Camulodunum

• 1. Introduction

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  Camulodunum was Rome's first capital in Britain, a city that burned to the ground in a single night and then came back larger than before. It began as a Celtic stronghold called Camulodunon, meaning the fortress of the war god Camulos, and its name first appeared on coins minted by the tribal chieftain Tasciovanus between 20 and 10 BC. Today it survives as Colchester in Essex, carrying the faint echo of the Latin words colonia and castra in its very name.

  What kind of place was this? A chariot circus larger than anything else in Roman Britain. Walls that still stand over six metres high. A rebellion so violent that archaeologists can still see the ash layer it left behind. And a medieval legend connecting the town to Constantine the Great himself.

• 2. The Celtic Stronghold

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  The earliest Iron Age defences at Colchester are the Pitchbury Ramparts earthwork, north of the town between West Bergholt and Great Horkesley. The main earthworks of the Celtic oppidum came later, beginning in the 1st century BC, with most dating from the 1st century AD. Together they enclose an area of 1,000 hectares, making them the most extensive Iron Age defences of their kind in Britain. By comparison, the Iron Age defences at Wheathampstead covered only 35 hectares.

  The settlement was protected by rivers on three sides. The River Colne bounded the site to the north and east, while the Roman River valley formed the southern boundary. The earthworks were designed mainly to close off the western gap between these two river valleys, running mostly parallel to each other in a north-south direction.

  Inside those defences, three main zones shaped daily life. The Gosbecks farmstead was a high-status site believed to be the home of the tribal chieftains. The Sheepen site, located around what is now St Helena School on the banks of the River Colne, was a large industrial and port zone, where iron and leather working took place alongside an important coin mint. Two coins minted at Sheepen, one found in Colchester in 1980 and another found at Canterbury in 1978, depict boats. They are the only known depictions of sailing vessels from Iron Age Britain. The Lexden area held the burial mounds of the ruling class, containing imported Roman material from Europe.

  The ruling figures here came in succession. Addedomarus, a king of the Trinovantes, is the first identifiable ruler of Camulodunon, known from inscribed coins dating to around 25-10 BC. Tasciovanus of the Catuvellauni briefly seized the town around 10 BC, then was forced to withdraw, perhaps under Roman pressure, his coins dropping the title REX and switching to the Brythonic RICON. After that, Addedomarus was restored. Eventually, Tasciovanus' son Cunobelinus took power. Cunobelinus was friendly toward Rome, marking his coins with the word REX and classical motifs rather than traditional Gallo-Belgic designs. Roman writers called him King of the Britons, and the poet Strabo noted Rome's lucrative trade with Britain through places like the Sheepen port: grain, gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves, and hunting dogs. Iron ingots, slave chains, and storage vessels found at Sheepen appear to confirm this trade directly.

• 3. Claudius and Conquest

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  Around AD 40, Cunobelinus fell out with his son Adminius, who fled to Rome and was received by the Emperor Caligula. After Cunobelinus died, his sons Togodumnus and Caratacus took power and began expanding their influence over other British tribes, including the Atrebates of the south coast. Verica, king of the Atrebates, appealed to Rome for help, and the newly enthroned Emperor Claudius, needing a military victory to secure his shaky position, saw this as the perfect pretext.

  Aulus Plautius led four Roman legions across the Channel with Camulodunum as their main target. The Romans defeated and killed Togodumnus near the Thames, then waited for Claudius himself to cross with reinforcements, including artillery and elephants. Caratacus fled the storming of the town and took refuge with the Ordovices and Silures tribes in Wales, where he became a folk hero for his resistance to Rome. The historian Suetonius and Claudius' own triumphal arch record that after this battle the British kings who had been under Cunobelinus' sons' control surrendered without further bloodshed, with Claudius accepting their submission in Camulodunum itself.

  A Roman legionary fortress, the first permanent such structure to be built in Britain, was then established within the confines of the settlement. The Twentieth Legion made it their home. A smaller fort built against the Iron Age earthworks near Gosbecks held the Ala Primae Thracum, the First Wing of Thracians, a cavalry regiment, along with the Cohors Primae Vangionum, a mixed cavalry-infantry unit from Gaul. The fortress was larger than a standard castrum, protected by a palisaded ditch and wall, and its interior consisted of long barrack blocks each holding groups of eighty soldiers, with a large room for a centurion at one end of each block.

