a thousand years later, and now completely dwarfed by it.

305
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:25,560
It was one of several such forts strung out along the southern and eastern coasts.

306
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:33,160
Not even fortifications like those of Porchester or Hadrian's Wall could work without adequate troops.

307
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:38,960
As more and more legionaries were sucked back to fight for Rome on the continent,

308
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:44,360
and as Picts and Saxons, spotting the weakness, started raids from the north and east,

309
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:50,120
Britannia couldn't help but feel the chill of vulnerability.

310
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:54,560
And when, in the year 410, Aleric the Goth sacked Rome,

311
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:59,080
and the last two legions departed to prop up the tottering empire,

312
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:03,440
that chill developed into an acute anxiety attack.

313
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:13,280
This was one of the genuinely fateful moments in British history, the legions departing.

314
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:20,160
No, it was not like Hong Kong in 1997. There were no flags flying or pipers piping.

315
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:25,600
The Governor was not driving around his courtyard, seven times pledging to return.

316
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:32,000
Doubtless, many of the Romano-British did hope and expect to see the eagles back some day.

317
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,320
The tax collectors, and the magistrates,

318
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:42,680
and the town counsellors, poets, potters, musicians, newly Christian priests all said to themselves,

319
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,200
"Well, this couldn't go on forever.

320
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:51,040
"We couldn't always look to Mother Rome, and Mother Rome is half infested with barbarians anyway.

321
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:54,560
"We can handle this. We've got the Saxon shore forts,

322
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:59,800
"we can hire barbarians to deal with other barbarians. We can handle this.

323
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,720
"We CAN handle this!"

324
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:17,080
For the less confident, there was only one thing to do - bury their treasure and head for the hills...

325
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:25,400
..planning, as refugees always do, to return when the worst was over and dig it all up again.

326
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:35,760
But in the case of this horde of 15,000 gems, medals and exquisite silver tigress, they never did.

327
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:50,720
It was instead discovered in 1992 at Hoxne in Suffolk, and is now kept in the British Museum.

328
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:03,360
Some force was needed to stop the barbarians in the north and west

329
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:09,760
from exploiting the yawning vacuum of power left by the exit of the legions.

330
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:18,600
At first, the warriors from north Germany and Denmark sailing up-river in their wave horses seemed a boon,

331
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:20,960
not a curse.

332
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:26,680
When one local despot named Vortigen naively imagined he could use the imported barbarians

333
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:32,280
as his own personal military muscle, but neglected to pay them, as per the contract,

334
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:36,760
he made one of the more spectacular blunders in British history.

335
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:43,200
Furious at being stiffed, the Saxons turned on the local population they'd been hired to defend,

336
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:49,000
and when they'd finished burning and pillaging, they took land in lieu of pay,

337
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:55,440
settling down amidst the understandably dismayed native population.

338
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,720
Dismayed but not, I think, terrified,

339
00:39:58,720 --> 00:40:03,040
for although earliest chroniclers of the coming of the Saxons

340
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,200
thought of Vortigen's faux pas as heralding some apocalypse,

341
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:14,640
it wasn't as if someone turned the lights out on Roman Britannia and declared the Dark Ages had begun.

342
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:20,240
The long process by which Roman Britannia morphed into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was gradual.

343
00:40:20,240 --> 00:40:24,280
Not sudden. An adaptation not an annihilation.

344
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:31,160
For a long time, the Saxons were a tiny minority,

345
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:34,480
numbered in hundreds rather than thousands,

346
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:39,320
living in the midst of a strongly Romano-British population.

347
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:43,640
As different as these cultures were, they were still neighbours.

348
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:49,520
The vast majority still tried, and succeeded, in living some sort of Roman life.

349
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:54,520
Here we're at Wroxeter in Shropshire, the Roman Viriconium.

350
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:59,720
There's wonderful evidence of this make-do, hybrid, improvised world,

351
00:40:59,720 --> 00:41:04,520
poised between Roman ruins and Anglo-Saxon beginnings.

352
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:10,280
When the bath house stopped functioning, the citizens took the tiles and used them for paving.

353
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:15,080
And when the roof of the great basilica threatened to fall in

354
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,680
the citizens demolished the whole building themselves.

355
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:22,080
Inside the shell they put up a new timber structure,

356
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:28,080
spacious and elegant enough to give the sense they were still living some sort of Roman lifestyle,

357
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:31,880
although in an increasingly phantom Britannia.

358
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:38,760
Eventually, though, the adaptations became ever more makeshift -

359
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:42,520
the fabric of Roman life increasingly threadbare,

360
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:46,160
until it did indeed fall apart altogether.

