Paul Cooper
speaker
254 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 5 Jun
Paul Cooper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Now, all of these threats menacing Roman Britain meant that it needed a large garrison.
This was somewhere between three to four legions at various times, which is up to 16,000 soldiers.
But these were augmented by many thousands of auxiliaries, who are usually local people who are armed and trained and so on by Rome, but who aren't necessarily citizens.
It's an ongoing question of debate, but I would say that Britain struggled to become as integrated as Gaul, which is what we call France today.
No Briton ever was raised to the rank of equite, which was one of the highest ranks in Roman society and was required to hold positions of power, to become a statesman.
So we get a sense that Britons were never really considered fully Romanized.
Certainly in towns like Camulodunum, Colchester, or Londinium, London, there was a great Romanized population.
There, people were living large on olives and wine from Gaul,
red-gloss pottery, all of the signs and symbols of Roman excess and luxury.
People were building villas with mosaic floors.
But outside in the countryside, people still lived in roundhouses with turf walls and thatched ceilings, living much as people had in the British Iron Age.
So we get the sense of a two-tier system.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Although it was subject to invasions, raids from these people outside the empire, the time of Roman Britain was a time of relative peace while the empire flourished.
When Rome had arrived, Britain had been a patchwork of, you know, tribes like the Ikenai.
Exactly, yes.
Yeah, well, I live in Norwich, so Boudicca is a big figure for us.
The Ikenai were our local tribe and they burnt Colchester to the ground, something I think they've never quite forgiven us for.
Yeah, he's a remarkable guy who's born in North Africa and is a classic Roman statesman who's flown into Britain to rule over these unruly people as a Roman.
He is therefore in charge of one of the largest armies in the empire, which is necessary to defend Britain from all the threats it faces, but also provides an irresistible temptation to anyone who leads it.
Showing 101–120 of 254 · page 6 of 13
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