MILITARY ELEMENTS OF ROMAN KENT

I. INTRODUCTION: CLASSIS BRITANNICA AND LITUS SAXONICUM

   The garrison of Roman Britain was concentrated in the hill-districts and frontiers, the west and north of the province. Here, as we have seen, were fortresses and forts, legions and auxilia, while the midlands, the south and the south-east were untroubled by soldiery and policed themselves. To this general arrangement there was one exception. The narrow seas between Britain and the Continent were never left unwatched. From the time of the Claudian invasion a Classis Britannica of triremes, and doubtless also of lesser ships, provided a guard against pirates who might venture in from Ireland or Caledonia or Germany. Despite its title, its principal station was in Gaul, at Boulogne—Gessoriacum, or Bononia as it was later called—the chief Gaulish harbour for British travellers and traffic. Less important stations existed in Britain, at Dover and at Lympne, and a hint of it has been found at Folkestone. We can trace this fleet throughout the first 250 years of Romano-British history, though we have no detailed knowledge of the number of its triremes, or the size and composition of its crews, or the success and efficiency of its work. In the end it became a danger and not a defence. In A.D. 287 it helped its admiral Carausius to usurp and keep the empire of Britain, unwelcome colleague to Diocletian and Maximian. When the central government recovered the island in 297, the fleet was altered. It was either abolished, or it ceased to be a definite fleet under one command. Certainly we can detect no vestige of its existence in the fourth century. But a small classis Sambrica now appears at Etaples, and may have been its successor in policing the Gaulish coast, while, as will be seen below (p.18), ships still seem to have aided in the defence of Britain.⁵ 
    But a fleet was no longer enough to guard the Channel and the lands on either side of it. The danger from pirates, and especially from German pirates, had grown rapidly and terribly towards the close of the third century, and soon the littorals of both south-eastern Britain and north-western Gaul
   ⁵  No good account of the fleet exists, nor indeed is there material with which to write one. That it was in being during the first three centuries is proved by the following datable evidence:—
   (a) An inscription of a trierarch under Claudius or Nero, found at Boulogne, Corpus Inscr. Lat. xiii, 3542; (b) events in A.D. 70, Tac. Hist. iv, 79; (c) the use of a fleet by Agricola in A.D. 82—4; (d) an inscription of a tribune, of Hadrian’s time, Corpus, xi, 5632; (e) a reference by a lawyer of the same epoch, Digest, xxxvi, 1—46; (f) two inscriptions of the second or early third century, found near Hadrian’s Wail, Corpus, vii, 864, 970; (g) an inscription of about A.D. 245, Corpus, xii, 686; (h) a rather rhetorical reference to the fleet in A.D: 287, Eumenius, Paneg. Constantio Caesari, 12. No later mention of a British fleet occurs. The Notitia, which records the classis Sam6rica in Gaul, is silent about a classis Britannica. The passages cited by Fiebiger to prove its continued existence in the fourth century (Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Classis) prove nothing of the sort; some of them, indeed, suggest the contrary, and the evidence at Lympne (p. 58) agrees with these. For the station at Boulogne see Corpus, xiii, 3529 foil. and Vaillant’s papers; for Lympne and Dover see below. The significance of the evidence from Folkestone (Winbolt, Roman Folkestone; cf. p. I 14 below), which consists of stamped tiles (P1. XXII, No. 2), still awaits critical consideration. The idea of Hübner and Fiebiger that the fleet also had stations at London, Gloucester, and Portus Magnus (Portsmouth) is most improbable in itself and is wholly devoid of evidence.