Londinium

The fort was called Llyn Din, the lake fort.

When the Romans came, they could not pronounce the word Llyn, Llyn in the British way, and called it Lon, hence their word Londinium.

Presently, adventurous merchants from Gaul pushed across to Dover and sailed along the coast of Kent past Sandwich and through the open channel which then separated the island of Thanet from the mainland into the broad Thames, and sailing up with the tide, dropped anchor off the fishing villages which lay along the river and began to trade.

What did they offer? What Captain Cook offered the Polynesians: weapons, clothes, adornments.

Here's what, on Sunday we have a meeting.

It turns out The gladiators I mentioned, Tetretus and Craxus, they're not only interested in staging bear wrestling here for the Londinium citizens.

They've been caught up in the city fathers who want to build a wall.

And they're interested in participating in building this wall if they can own part of it where they can run their gambling operations.

He might be.

Well, after the rebellion, Boudicca, you know...

The 20 years or so since, Londinium has been a real growth area,

you

He probably didn't like his chances of survival, considering that even the Romans blamed him for the rebellion.

Meanwhile, Boudica's rebels marched to Londinium, the future city of London.

The settlement had only been founded around 47 CE, but was already abuzz with merchants and tradesmen.

Located around 60 miles southwest from Camulodunum, it wouldn't have taken long for the rebels to get there.

The Roman governor, Suetonius Paulinus, had been on a campaign in Wales, but raced to Londinium once he got word of what had happened.

He actually arrived there before the insurgents with a small force of legionaries.

He's said to have considered fighting in Londinium, but decided against it, being so greatly outnumbered.

Boudica's army had already defeated larger groups, so it was probably a wise decision.

Wonderful.

Here at the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr is one of the oldest pieces of Roman London that's ever been excavated from the foreshore.

Gustav Milne.

This particular timber is actually 2,000-years-old, and it comes from a Roman wharf, part of the Port of Roman London, which was here in the first and second century.

We know this was Roman because it was recovered with a lot of Roman pottery, which we were able to date with some precision.

Since then, we've excavated a number of other sites next door to this original site, and we have a whole series of absolute dates for these Roman timber keys dating from AD 62, uh, AD 78, uh, AD 93.

In the Roman era, this is the absolute best pottery you can buy.

This is the top quality tableware.

Bye.

[ on-hold music] And a good day to you from Londinium.

It is 92 AD.

We're coming fall.

The leaves are still hanging in there.

We had a wet summer, so it's green here, both in Londinium and in New England.

Green.

It is also a moment to reflect on that there's nothing new now coming.

Let's hear it

... come on, making Arthur a fast-talking, street-level mob boss who runs a brothel in Londinium.

It's a choice.

It feels like a cheap Hollywood trick.

That's true.

A king ordained by Heaven is incredibly hard for a modern viewer to connect with.

So by dropping Arthur into the gutters of Londinium, raising him as an orphan who has to fight for every single scrap, you tap into the ultimate underdog narrative.

Huh.

Archaeologists still find Latin inscriptions where the local dialects would have spoken in their own script, indicating a bilingual reality.

In cities like Londinium and Eboracum, you see Latin names carved alongside Celtic ones, hinting at a layered society where officials spoke both tongues for administrative efficiency.

This linguistic layering set the stage for later language contact events.

The influence of Latin on Celtic vocabulary was subtle yet pervasive.