Don’t believe Roman lies about ancient Britons
SIR – The Rev His Honour Peter Morrell (Letters, January 23) argues that “the [Roman] invasion in 55 BC and subsequent colonisation of Britain was the best thing that ever happened to this country”.
To me, as an archaeologist, this is a contentious claim, and a strange context in which to judge “woke guilt about the British Empire”.
The Romans came for our corn. We were civilised farmers, not “hunter-gatherers clad in skins”. Don’t believe Roman propaganda of the time: the Celts were not barbarians but an egalitarian people with a rich and largely peaceful way of life – culturally different but judged by Rome inferior.
Under Roman rule, generations suffered military and economic exploitation, and traditional life was trashed. Civil administration was embedded so weakly that the Pax Romana in colonised Britannia soon broke down after 410 AD, and comparable rule wasn’t seen again until the Norman Conquest six centuries later.
Hardly “the best thing”.
Peter Saunders
Salisbury, Wiltshire