The history of Wales in the Roman era began in AD 48 with a military invasion by the imperial governor of Roman Britain. The conquest would be completed by 78, and Roman rule would endure until the region was abandoned in 383 AD. Once the conquest was complete, the region and the people living there would be a virtually anonymous part of Roman Britain until the Roman departure.
Roman rule in Wales was a military occupation, save for the southern coastal region of South Wales east of the Gower Peninsula, where there is a legacy of Romanisation, and some southern sites such as Carmarthen. The only town in Wales founded by the Romans, Caerwent, is located in South Wales. Wales was a rich source of mineral wealth, and the Romans used their engineering technology to extract large amounts of gold, copper, and lead, as well as modest amounts of some other metals such as zinc and silver.
It is the Roman campaigns of conquest that are most widely known, due to the spirited but unsuccessful defense of their homelands by two native tribes, the Silures and the Ordovices. Aside from the many Roman-related finds along the southern coast, Roman archaeological remains in Wales consist almost entirely of military roads and fortifications.
Read more about Wales In The Roman Era: Britain in AD 47, Invasion and Conquest, Religion, Irish Settlement, End of The Roman Era, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words wales, roman and/or era:
“I just come and talk to the plants, really—very important to talk to them, they respond I find.”
—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)