  When the legion was withdrawn around AD 49, the fortress was converted into a town. Its official name became Colonia Victricensis, populated by discharged Roman soldiers. Tacitus described it as a strong colonia of ex-soldiers established on conquered territory, built to provide protection against rebels and a centre for instructing the provincials in the procedures of the law. The Temple of Claudius, built there in the AD 50s and dedicated to the emperor on his death in 54, became the largest classical-style temple in Britain.

• 4. Boudica's Fire

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  Tensions arose in AD 60 and 61 when Roman authorities used the death of the Iceni king Prasutagus as a pretext for seizing his client state from his widow Boudica. The Iceni rebels were joined by the Trinovantes, who harboured specific grievances against the Roman population of Colonia Victricensis. These included the seizure of land for the veteran population, forced labour to build the Temple of Claudius, and the sudden recall of loans from leading Romans, including Seneca and the Emperor, which the local elites had needed to qualify for seats on the city council. The Procurator Catus Decianus was especially despised.

  Tacitus recorded the portents that townspeople reported before the attack: the statue of Victory fell down with its back turned as if retreating, women chanted of approaching destruction, a reflection of the colonia overthrown had been seen in the Thames estuary, and the sea appeared blood-red. Whether the citizens believed these omens or not, the town was undefended when the attack came, protected only by a garrison of 200 of the procurator's guard. Tacitus wrote of the last stand: in the attack everything was broken down and burnt. The temple where the soldiers had congregated was besieged for two days and then sacked.

  A relief army led by Quintus Petillius Cerialis and the Legio IX Hispana tried to reach the besieged citizens but was destroyed outside the town. The rebels burned the city to the ground and slaughtered its population.

  The destruction layer they left behind is one of archaeology's most precisely dated finds. At Williams and Griffin on the High Street, excavations in 2014 uncovered a collection of gold and silver jewellery buried in the floor of a Roman building destroyed during the revolt, a cache now known as the Fenwick Treasure. The layer itself, also found at Verulamium and Londinium, preserved beds and mattresses, a samian store, a glass store, wall plaster, tessellated floors, a few human bones with wounds, and even dates and plums, all frozen in the moment of AD 60. The layer is one of the first archaeological contexts in Britain that can be given a definitive date.

• 5. A City Rebuilt

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  After Governor Gaius Suetonius Paullinus crushed the revolt, the town was rebuilt on a larger scale than before, growing to 108 acres, or 45 hectares. Despite losing its status as provincial capital to Londinium, it reached its peak in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Its official name was Colonia Claudia Victricensis, though contemporaries called it Camulodunum or simply Colonia.

  New walls went up, the first town walls in Britain, predating other such walls in the province by at least 150 years. Completed by 80, twenty years after the revolt, they were 2,800 metres long and 2.4 metres thick, built with alternating layers of tile and septaria mudstone, using 45,000 cubic metres of stone, tile, and mortar in total. In the 21st century they still survive to a height of over six metres in places. The Balkerne Gate, incorporated from the earlier monumental arch, stands as Britain's largest Roman gateway, and skulls showing signs of decapitation were found in the town ditch in front of it, interpreted as public executions.

  In 2005, archaeologists discovered the only known Roman circus in Britain on the southern outskirts of the colonia. About 450 metres long, built in the early 2nd century, with eight starting-gates, it could accommodate at least 8,000 spectators and perhaps up to double that number. A 5,000-seat theatre stood at the Gosbecks site, making it Britain's largest at 82 metres in diameter. A 3,000-seat theatre on the modern Maidenburgh Street has the Norman chapel of St Helena built into its corner.

  The town also produced and traded on an impressive scale. The Samian pottery industry operated from around 160 to 200, with over 400 fragments of Samian moulds uncovered in the town, including 37 complete examples. A well-preserved kiln near Middleborough was 8 feet wide, with a 5-metre flue, and used a complex system of ceramic pipes to regulate the oxidisation that gave the pottery its distinctive red colour. Pottery made in Camulodunum reached as far as Eboracum. The famous Colchester Vase, made around 200, depicts gladiators named Memnon and Valentinus. Imports arriving in return included Falernian wine, olive oil, jet, marble, and dates from across the Empire.

