ABSTRACT
After perhaps two centuries of relative isolation, the communities of southern England again became closely involved with their neighbours across the English Channel from about 120 BC onwards. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but a major contributory factor must have been the effects of a westward expansion of Roman power and an extension of trading at this time. The first century BC was a period of major change in Roman politics. The State was rapidly evolving, largely under pressure from ambitious leaders with an efficient military machine at their disposal. By 100 BC Roman provinces had been established along the northern coast of the Mediterranean from Portugal to Asia Minor. North of the Alps the provinces of Cisalpine and Narbonensis Gaul had been founded. Thus in 62 BC, when Pompey returned to Rome triumphant at his conquests in the East, his rival Julius Caesar sought an equivalent chance to bolster his military prestige and to build up his financial resources in the west. Three years later he began his famous campaigns to conquer Gaul. By 57 BC he had taken Gaul and soon after established the frontiers of the Roman world along the coast of northern France and Belgium and eastwards along the Rhine. Britain remained outside direct Roman rule for nearly a century after the conquest of Gaul, but throughout that time languished on the periphery of one of the greatest civilizations in history.
