Beginnings英国起源(26)

For long process by which Roman Britannia morphed into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was gradual, not sudden, an adaptation, not an annihilation. For a long time the Saxons were a tiny minority, numbered in hundreds rather than thousands, and they lived in the midst of an overwhelmingly Romano-British population. As different as these cultures were, they were still neighbours. The vast majority still tried and succeeded in living some sort of Roman life. Here at Wroxeter, in Shropshire, the Roman Veraconium, there's wonderful evidence of this make-do, hybrid, improvised world poised between Roman ruins and Anglo-Saxon beginnings. When the bath house stopped functioning, the citizens here just took the tiles and used them for paving. And when the roof of the great basilica threatened to fall in, the citizens simply went and demolished the whole building themselves. Inside the shell they then put up a new timber structure, spacious and elegant enough to give them the sense they were still living some sort of Roman lifestyle, although in an increasingly phantom Britannia.

罗马不列颠尼亚被盎格鲁撒克逊王国取代，历经了鲸吞蚕食的漫长过程而绝 非一瞬，是平稳的演变，而非骤变。很长时间，撒克逊族只是一支少数民族，人口数百，不及上千。在罗马不列颠压倒性的人口夹缝求存。即使文化迥异，却仍能和平共处。庞大的民族仍旧维持着原有的罗马式生活，在希罗普郡的沃克斯特，罗马时期的威尔克尼亚，保留了两种文明交融的完美证据，泰然于罗马废墟与盎格鲁撒克逊朝阳之间。当大浴池不再运作，市民挖来浴池的瓷砖用来铺路。当他们的屋顶与大教堂摇摇欲坠，市民们便顺势拆掉，并动工新建。他们运用木质结构作为骨架，宽敞而考究，让他们认为自己仍保持着罗马生活方式 。