• 6. People of the Colonia

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  The tombstones of Camulodunum tell stories that no narrative history recorded. The tomb of Longinus Sdapeze, a Thracian cavalryman from the country district of Sardica, describes him as Duplicarius of the Ala Primae Thracum who lived for forty years with fifteen years of paid service. His tombstone, carved in triumph over a cowering Briton, was set up by his heirs as stipulated in his will.

  Marcus Favonius Facilis, a centurion from Rome who served with the Twentieth Legion, has one of the finest surviving military portraits in Britain. His memorial was placed by two of his freedmen, Verecundus and Noucius. A centurion from Nicaea in Bithynia, in what is now western Turkey, served twice with Legio Tertiae Augusta and twice more with Legio Vicesimae Valeria before dying in Camulodunum. Another tomb belonged to a former collector of taxes from the First Cohort of Vangiones, the Gaulish unit.

  The 2nd-century tomb of Gnaeus Munatius Aurelius Bassus, discovered in Rome rather than Colchester, lists his extraordinary career: procurator of the Emperor, prefect of three cohorts, census officer of the Roman citizens of Colonia Victricensis which is in Britain at Camulodunum, overseer of the Nomentum Road, patron of the municipality, priest for life, and dictator four times. A bronze military diplomata found at the Sheepen site records the retirement of a legionary soldier named Saturninus.

  Religious dedications show a similarly diverse population. A bronze plaque dedicated between 222 and 235 CE was placed by a man named Lossius Veda, grandson of Vepogenus Caledos, a Caledonian from Scotland, offering thanks to the god of the battlefields Mars Medocius and to the victory of the Emperor Alexander. A local artisan named Maronius built a monument to Mercury and the Spirits of the Emperor on behalf of a freedman. The late Roman church at Butt Road, just outside the town walls, contained over 650 graves, some holding fragments of Chinese silk, with a coin sequence running from 320 to around 425.

• 7. Decline and Continuity

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  The late 3rd century brought raids by Saxon pirates and the breakaway Gallic Empire, of which Britain was briefly a part. The fort at Othona, overlooking the confluence of the Blackwater and Colne estuaries, and two more at the mouth of the River Colne were built to protect the town. Balkerne Gate and Duncan's Gate were blocked up, the latter showing signs of attack. By 300, the extramural suburbs outside Balkerne Gate had been replaced by cultivation beds, and a hoard of 1,247 coins was buried in a grey-ware pot at Hyderabad Barracks.

  The town shrank in the 4th century but did not die. By around 350, some 75 percent of the large townhouses had been replaced by smaller buildings. Yet a period of building activity between 275 and 325, sometimes called the Constantinian renaissance, produced new houses and reshaped old ones. The Temple of Claudius underwent large-scale structural additions in the 4th century, with a large apsidal hall built across its podium steps and numismatic evidence dating activity up to at least 395. New coins stopped arriving around 395, silver coins around 402, though they likely remained in use after that. The coin sequence at the Butt Road church runs up to around 425, fourteen years after Roman rule formally ended.

  Late Roman military equipment found in the town includes an official belt buckle made in Pannonia for Roman frontier units. Alongside it, archaeologist Philip Crummy has interpreted finds of 4th and early 5th century Germanic weaponry and domestic objects as possibly representing Saxon foederati, mercenaries living and settling in the town decades before the wider Saxon migrations of the mid to late 5th century.

  Excavations of the former Goojerat and Hyderabad Barracks in 2004 and 2010 found pagan 5th century burials with Germanic weapons, nine of them in burial mounds surrounded by circular ditches. A Germanic-style brooch dated to around the 420s was found at Guildford Road Estate alongside beads from a necklace dated to somewhere between 400 and 440. The shell of Roman Camulodunum, walls and streets and ruined buildings alike, continued to shape the city above it. Colchester first re-enters the written historical record explicitly in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 917, when King Edward the Elder retook it from the Danes and restored the borough to English rule. Over 25,000 cubic metres of reused Roman tile and brick went into Colchester Castle alone, and a study by Colchester Archaeological Trust in the late 1970s found that many medieval property boundaries within the town centre followed the lines of Roman street frontages, with the High Street frontage between St Runwald's Church and Maidenburgh Street described as having fossilized the imprint of the Roman town underneath.