Back to the Definitely All Romans calendar
The first serious cracks in the Roman Empire began to show around this time. The Picts, Scots and Irish all started to attack
Roman Britain at about the same time. Was this a coincidence or had they all secretly met up and arranged to do this so that the Roman army would be fighting all
over the place at once? No one really knows but one Roman general was killed and another defeated, allowing the invaders to plunder the province at will. These
raids were known as the Great Barbarian Raids.
A man called Theodosius hurried to Britain to restore Roman control. At the end of a couple of years of fighting the Romans succeeded in defeating all
three, coming away with 9 points and a place in the semi finals. However, as the phrase goes, the writing was on the wall for the Roman Empire and not just in
Britain.
Talking of writing, did you know that the Romans had a different way of writing numbers. The table below shows how they did it. Basically they only
used 7 letters: - I, V, X, L, C, D, and M.
For most numbers it all depended where the letters were. For example 50 is L, 40 is XL (50 less 10 because the X is before the L) while 60 is
LX (50 plus 10 because the X is after the L) You could try and list some other numbers. 2017, the year I wrote this, is MMXVII. What was the year in which
you were born. Mine was MCMXLIX. Work it out.
Forward to 391AD