361
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:52,880
The island was now divided into three utterly different realms.

362
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:57,200
The remains of Britannia hung on in the west.

363
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:03,880
North of the abandoned walls and forts, the Scottish tribes, for the most part, stayed pagan.

364
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:09,760
England, the realm of Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, was planted in the east,

365
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:14,280
all the way from Kent to the kingdom of Bernicia in Northumbria.

366
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:27,880
Saxon chiefs often built settlements on the ruined remains of old Roman British towns, not least London.

367
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:32,920
Like many invaders, they hankered after what they had destroyed.

368
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:39,800
Showier pieces of their armour often bare startling resemblances to Roman armour,

369
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:44,560
and their leaders aspired to be something more than war chiefs.

370
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:48,600
They wanted to be known as dux, a Roman duke.

371
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:55,240
But in one crucial respect the Germanic tribal societies were utterly different from the Romans.

372
00:42:55,240 --> 00:43:00,240
Theirs was a culture based on the blood feud and punishment by ordeal.

373
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:07,040
It was an entire social system. Its plunder was the glue of loyalty.

374
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:23,080
But the Saxons were no more immune to change than the Romans had been before them.

375
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:29,720
To look at the relics recovered from the Sutton Hoo burial site is to be teased by a powerful question.

376
00:43:29,720 --> 00:43:37,520
Did the Saxon lord buried here find his resting place in a pagan Valhalla or a Christian paradise?

377
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:44,440
The history of the conversions between the 6th C and the 8th C

378
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:49,480
is another crucial turning point in the history of the British Isles.

379
00:43:55,920 --> 00:44:02,240
But while the legions had long gone, the shadow of Rome fell once again on these islands.

380
00:44:02,240 --> 00:44:06,480
This time, though, it was an invasion of the soul,

381
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:12,400
and the warriors were carrying Christian gospels rather than swords.

382
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:18,760
The process began in a country that had never been touched by Roman rule in the first place.

383
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,800
The land the Romans called Hibernia. Ireland.

384
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:32,080
One of the most famous of the early missionaries to Ireland, St Patrick, was a Romano-British aristocrat -

385
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:36,000
"the Patrician," or Patricius as he called himself.

386
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:42,240
So there was nothing remotely Irish about the teenager who was kidnapped and sold into slavery

387
00:44:42,240 --> 00:44:46,320
by Irish raiders some time in the early 5th Century.

388
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:57,000
It was only after he'd escaped, probably to Brittany, been ordained then visited by prophetic dreams,

389
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:02,200
that he returned to Ireland, this time the messenger of the gospel.

390
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:09,360
Patrick understood that the monastic ideal of the retreat

391
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,800
was perfectly matched with the needs of local royal clans.

392
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:19,760
So monasteries like Aran, off the Gulf-swept Irish coast,

393
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:24,240
with their beehive cells, and encircling stone walls,

394
00:45:24,240 --> 00:45:28,840
looked like a stronghold, an encampment for God.

395
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:43,120
But what about the dragon slayers on the mainland? Who converted them?

396
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,120
One man gives us the answer.

397
00:45:52,720 --> 00:46:00,520
To school children of my generation, growing up in the 1950s, he will always be the Venerable Bede.

398
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:06,360
Bede was not just the founding father of English history.

399
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:12,240
Arguably, he was also the first consummate storyteller in all of English literature.

400
00:46:12,240 --> 00:46:18,800
He was not exactly well-travelled. He spent virtually his entire life here in Jarrow.

401
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:25,080
But in a few lines he could conjure up not just the world of holy men and hermits,

402
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:31,280
but the world of the great halls of Saxon Kings, their firelight and roasting meat,

403
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,640
or the death throes of a great warhorse.

404
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:39,680
His masterful grip on narrative made Bede not just an authentic historian

405
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:43,840
but also a brilliant propagandist for the early church.

406
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,600
Bede sees without any starry-eyed sentimentality

407
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:58,040
what could overcome the mistrust of the pagan kings when asked to abandon their traditional gods.

408
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:02,840
According to the most touching speech in Bede's entire history,

409
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:08,960
the clinching moment of persuasion for one noble was nothing more than a gambler's bet.

410
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:14,400
"It seems to me, my lord, that the present life of men here on Earth

411
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:20,200
"is as though a sparrow in wintertime should come to a house and very swiftly fly through it,

412
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:25,080
"entering in one window and straight away passing out through another,

413
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:29,920
"while you sit at dinner...in a hall made warm with a great fire,

414
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:35,000
"while outside, there are the raging tempests of winter, rain and snow.

