Whereas the catalysts for the dissemination of Roman religion in Britain were obviously the Roman army and the administration, reducing Romano-British syncretism to the wholesale absorption of befitting local deities into the Roman pantheon would be overly simplistic. On the contrary, Roman Britain was characterised by the co-existence of religious cults whose interaction fostered continuity with the past while giving impetus to the creation of new ones. Such diversity reflects the multi-ethnic make-up of the Roman army stationed in Britannia whose members were not just from Italy but hailed from all corners of the Empire. This, in turn, fostered a two-way process of religious identity negotiation whereby existing cults were adopted and vice versa and their rituals enhanced through the import of typically Roman ‘worship technologies’ such as epigraphy and iconography. One way in which this occurred was through what John Creighton has called the ‘creation of the familiar’ in his book Britannia: The Creation of a Roman Province. Roman Gods were given Romano-British names and the same god was oftentimes depicted differently. Our Romans topic booklist for KS2 features a curated selection of books for your next primary school history topic. With fictional stories about life in the Roman Empire like classroom favourite The Roman Mysteries series, Romans picturebooks including Escape from Pompeii and Roman themed comic books including the graphic-novel-style Gods, Emperors and Dormice, there are plenty of quality text options for schools to choose from for this topic.

Lowland British Celtic was the language of pre-Roman Britain and the language encountered by the Germanic colonists of the 5th century; has seen a flurry of books published about early medieval Britain – The First Kingdom by Max Adams; Early Medieval Britain, c 500-1000 by Rory Naismith; and The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England by Marc Morris. While Adams focuses on the immediate post-Roman period from the fifth to the early seventh centuries, Naismith and Morris take the history of Britain from the departure of the legions to the threshold of the Norman conquest. Caesar, then, at this time was the first of the Romans to cross the Rhine, and later, in the consulship of Pompey and Crassus, he crossed over to Britain. This country is sixty miles distant, by the shortest way, from the Belgic mainland, where the Morini dwell, and extends alongside the rest of Gaul and nearly all of Spain, reaching out into the sea. To the very earliest of the Greeks and Romans it was not even known to exist, while to their descendants it was a matter of dispute whether it was a continent or an island ; and accounts of it have been written from both points of view by many who knew nothing about it, because they had not seen it with their own eyes nor heard about it from the natives with their own ears, but indulged in surmises according to the scholarly sect or the branch of learning to which they severally belonged. In the lapse of time, however, it has been clearly proved to be an island, first under Agricola, the propraetor, and now under the emperor Severus. But I won't have the idea of Boudicca's being pretend even in my house, let alone entertain it, because as far as I could tell, the only thing that makes her likely to be fictional is that she's female. (grrrr) If one is to argue that large-scale immigration is unnecessary to explain the rapid adoption of Continental building and burial styles, material culture and language, one must at least allow for a continuous and fluid commerce in ideas, trade items and people in both directions.Children in lower KS2 may be better suited to shorter chapter books with a little more humour and a little less gore. My Family and Other Romans is one of the newer books on this reading list and adds a good dose of humour to some rich historical detail about Ancient Rome – as does A Gladiator Stole My Lunchbox. As Vita struggles to solve the mystery of who murdered her father, she must also decide where her allegiances lie. Through her journey, she discovers that people – like Brea, her gladiator friend – are not always what they seem at first and that there is often more that unites us with than divides us from our enemies. So where does Adams land on these big questions? In terms of the broader political picture, he is definite in his rejection of a one size fits all approach, advocating instead a nuanced version of political and social change based on diverging trajectories across the different regions of Britain. For example, he is at one with Morris and Naismith in envisaging the role played in the north especially by allied Germanic foederati or auxiliary troops stationed in the forts along Hadrian’s Wall. Adams also dismisses the tendency of historians in the 19th century and beyond to obsess about ethnicity and to portray the conflicts of the period in binary terms, Celts versus Anglo-Saxons. Why only features of the Lowland British Celtic sound system and none of its syntactic features influenced Old English “can only be guessed at.”

These were the occurrences in Rome while the city was passing through its seven-hundredth year. In Gaul during the year of these same consuls, Lucius Domitius and Appius Claudius, Caesar among other undertakings constructed ships of a style half-way between his own swift vessels and the native ships of burden, endeavouring to make them at once as light and as seaworthy as possible and capable of being left high and dry without injury. When the weather became fit for sailing, he crossed over again to Britain, giving as his excuse that the people of that country, thinking that he would never make trial with them again because he had once retired empty-handed, had not sent all the hostages they had promised ; but the truth of the matter was that he mightily coveted the island, so that he would certainly have found some other pretext, if this had not offered itself. He came to land at the same place as before, no one daring to oppose him because of the number of his ships and the fact that they approached many points on the shore at the same time ; and he straight-way got possession of the harbour. Lowland British Celtic was the language of the British lower classes who formed a ready workforce for the Anglo-Saxon migrants and were assimilated into Anglo-Saxon society; In terms of the material culture of the period and the controversies concerning migration, Adams looks to the growing body of archaeological evidence for guidance. He accepts that the archaeological record may not be sufficient to reassemble the original storyline, while insisting that it is enough, “to furnish the set on which that lost drama was performed.” He arrives by this route at the paradox which lies at the core of this historical period. On one side, he finds mainly in the written sources, accounts of desertion, abandonment and discontinuity, as evidenced for example in the end of imperial coinage and villa life; while on the archaeological side, in the environment and landscape, Adams reports “increasingly visible, if subtle, signs of continuity.” hint at a significant disjuncture in post-Roman-Britain: if people were not being killed or displaced, they were nonetheless experiencing substantial change.As all Old English dialects were influenced by Lowland British Celtic, this language must have been spoken from south-eastern Scotland to the Isle of Wight; Guidance: Recommended Romans Topic Books for Children What are the best Romans books for schools and classrooms? Such questions are central to The First Kingdom by Max Adams. This is an impressive piece of historical analysis, beautifully written, comprehensive in its treatment of the available sources. As in his previous books, Adams brings an intimate and imaginative understanding to bear on the relationship between the political and geographical landscapes of the many and diverse regions of Britain. Working within the possibilities of the material and written sources, he challenges the traditional picture of complete social breakdown in the fifth century. The broad shape of his thesis is that the obscure fifth century was a time of relative continuity and social equality, with petty lordships developing in abandoned Roman forts, hill forts and other locations. He envisages an evolutionary process of political change that gathered pace over the next hundred years, as these lordships grew in power, initially subordinating if not actually conquering their neighbours – from little things big things grow.

