- Chapter Eight -
Table 8.1 Dates of major public buildings
Building type Site Date (AD)
Forum-basilica London proto-forum 60-9 0
main complex 90-110
Verulamium 79- 81
Silchester second century
Wroxeter Hadrianic
Leicester Hadrianic
Caistor by Norwich Antonine
Market places Verulamium Flavian
Cirencester Hadrianic
Leicester late second/early
third century
Bath houses Silchester Neronian
Canterbury late first century
Leicester mid-second century
Theatres/ amphitheatres Canterbury 80-9 0
Cirencester late first century
Verulamium mid-second century
(in timber) Silchester 50S-60S
the more romanized provinces of central and southern Gaul and the Mediterranean
littoral (Blagg 1990). This has often been explained as the result of a lack of wealth
or of remoteness, but it is more probably related to a reduced level of competitive
munificence amongst the native elites. In this context, Millett (1990: 81-2) has argued
that power within the British civitates remained in the hands of a limited oligarchy
with far fewer outsiders, who had much less need to compete with each other because
power was already theirs; this may have led to collective rather than individual
displays of wealth in the central cities (d. Wroxeter) and, thereby, to an adequate
rather than an excessive level of provision in terms of buildings and amenities. More
than likely, the real competition lay between civitates, not within them, except in
those cities with a clearly cosmopolitan element outside the system, such as London
or the colonies, or a more sharply defined social hierarchy, such as early Silchester.
The growth of civitas centres in the first and second centuries was very distinctive
in morphological terms, but also had a significant functional impact, as has already
been indicated, in opening up new markets, witness the appearance of fora, macella,
and large numbers of shops and workshops. Despite such evidence for economic
expansion, it need not necessarily have occurred entirely within the sphere of free
market forces; rather, early civitas organization and taxation system may have been
such that it reinforced the power of the native elites (who controlled taxation), enabling
them to exercise considerable control over where and how the economy developed.134