The Romanization of Roman Britain / by F. Haverfield.

  • Francis J. Haverfield
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Romanization of Roman Britain / by F. Haverfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    moment fully accepting Roman fashions, speech and political institutions. The native element in Gaul had not quite died out of mind, but it had become little more than a pic¬ turesque contrast to the Roman. If this Gallic Empire in some details recalls the past, it still more looks forward. Its independence, its cry of 4 Gaul for the Gauls ’, is a geo¬ graphical fact, not a racial survival. It demanded indi¬ vidual life, and doubtless also individual protection from the barbarians, for a Roman section of the Roman world. It anticipated the birth of new nations. Progress in Romanization was perhaps slowest in lan¬ guage, especially in the remoter districts of the Empire. In Roman Africa, Punic was in almost official use in towns like Gigthis, in the Syrtis, as late as the second century, and Punic-speaking clergy were needed in outlying villages even in the fourth century. In Gaul, Celtic is stated 1 to have been spoken at the same epoch among the Treveri, who lived round what is now Trier. Presumably the native idiom lingered on in the vast woodlands of the Eifel and Hunsriick and Ardennes and in the hills above the upper Mosel valley, from which uncouth uplanders came down to sell forest- produce in towns, where they must have looked as strange as the Gorals of to-day in the streets of Cracow or Lemberg. On the borders of Gaul and Spain, in the shadowy valleys of the Pyrenees, Basque must have survived throughout the Roman age, as it has done ever since. On the high plateau of Asia Minor, where Greek was the dominant tongue of civilized folk, six or seven other dialects, Galatian, Phrygian, Lycaonian, and the rest, lived on till a very late date, espe¬ cially (as it seems) on the wild and remote pastures of the Imperial domain-lands.2 Some of these are survivals, noted 1 Jerome, comment, in epist. ad Galatas, ii. 3. He is the only authority and his accuracy has been doubted. But other survivals can be quoted from this region ; here, for instance, in the secluded region of Birkenfeld, the Celto-Roman culture is said to have resisted Germaniza- tion long after the lowlands had succumbed. (Cumont, Belgique romanisee, p. 95, takes the same view as I have given above.) 2 K. Holl, Hermes, xliii. 240-54 ; W. M. Ramsay, Oesterr. Jahreshefte, viii (1905), 79-120, quoting, amongst other things, a neophrygian text of a.d. 259 ; W. M. Calder, Hellenic Journal, xxxi. 161.