Roman Influence on British Culture

Fashion and Food

Life changed very little for the native peasants living outside the towns and villa estates, their houses remained simple undecorated huts, their clothes were made from home-spun wool, and they grew their own grain for the staple diet of bread and porridge.

The Romanized and urbanized middle and upper classes lived in style and comfort, eating a wide variety of food, drinking good wines and enjoying social life.

A man wore a simply cut tunic which also did service as a nightshirt. If he were on official business he would wear a toga over the tunic, but if not he would put on a long overtunic held in by a belt and, in cold weather a cloak. Footwear was usually leather sandals on bare feet, or boots in cold wet weather.

A lady, assisted by a servant, took great care over her appearance. She used cosmetic paste, wore an ankle-length tunic covered by a shorter one or toga-type drapery and she wore brightly coloured sandals. The colour of a lady’s dress would denote her rank, as would the jewellery she wore.

The main meal of the day, with food selected from a wide range of meat, fruit and vegetables, was eaten in the evening.

Religion

Romans were driven by superstition and worshipped both their own and other people’s deities. Superstition and the fear of giving offence might be why they acknowledged most of the 400 Celtic gods religions provided they were not subversive, as Christianity was first considered to be because it would not accept emperor worship or any other god.

Decline and Fall

The civil and military authorities tolerated almost all the empire itself which was threatened by weak emperors and pressure on its over-extended frontiers.

In 367AD the unthinkable happened – the Scots from Ireland, the Picts from Scotland and the Saxons and Franks from across the North Sea all attacked at the same time. Theodosius finally drove the enemy out. There was peace for a while and modest prosperity in the towns. In 383AD another general, Maximus, seized power in Britain and was defeated in 388AD. Emperor Honorious released Britain from her allegiance. It was the end of Roman Britain.

The Legacy

The Romans left Britain with a fine road system and navigable inland waterways which enabled cargoes to be moved inland. They also create a complex system of natural rivers and canals, and much of it still exists. They introduced many species of fruit and vegetable, such as cherries, grapes, figs, mulberries and raisins, radishes, peas, broad beans and celery, which provided a more varied and healthy diet.

The mineral wealth of the country had been exploited and 50 large walled towns had been built, most of which evolved into modern towns and cities.

The Christian church introduced by the Romans kept the Roman language and literature alive in the period following the fall of the empire and this enabled scholars, intellectuals, churchmen and scientists of the former Roman world to communicate with each other.

The English language has changed over the centuries, one of the greatest influences has been that of Latin because of 365 years of Roman Invasion.

Borrowings and Calques

Borrowing is the introduction of a word from one language or dialect into another.

Calque is a type of borrowing where the parts are translated in the new language. A calque is an expression which is translated literally from an expression in a foreign language, such as ‘marriage of convenience’ in English, which is a direct word-for-word translation of the French phrase mariage de convenance.

Latin influence on Old English

The influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight due to the fact that the Celts were thought to be an inferior race in relation to the Anglo-Saxons. However, it was different with Latin because it was the language of a higher civilisation and its contact at first commercial and military, later religious and intellectual, extended over many centuries and was constantly renewed.

Latin also influenced the OE lexicon by occasioning the formation of semantic loans, loan translations (or calques) and loan creations. Consider, for example, the semantic loan OE cniht for L discipulus, in which native OE cniht, ‘boy’ or ‘servant,’ assumes the additional sense of L discipulus, ‘disciple.’ Such translations are abundant in the OE lexicon.

The literary age began only after the arrival of the Roman missionaries, led by St Augustine, who came to Kent in AD 597. Large numbers of Latin manuscripts were produced, especially of the Bible and other religious texts.

Latin influence in the Germanic Period

Long before English began its separate existence, while it was merely a regional type of Germanic; those who spoke it had acquired a number of Latin words that are common to several or to all of the Germanic Languages to this day. Unlike a good many later borrowings. They are mostly concerned with military affairs, commerce, agriculture, or with refinements of living that the Germanic peoples had acquired through a fairly close contact with the Romans since at least the beginning of the Christian era.

‘Wine’ (OE win, Lat vinum), for instance, is a word that denotes a thing the Germanic peoples learned about from the Romans. It is to be found in one form or another in all the Germanic Languages: ‘Wein’ in Modern German, ‘wijn’ in Modern Dutch, ‘vin’ in Danish and Swedish.