Summary of Peter Salway's Roman Britain

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The origins of Roman Britain go back beyond the Roman period.

The culture of Britain had developed forms of organization similar to those encountered by the Romans elsewhere in north-western Europe by the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age.#2 The process of absorption proceeded so far that two whole centuries before the end of Roman rule in Britain, all the non-slave permanent inhabitants of the empire were included in citizenship by an imperial act of policy.#3 The difference between Roman Britain and what went before is that its society was literate, and this allowed the rule of law to be implemented more efficiently.

As a society that became more and more dominated by regulations and procedures contained in official documents, the contrast between Roman Britain and Britain at the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age is striking.#4 The physical geography of a country has a great effect on how people live.

Britain is no exception, and its outstanding characteristic is the broad division between highland and lowland.

The inhabitants had already grown to something of the order they reached under the Romans by the Roman Conquest.