Britannia, the name applied by Cæsar and other Roman writers to the island of Great Britain; Aristotle having referred to the Nesoi Bretannikai ('British isles') as early as the 4th century B.C. According to Rhys, Britannia has nothing to do with the Welsh brith, 'spotted, tattooed,' from which it is commonly derived; but 'so far as we know, the only Celtic words which can be of the same origin are the Welsh vocables brethyn, "cloth," and its congeners;' in which case the Britons may have styled themselves 'cloth-clad' in contradistinction to the skin-wearing neolithic nation that preceded them (see CELTS). Though the Romans kept possession of Britain for nearly four centuries (43-410 A.D.), their occupation of it remained essentially military, and consequently the influence of their civilisation was to a great extent restricted to the towns. The general tendency of their government was to break up the native tribal system, and substitute their own in its stead, but in this they did not succeed so completely as in Gaul and Spain, neither did the Latin language displace the native British, as it did in these countries. The country south of the Solway Firth and the mouth of the Tyne, in the reign of Claudius, formed one Roman province under a consular legatus and a procurator. Ptolemy mentions seventeen native tribes as inhabiting this tract. Severus (210 A.D.) divided it into two parts, Britannia Inferior, the southern, and Britannia Superior, the northern, placing these under separate prefects. In the division of the empire under Diocletian, Britain was made a diocese in the prefecture of Gaul, and was governed by a vicarius residing at Eboracum (York). It was divided into five provinces, of which the boundaries, though uncertain, are supposed to have been as follows: Britannia Prima, England south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel; Britannia Secunda, Wales; Flavia Cæsariensis, the country between the Thames, Severn, Mersey, and Humber; Maxima Cæsariensis, the rest of England to the Wall of Hadrian; and Valentia—soon abandoned by the Romans—or Scotland south of the Wall of Antoninus. The population of Roman Britain was in the main Celtic, divided, as at present, into two branches, the Cymric and Gadhelic. The former occupied the south and east, the latter the north and west. Besides these, there probably existed remnants of two earlier races which were ultimately absorbed, a small dark-haired race possibly akin to the Basques (q.v., hence sometimes called Euskarian), and a tall fair-haired race supposed to be of Finnish descent. The traces of the dark stock are most marked in South-west England, South Wales, and parts of the Scottish Highlands. To insure the obedience of the natives, at least three Roman legions—chiefly composed of Gauls,
Germans, Iberians, and but few pure Romans—were stationed in Britain—viz. at Eboracum, Deva (Chester), and Isca (Caerleon) in South Wales. Under the Romans, many towns (coloniæ and municipia)—fifty-six are enumerated by Ptolemy—arose in Britain, and formed centres of Roman law and civilisation. The towns of Eboracum (York) and Verulamium (near St Albans) had the privileges of Roman citizenship. The Romans made many roads or streets (strata), of which there are still numerous remains, across the country, all centring in London. They also developed it into a corn-growing country. Druidism was the religion of the Britons at their conquest by the Romans, but the latter introduced Christianity and Roman literature into the country, though Christianity was not recognised as the state religion till 324 A.D. There are many remains still extant of the presence of the Romans in Britain, such as camps, roads, ruins of houses, baths, flues, altars, mosaic pavements, painted walls, metallic implements and ornaments, weapons, tools, utensils, pottery, coins, sculptures, bronzes, inscriptions, &c. These remains show that the Romans wished to render their British conquests permanent, and that they had greatly improved the arts of the ancient Britons, as is evident on comparing the remains with the far ruder native antiquities of the British pre-Roman or prehistoric era, such as tumuli, barrows, earthworks, so-called Druidical monoliths and circles, cromlechs, cairns, pottery, weapons, tools, utensils, ornaments, &c. Many of the Roman remains in Britain also show that the Romans had introduced into the country the refinements and luxuries of Rome itself. See ENGLAND, ROADS, WATLING STREET; Elton's Origins of English History (1882), and Scarth's Roman Britain (1883).