Silurians
The Silurians were a powerful and warlike tribe in Iron Age and Roman Britain ; they lived roughly in the Welsh counties of Monmouth , Brecon and Glamorgan .
They offered fierce resistance from the late 1940s to the early 1950s with the help of Caratacus (Caradoc), a nobleman from the Catuvellaun tribe who fled to them from the east after his own tribe was defeated against the Roman conquest.
In order to support the Roman administration in eliminating local opposition, a legionary camp ( Isca Silurum , probably at today's Caerleon ) was built in the middle of the tribal area; By 78 the Roman governor Sextus Iulius Frontinus succeeded in finally subjugating the tribe.
Their city Venta Silurum ( Caerwent , 10 kilometers west of Chepstow ) was romanised, similar to Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), but remained smaller. The massive Roman walls of the place still exist, during excavations a forum was uncovered, shops, many comfortable houses with mosaics etc. An inscription shows that Venta Silurum was the capital of the Silurians during the imperial era, whose ordo or district council took care of the administration of the district .
Occasionally, in Celtic history, terms such as “Silurian” refer to this time. The poet Henry Vaughan called himself "Silurist" to emphasize his South Welsh roots.
The geological period Silurian is first described by Roderick Murchison on the basis of rocks in the earlier tribal area of the Silurians, who then gave the name to this time.
literature
- Karlhans Abel : Silures. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, Col. 197.