ABSTRACT
In the late fourth century the Roman empire and its civilisation held intact. Mistress of the known world, Rome still had immense resources and the prestige of the civilisation which had dominated the Mediterranean basin and much of Europe for half a millennium. Yet by the middle of the fifth century most of her European and African possessions were effectively under the control of barbarian peoples, and Rome’s attempts to reassert her authority were becoming increasingly futile. Britain was no exception; in the late fourth century she was still a diocese of the empire with the administration, the economy and the society fashioned by three hundred years of Roman rule still firmly in place. But by the middle of the fifth century Britain was no longer ruled from Rome, and all the apparatus of Roman civilisation and values was in pieces. In this chapter we shall examine not only the varied evidence for what was going on, but we shall try to order it so as to bring out why it was happening. The upper point of the date bracket has been chosen for two reasons; the first is that it approximately coincides with an observable change in the archaeological record. The second is that it makes the point that the ending of Roman Britain was rooted within the Roman period and must be seen within the framework of the demise of the western part of the empire, and certainly not only attributed to the deus ex machina of Germanic invasion.
