ROMAN BRITAIN is usually thought of as a place full of togas, towns and baths, with native Britons happily going about their lives under the watchful gaze of Rome. This, however, is a myth that developed long after Roman control of Britain came to an end, when the British Empire was at its height in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Britain was, in fact, one of the least enthusiastic outposts of the Roman Empire. Many Britons failed to acknowledge the Roman lifestyle at all, while many others were only outwardly Romanised, clinging to, or only mildly adapting, their former identities throughout the occupation. Even the Roman Army in Britain became chronically rebellious and a source of instability that ultimately affected the whole Empire. As the power of Rome weakened in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Britons abandoned Rome and almost all aspects of Mediterranean culture, Britannia becoming a land of warring kingdoms.