In 43 AD, a great army descended upon the shores of Britain.

The strongest ever yet seen in this part of the globe.

Tens of thousands of highly organized fighting men from all corners of the known world.

Come to put an end to the independence of this obscure island once and for all.

Of course, the landing was not unopposed. Contemporary writing talks of rows of determined Celtic

warriors lining the white cliffs overlooking the landing craft, hurling challenges and insults

of their seaborne foe.

Though distant, perched on the very edge of the world, in fact, the islands didn't exist in a vacuum,

and murmurings of this great mustering across the channel that arrived long before their sails were sighted of British shores,

giving the Britons time enough to amass a great army of their own

to meet the invaders head on.

However, the enemy they were about to face was unlike any they'd encountered before,

for this was the Imperial Roman army.

Their countrymen had been here before, nearly a century earlier,

and other aborted invasion attempts followed.

But this invasion, led by the Emperor Claudius, was very real.

The Romans were now here to stay.

As column after column of well-disciplined professional soldiers landed on the shores of this obscure remote land.

Little did either side know that their clash would force this region into the wider world,

bringing it definitively out of the Iron Age and into a literate city-dwelling society,

beginning one of the most famous epochs in all of its history.

This is the entire history of Roman Britain, an epic story spanning more than 500 years.

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