The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain.

Tempus, 192p. Richly ills.(B&W as well as full colour photographs and line drawings). Hard bound with dust wrps. Dust wrps to head spine discoloured. Initials stamp, date and personal library mark on free endpaper. 'Though the work is directed towards exploring Roman Britain's decline and collapse, F. sets his study within a much wider narrative. The first three chapters, for instance, deal with topics such as the conquest and the imposition of Roman rule, the limits of possible Roman expansion in the island, and the underlying military base of Britain's economy. In this F. sets out well that underlying feature of the whole Roman empire which is ll too often passed over: it was essentially a parasitic entity, the long-term existence of which was only possible through its constant predatory expansion into new areas. Once this was brought to a halt by encountering either totally uneconomic areas or resistance it could not break, it was forced to begin feeding off itself, creating internal tensions which severely compromised its ability to resist those external pressures that arose. From this F. turns to the increasing crises of the third century, the military recovery under Diocletian and his successors, the decline of urban life and of the economic base of Britain under the increasing demands of central expenditure, and finally the collapse itself, which is where F.'s overall approach come into its own. What we get there is not a picture of gradual decay, but rather the rapid and fundamental desintegration of a veneer that had been Roman civilisation. (...) The work has undoubted merits; it brings together the historical and the archaeological evidence in a way that is fresh and exciting. It strips away some of the mythology of Roman civilisation, presenting a view of the empire and its organisation that is credible, if unsympathetic, and it offers a view of Roman Britain's end that is certainly thought-provoking.' (STANLEY IRELAND in The Classical Review (New Series), 2002, pp.189-190).