It both begins and ends with an invasion: the first Roman invasion in 55 BC and the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066. Add ‘in between were the Anglo-Saxons and then the Vikings’. There is overlap between the various invaders, and through it all, the Celtic British population remained largely in place.

Julius Caesar

55 BC

The Romans also introduced staple foods such as apples, pears and peas to Britain.

Constantine III

The city of Rome was under attack and the empire was falling apart, so the Romans had to leave to take care of matters back home. After they left, the country fell into chaos. Native tribes and foreign invaders battled each other for power.

Invasions by Barbarian tribes The most straightforward theory for Western Rome’s collapse pins the fall on a string of military losses sustained against outside forces. Rome had tangled with Germanic tribes for centuries, but by the 300s “barbarian” groups like the Goths had encroached beyond the Empire’s borders….

Scotland had valuable natural resources, like lead, silver and gold. The Romans could also get rich by charging the people they conquered taxes and forcing them to become slaves. But the tribes weren’t about to give up their lands without a fight.

This resulted in the Anglo-Saxons becoming overlords of the south-eastern half of Britain, whilst the general populace continued in its usual way. The Roman era had ended and the Anglo-Saxon era had begun. But Britain was now no longer Roman. The Roman era had ended and the Anglo-Saxon era had begun….

As different cultures settled in what would later become Italy, each brought their own gods and forms of worship. This made the religion of ancient Rome polytheistic, in that they worshipped many gods. They also worshipped spirits. Rivers, trees, fields and buildings each had their own spirit, or numen.

four hundred years

Hibernia

Caesar makes impossible claims about the number of Gauls killed (over a million), while claiming almost zero Roman casualties….Gallic Wars.

The Romans (Latin: Rōmānī, Classical Greek: Rhōmaîoi) were a cultural group, variously referred to as an ethnicity or a nationality, that in classical antiquity, from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD, came to rule large parts of Europe, the Near East and North Africa through conquests made during the Roman …

With the Roman Conquest in 43 AD came the first written records of England’s history. In 43 AD the Emperor Claudius resumed the work of Caesar by ordering the invasion of Britain under the command of Aulus Plautius. The Romans quickly established control over the tribes of present day southeastern England.

The final Viking invasion of England came in 1066, when Harald Hardrada sailed up the River Humber and marched to Stamford Bridge with his men. His battle banner was called Land-waster. The English king, Harold Godwinson, marched north with his army and defeated Hardrada in a long and bloody battle….

The areas where Roman descent is the greatest is of course modern Italy. People in Italy tend to be a mixture of celts, Germanic Lombards, ancient Etruscans, and of course a very large amount of Latin ancestry, the original name for the Romans. The descendants of the Romans today, are living all across Europe.

Today, there are no empires, at least not officially. Officially, there are no empires now, only 190-plus nation-states. Yet the ghosts of empires past continue to stalk the Earth….