ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

174 ROMAN BRITAIN[CH. xxviBritish Of the mysterious period of British history thatisor erfollowed the departure of the Romans, when the nativeswere left to their own resources, we know just enough totantalize us. A corner of the veil onlyis lifted for amoment by the monk Gildas, who wrote during the lullthat interrupted the career of thethe invaders had been checked by theSaxon conquest, afterBritish victory atMount Badon, and while the issue of the struggle wasstill doubtful. From him we gather that the Britons werewith difficulty united inthe presence of the enemy, andturned their swords against one another when the generaldanger was removed 1 .Writing forty- four years afterthe British victory at Mount Badon Gildas describes thecountry as laid waste and the cities no longer inhabitedas formerly, but deserted and ruined, for though foreignwars had for the time ceased, civil wars took their place2.In such a state of society there was no room for thearts of peace. Buildingsleftby the Romans might beturned into defences against the Saxons, or castles formarauding chieftains, but it would be vain to look for anyBritonsnot native architecture. The Britons had not assimilatedizeTan " Roman culture like the Gauls, and it is not likely thatmany Romans, if any, let the legions gowithout them.Among the princes whose vices Gildas castigates wefind side by side with the Celtic names of Vortiporius,Cuneglasus and Maglocunus, the Latin Constantinus andAurelius; but there is nothing to tell us whether theywere Romans who had stayed behind, or ItalianizedBritons. All foreign artisans had probably departed1 Moris namque continui erat genti, sicut et nunc est, ut inftrma esset adretundenda hostium tela, et fortis esset ad civilia bella, et peccatorum onerasustinenda. Gildas, Epistola 19.2 Ibid. 26, he tells us he was born in the year of the battle of MountBadon, which was 520, so that his history was written in 564,