"English is based on Latin"

Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Aug 31, 2009 3:37 pm GMT
Someone who prefers to remain nameless is being just a wee bit pedantic....the word "heathen" - alright, agreed - using it in the context of the Roman occupation of Britain was wrong in strict terms as the word would have been meaningless at a time when the introduction of Christianity into these islands by St Augustine was still some 180 years or so in the future - the final withdrawal of the last of the Roman occupiers was indeed completed by the year 410 - either CE or AD, take your choice...as you say, it wasn't all effected by a single mass withdrawal in that year! That would have been silly...a bit like the Dunkirk evacuation by the 339,000 strong British military in 1940 only in reverse.

I admit I should perhaps have replaced "heathens" with savages, pillagers or tribal rampagers.....something that currently applies to West Ham United or Millwall supporters, but there you go, you can't win them all...

410 is indeed the year which is generally quoted when referring to the official end of the Roman Occupation of Britannia - all gone for good never more to return to these wavebeat shores - and Britannia really WAS the name those hunky dark haired dark eyed Romans gave to the greater part of this island - the largest of the entire British archipelago.....the whole of modern day England and the southern part of Scotland lying to the south of the Antonine Wall (including the Roman settlement of Dunedinum which many years later became a very prominent city - no prizes for guessing its modern name).

The Antonine Wall (stretching roughly from Glasgow to Edinburgh) is nothing more than a series of grassy mounds and dips and hollows now, and nowhere near as large and impressive and as well preserved as Hadrian's Wall truly is...it's a joy to follow it's length from coast to coast in the northernmost part of modern day England, not too far short of the present border with Scotland.

I admit that Ebor is but an abbreviation of the Roman name for modern day York - Eboracum....it's just that Ebor is often used in many contexts, not least of all those establishments in the City of York whch I mentioned, plus of course that famous horse race - the Ebor Handicap. However, the correct title is Eboracum in Romanspeak.

Likewise Deva for Chester - the Romans built a huge fortress on the banks of the River Dee in present day NW England - very close to the Welsh border....that was in the year 79 - CE or AD - you choose - the same year as that when Vesuvius blew its top and pulverised both Pompeii and Herculaneum and all who dwelt therein.

The name Chester is not actually Latin, as you say, but it does refer to any Roman settlement which was designed as a fort or an encampment....the Latin name actually being "castrum", which is why all British places with names ending in "---chester" "----cester" "---caster" were later built on or very close to such Roman sites.......Manchester (Mancunium - hence Mancunians for people living there even today) Cirencester (a very prominent Roman town in its day - which they called Corinium - and with plenty of evidence of this exisiting today in all its grandeur) - Leicester (unfortunatey called Ratae by the Romans) and Doncaster (to the Romans this was plain old Danum). The great military town in Roman Britain was what is now known as Colchester, in present day Essex - known to them as Camulodunum - and maybe it's no co-incidence that the military prison for miscreants in the modern day British Army is based in Colchester.

I'm so glad I allowed a very enthusiastic mate of mine to persuade me to join the British Association for Roman Archaeology - we're all off to Libya in November to tour the array of Roman sites out there, all being well in view of recent events. I think we may just be able to cope with the complete and total ban on alcohol in that country.

Such floridity....