415
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:41,080
"For that short time it be within the house, the bird feels no smart of the winter storm

416
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:46,760
"but soon passes again from winter back to winter and escapes your sight.

417
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:51,360
"So the life of man here appears for a little season.

418
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:55,960
"But what follows, or what has gone before, that surely we do not know.

419
00:47:55,960 --> 00:48:02,120
"Wherefore if this new learning has bought us any certainty methinks it is worthy to be followed."

420
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:08,080
It's typical of Bede to put these words in the mouth of a nobleman,

421
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:14,440
for the Church in Anglo-Saxon England was just really a branch of the aristocracy.

422
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:17,920
St Wilfred the aristocratic Bishop of York

423
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:26,120
deliberately used part of Hadrian's Wall to build at Hexham a basilica worthy of Roman authority.

424
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:34,080
For Bede and St Wilfred, it was crucial the Roman, not the Irish Celtic Church, won over Britain,

425
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:41,720
for what they passionately desired was the reconnection of a converted country with its Roman mother -

426
00:48:41,720 --> 00:48:45,000
a true homecoming.

427
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:50,240
The authority of the Roman Saxon Church, though, didn't guarantee protection.

428
00:48:50,240 --> 00:48:54,760
Bede himself had had forebodings before he died in 735.

429
00:48:54,760 --> 00:49:01,280
Sure enough, half a century later, in 793, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle reports:

430
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:04,560
"Dire portents appeared over Northumbria.

431
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:11,560
"Immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying through the air.

432
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:14,080
"A great famine followed.

433
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:16,600
"A little after, on 8th of June,

434
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:23,400
"the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne."

435
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:27,560
The heathen men were, of course, the Vikings.

436
00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:44,520
If you look long enough and hard enough at any culture, you're gonna find something good to say about it,

437
00:49:44,520 --> 00:49:50,640
and historians of the Vikings, understandably distressed at the rape and pillage stereotype,

438
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:57,240
have asked us to think of things other than sail, land, burn and plunder to say about the Vikings.

439
00:49:57,240 --> 00:50:03,400
They've said, "Look at their metalwork, look at their ships, look at the great poetic sagas."

440
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:07,760
So we know they did come bearing more than just a nasty attitude.

441
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:11,160
They came carrying amber, fur and walrus ivory.

442
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:18,640
But somehow, though, this vision of the Vikings as rapid transit, long-distance commercial travellers,

443
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:22,880
singing their sagas as they sailed to a new market opening

444
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:28,280
I don't think would've cut much ice with the priests here at the cathedral at Bradwell-on-Sea,

445
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:32,760
a crab scuttle from the area where I grew up as a child.

446
00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:42,480
There'd been a church here at Bradwell-on-Sea for over 200 years.

447
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:46,760
It had originally been built on remains of an old Roman fort,

448
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:52,960
and I can't help thinking that the priests would have found their stone defences reassuring

449
00:50:52,960 --> 00:51:00,640
as they waited nervously for the Viking raids they knew could strike hard and fierce at any moment.

450
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,440
In addition to land, Vikings were keen on one other merchandise.

451
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,480
People, whom they sold as slaves.

452
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:21,440
A thousand such slaves were taken from Armagh in one raid alone.

453
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:27,480
A burial dated to 879 contained a Viking warrior with his sword,

454
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:33,360
two ritually-murdered slave girls, and the bones of hundreds of men, women and children -

455
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:37,560
his very own body count to take with him to Valhalla.

456
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:52,920
On the positive side, though, there was one thing that the Vikings did manage to do, however inadvertently.

457
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:56,280
They created England.

458
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:00,160
By smashing the power of most of the Saxon kingdoms

459
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:06,160
the Vikings accomplished what, left to themselves, the warring tribes could never have managed.

460
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:11,520
Some semblance of alliance against a common foe.

461
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:15,880
To push back the Vikings to repair some of the damage they'd done

462
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:20,120
would need more than just a competent tribal warrior chief.

463
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:26,000
It would need someone who had a vision, and a vision not just of victory but of government.

464
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:31,160
Someone who could harness Anglo-Saxon energy and determination to Roman military discipline.

465
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:38,880
They'd need a local Charlemagne, someone with the intelligence and imagination of a truly Roman ruler.

466
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:46,160
And he, of course, was Alfred.

467
00:52:47,720 --> 00:52:54,080
Our cherished image of Alfred is of the hero on the run, up against steep odds, muddling through,

468
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:58,360
taking it on the chin when getting scolded for burning the cakes.

