ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Salway: Geography and the growth of towns, with special reference to Britain
being deliberately sited on land in imperial hands. If that
is the case, the difference is likely to have lain in a much
stricter Flavian supervision of the geographical boundaries
between the new colonies and their neighbours, and
may help to explain why Cirencester, for example,
managed to flourish without being stifled by its proximity
to Gloucester. Political, we may begin to suspect, was as
important as physical geography.
Situations of this kind cannot have been uncommon.
Another factor entered when Roman political as well as
strategic importance had already been attached to a site
before the city’s foundation. At Cologne the Ara Ubiorum,
the centre for the imperial cult in Germany, was established
in 9 BC where the friendly tribe of the Ubii had been
deliberately resettled by Rome as early as 38 BC (Hellenkemper
1983, 20-3). Claudius’s Colonia Claudia Ara
Agrippinensium did not follow till AD 50. Here we have
three different layers of imperial action, each focused on
the same spot by a combination of politics and geography,
and implying an exceedingly complicated set of relationships
for the lawyers, administrators, and landsurveyors
to sort out in the planning office and in the field.
Are there periods in Romano-British history or particular
situations recognizable on the ground where we should
be especially alert to the possibility of such problems
having existed? Cologne in AD 50 is not irrelevant here,
since we have the certainty that the Colchester colonia was
founded in 49 and the possibility that London was
deliberately planted at almost exactly the same time. In
general terms, it is reasonable to assume that both these
British sites were associated in some way with the
movement forward on the western frontier. Tacitus says
as much for Colchester (Annals, xii.32), and I will return
later to the origins of London. But London and Colchester
also commanded the two principal points of entry for sea
traffic from the Low Countries and the Rhine. I agree with
the view that the wealth and political influence of
Cunobelinus in pre-conquest Britain was probably very
closely bound up with his geographical location: that his
taking of Colchester gave him the critical control of the
route between Britain and the Rhine. I certainly suspect
that British agricultural production expanded before the
conquest to meet the opportunities presented by the
appearance of large permanent Roman garrisons on the
Rhine. Sited at Colchester, Cunobelinus was in the ideal
geographical position to elicit diplomatic ‘gifts’ both from
his British compatriots and from the Romans. On the one
hand he could facilitate or block the passage of the luxury
status-symbol imports from the Roman world which were
destined for other British princes; on the other he could
command the respect of Romans anxious to purchase
British exports, whether as supplies for the army or in
private trade. I am sure this explains the characteristics of
such sites as Skeleton Green, and it is the most probable
explanation for the Welwyn silver or the Augustan cups
from Hockwold.
If a good deal of Cunobelinus’s power and prestige was
based on an astute exploitation of geography, then it
follows that it is geography that ultimately lies at the
bottom of the importance in early Roman Britain of
Colchester. It was undoubtedly the preeminence of the
Catuvellaunian royal house that determined Colchester as
the scene of the imperial final act of the initial campaign;
and that in turn must have influenced Claudius in settling
70
on Colchester both as the site of the first colony in Britain
and as the centre of the imperial cult. We may also assume
that the preexistence of the trade route, whether through
Colchester alone or through this and neighbouring Essex
estuaries, must have given this district enormous initial
importance in military communications and supply.
What, then, of London? The paucity of Iron Age
material suggests that there would have been little to draw
the attention of Claudius or his commanders in the first
stages of the conquest, except perhaps the bridge that
features in the account of the crossing of the Thames. And
that is perhaps symbolic. The new importance given to the
south and south-east of England by the Claudian bases in
Kent and the Southampton area shifted the balance away
from a concentration on the east coast. At a fairly early
stage after 43, as the first permanent forts west and north
began to be established, someone must have realized that
London was the natural hub for land communications and
consequently had far more potential as the major port than
anywhere on the east coast. If London was deliberately
founded, then I think the decision must have been based
on an official reappraisal of the geographical situation; and
I would argue that the assessment was made in the context
of the renewed military expansion of the province from 48
onwards. An absence — or virtual absence — of existing
native settlement at London will have been a bonus,
permitting the founders to work untrammelled by such
administrative problems as may have occurred at Cologne.
But if we accept that London was a deliberate foundation,
can we create another step in the hypothesis by
considering the character of its first phase, as it now seems
to be emerging? If the earliest structural evidence does
seem to have a predominantly civilian character, then we
have to consider where the early administration of the
province was situated. It has, of course, long been
suspected that the provincial procurator’s office was in
London at an early date. But what about the civil
functions of the governor?
I think it is reasonable to assume that the governor’s
office was first set up in the base camp at Richborough.
During the early phases of the conquest most of his staff
will have moved with the governor on campaign, though
one might perhaps expect a communications unit to have
remained at Richborough at the British end of the short
route to Gaul. The establishment of the legionary fortress
at Colchester and the ‘gradual reduction of the nearer part
of Britain into the regular form of a province’ (Tacitus,
Agricola, xiv. 1), should have led to greater stability among
the staff dealing with civil affairs and their fairly continuous
stationing in one place — probably the headquarters
building of the fortress. But does it follow that, when
the legion moved and the colonia was founded in 49,
Colchester as a civil town necessarily retained its function
as ‘capital’ of Britain?
The presence of the premier temple of the imperial cult,
whether or not there was a temple of Claudius during his
lifetime, has led to the assumption that the colonia was
indeed the capital. The elaborate laying-out of this temple
area, outside the limits of the former fortress, might seem
prima facie to support the idea, perhaps indicating a
permanent base for the provincial council, and maybe
accommodation for the provincial administration as well.
The link between provincial council and imperial cult
centre is a natural one. It is, for example, demonstrated in