Quote:Was life in Sub -Roman Britain a subsistence existance??? I find that hard to accept as from what I understand farming practices changed little in the periods before, during and after the 5th centrury.

Quote:I doubt very much that the people working the land, living outside of big towns, noticed much of a difference. Sure, the man that they had to give stuff to dressed differently and spoke differently. Not that they ever spoke to the man in charge anyway. I suppose there might even have been a period where they got to keep anything they grew all to themselves....seems unlikley though. Somebody always fills a power vacuum, even if it's only on a very small, temporary level.

Quote: In A.D. 407, the last legion left to support Constantine III's bid for imperial purple.

Quote: In 410, Honrius told the Britons to look to their own defenses.

Quote: In 429, St. Germanus, supposedly a fomer military man, is said to have helped stop an attack by combined Pictish and Scottish forces--the so-called Alleluia victory--but a generation later,
In 447, Germanus (may have) returned to Britain and reported local admin and churches much deteriorated . Assumedly military prowess degraded with the other trappings of Roman culture.

Quote: By the time Gildas wrote of the Ruination of Britannia (late fifth or early sixth century), things are pretty much flushed down the toilet.

Quote:Earlier in his Jeremiad, Gildas refers to the Romans sending "forward, like eagles in their flight, their unexpected bands of cavalry" against invading Scots and Picts. (Assumed to refer to Stilicho's second rescue, circa 418.) That places effective mounted Roman soldiers in Britannia in the corporate memory of Britons of the fifth and sixth century. (Gildas wrote circa 545.) Such a memory may have influenced the rub-Roman Britons to try to emulate the Roman practice.
Gildas is also who we have to thank for our earliest "Arthur" reference, that of the Briton victory at "the seige of Bath hill". Despite Gildas having named many other names which have appeared in this thread, he neglected to tell us who led the Britons in that victory which brought Britannia a generation of peace--perhaps their last before the Saxons gradually pushed the Briton remnant into Cornwall and Wales.

Quote:Recently (perhaps fifteen minutes ago, but maybe not :wink: ) a well known Oxford type even suggested that "some Britons turned themselves into Saxons." That is the "new" perspective, if not simplistic. Certainly there was acquisance, even for reasons of avoiding bloodshed. BUT, and I give it a Huge BUT, there was no signs of acquisance in the areas of Dumnonia to Gwent; even into Demetia... except for an uneasy "peace" with the Irish. Once again we are looking at the regional seats of Romano-British power and prestiege with Gwent at the highest status. Here in the southwest (which became our Wales as we know it) there was no acquisance yet a stubborn, and successful, rebuff of Saxon invasions and rule. Just a thought.

Quote:That would have been the senible thing to do--roughly how the Romans ruled conquered peoples--but do we know whether the Anglo-Saxons did so?

we know germanic peoples did not generally slaughter women and children.even steppe peoples only did so to terrify their enemies and discourage resistance.mass slaughter was wasteful.

A different thread pretty well laid to rest the idea that the Germans slaugtered the Britons. Apparently some sort of assimilation occurred, but do we know whether the Briton hieracrhy was retained or replaced by Germanic overlords, as the Normans largely did to the English six hundred years later?

Quote:"Roads vanish"? I lived in Oxfordshire in the 1980s: the Roman roads were still there then. In fact, our local joke was: If a road is straight it was probably built by the Romans, the British never seemed to do as well thereafter.