Published in collaboration with The British Museum, this children’s information book offers a humorous and informative introduction to daily life in Ancient Rome and has a high appeal to readers in KS2. Britain under the Romans is one of my favorite historical era's so not surprisingly, I found the book very informative. If you are a fan of British history in general you might find the book interesting. If you care for neither, stay away. After this, each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Roman rule: government, the military, urban life, etc. Bédoyère spends a lot of time explaining how we know what we do about the period. As far as written sources go, we have to rely primarily on Tacitus and Cassius Dio. In other words: on the Romans. But the same is also true of archeology. Roman material culture, in the form of large-scale public and military building projects, pottery, mosaics and other objets d'art, have left us a clearer picture of rulers than the people being ruled over. Moreover, much of what we do find is related to the Romany army. Bédoyère points out the difficulties this leaves us with if we want to talk about Roman Britain as a whole based on archaeological evidence. The army represented only a tiny fraction of the population.

Otherwise, I liked this book. And I think Guy de la Bedoyere is great and highly recommend his works. There is of course a lot more to be said about early Medieval Britain and plenty more about its interpretation in these three books. Just as archaeology has only scratched the surface of the fifth and sixth centuries, so this review only provides the barest outline of the works under consideration. Perhaps the note on which to end is that none of us should be rushing off to one extreme or another and that, in its own way, each of these books is a valuable and thought-provoking addition to what is a lively and increasingly crowded field of study for popular and academic historians alike. Cassius Dio was a Roman statesman and historian of Greek and Roman origin. He published 80 volumes of the history on ancient Rome. References to Britain and the Britons There is evidence for this complex relationship between paganism and Christianity at the shrine of Apollo at West Hill, Uley in Gloucestershire. The Romano- British shrine at Utley went through a number of modifications during its life and yet when early in the fifth century the temple was levelled, the head of the cultstatue dedicated to Apollo was left unscathed and may well have been re-used as the head of a statue of Christ at the Christian church built upon the original shrine. From a methodological perspective, Aldhouse-Green conducts a flawless and meticulous analysis of each source at her disposal and draws general conclusions about the religious make-up of Roman Britain as a whole. In doing so, she also warns about the pitfalls of Roman literature. If you’re teaching a topic that includes a look at Roman Life then this book will enrich your curriculum and would be useful both when planning and for wider reading and research from students.

For a fun, interactive non-fiction text that children love to pore over, try Romans Magnified– a seek-and-find introduction the the Roman world with plenty of historical detail to discuss. Are lesson plans or resources available for any of the recommended KS2 Romans books?One of the joists supporting the argument that Anglo-Saxon invaders and colonists physically displaced the natives of Britannia has been sawn half-through. Through words and pictures, the book compares modern-day life for childrento different aspects of daily life for the Ancient Romans, including clothes and hairstyles, education, family life, pets, food and hobbies. The book sets itself apart from the myriad of other non-fiction texts about the Romans as each topic isviewed through the eyes of a child. Did you know, for example, that emperor Elagabalus was a cheeky prankster who was known to feed his dinner guests food made of wax? If you think that your school has too many rules, wait until you read about the vow that new students at gladiator school had to make. And the next time you begin to think that your bedroom is too small, spare a thought for Roman slaves, who often had to sleep in the doorway to their master’s bedroom. A second, more substantive thread relates to the development of the political landscape, where we find the common theme of the making of larger and more stable kingdoms, Christian in religion, out of the plethora of petty lordships, pagan and otherwise, that emerged to fill the power vacuum left by the Romans after 410. Of the fifth century, Naismith writes of “the mosaic of small worlds” and Morris of a “gaggle of small kingdoms;” likewise Adams envisages “incipient lordships” arising by different routes in defined geographical locations and subject to regional variations. For all three, the story is one of consolidation of power and administrative structures, secular and religious, nascent in Adams and more fully realised in the more extended treatments found in Morris and Naismith. For Morris, the spotlight is on England, whereas Naismith extends the argument to encompass the Pictish kingdom’s rise to hegemonic status in the north. Children looking to get their heads around the artefacts and treasuresthat tell us about Ancient Rome should try the impressive non-fiction book The Magnificent Book of Treasures. In the case of the Romans topic, the National Curriculum for KS2 states that pupils should be taught about ‘the Roman Empire and its impact on Britain.’ This Romans booklist includes children’s fiction and non-fiction texts that cover wider themes of empire, impact and the Roman world – including its diversity – as well as stories that relate specifically to the Romans in Britain. The books include topics about the Roman invasion, the power of the Roman army, Boudica’s resistance, classical mythology and the Romanisation of British culture.