469
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:06,400
But the story which really tells you all you need to know about Alfred isn't set in the swamps of Somerset

470
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:13,840
but on the Palatine Hill of Rome. It's more startling, illuminating, and it happens to be true.

471
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:23,680
As a small boy, Alfred's father King Aethelwulf sent him on a special mission to Rome to see Pope Leo IV,

472
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:28,360
probably to ask the Pope's help in the struggle against the Vikings.

473
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:35,280
In a ceremony, the Pope dressed the little fellow in the Imperial purple of a Roman consul

474
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:43,200
and wound a sword belt around his waist, turning little Alfred into a true Roman Christian warrior.

475
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:53,040
On a second trip, Alfred spent a whole year in the Eternal City along with his father,

476
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:57,000
walking the ruins of the empire and the sacred sites.

477
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:02,200
It was surely this experience which made him what he was - a philosopher prince,

478
00:54:02,200 --> 00:54:10,160
someone who in more than a literal sense translated the works of Roman wisdom for Anglo-Saxon consumption.

479
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:15,800
Through Alfred, England got something it hadn't had since the legions departed -

480
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:20,080
an authentic vision of a realm governed by law and education.

481
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:25,240
A realm which, since Alfred commissioned a translation of Bede into Anglo-Saxon,

482
00:54:25,240 --> 00:54:32,520
understood its past and its special destiny as the Western bastion of a Christian Roman world.

483
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:38,360
First he had to win those battles.

484
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:45,240
He took the throne of Wessex when, despite recent victory, the collapse of his kingdom seemed imminent,

485
00:54:45,240 --> 00:54:50,480
and with it the entirety of Anglo-Saxon England.

486
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:52,760
It was on Athelney Island

487
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:57,040
that the heroic legend of Alfred, fugitive on the run,

488
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:00,680
finally turning the tide against his enemies, was born.

489
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,960
By the spring of 878

490
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:10,000
Alfred had managed to piece together an alliance of resistance,

491
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:15,040
and at King Egbert's stone on the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset,

492
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:18,880
near the site of this 19th-C folly built to celebrate it,

493
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:25,840
he took command of an army which two days later fought and defeated Guthrum's Vikings.

494
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:36,720
His victory, a holding operation, forced the Vikings to settle for less than half the country.

495
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:43,440
But when in 886 Alfred entered London, rebuilt over the old Roman site,

496
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:46,960
something of a deep significance did happen.

497
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:53,400
He was acclaimed "The Sovereign Lord of all the English people not under subjection to the Danes."

498
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:56,680
So it appears that during Alfred's lifetime

499
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:03,840
the idea of a united English Kingdom had become conceivable and even desirable.

500
00:56:07,720 --> 00:56:13,200
The Alfred jewel, found not far from Athelney, has inscribed on its edge,

501
00:56:13,200 --> 00:56:18,320
"Aelfred Mec Heht Gewyrcan" - "Alfred caused me to be made".

502
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,720
The same might well be said of his reinvention of the English monarchy.

503
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:31,000
The enormous, haunting eyes which dominate the figure are said to be symbols of wisdom, or sight -

504
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:35,280
apt qualities for a ruler whose ambitions were so lofty.

505
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:38,360
Alfred's special gift was indeed

506
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:43,640
to be able to see clearly England's place in the scheme of things -

507
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:48,880
the debt of his realm to antiquity and his bequest to posterity.

508
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:58,960
With his realm transformed, Alfred made possible a true Anglo-Saxon renaissance in the 10th century,

509
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:03,360
creating stunning works of Christian art and architecture.

510
00:57:03,360 --> 00:57:07,680
But the long shadow of Rome still fell over all this brilliance.

511
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:15,080
Alfred's grandson would be crowned "the first King of England," in a great Roman style coronation.

512
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:20,640
And where did this momentous event happen? Well, where else but Bath?

513
00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:32,360
We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. England's been conceived, not yet born

514
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:38,640
and to the north, Pictland has even further to go before it's recognisably a kingdom of Scotland.

515
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:42,640
But for a generation or two, it did look as though

516
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:49,600
the grafting of Anglo-Saxon culture onto the legacy of Roman Britain had produced an extraordinary flowering.

517
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:54,640
But the shoots were still green, the buds were tender and vulnerable,

518
00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:58,400
and before this new kingdom had a chance to mature

519
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:03,680
it would be cut down by the devastating blow of an invader's axe.

520
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:30,640
Subtitles by Valerie Maguire BBC - 2000

521
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:33,760
E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk