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To the Romans, Britannia was a mysterious island lying beyond Oceanus, the great river described by Homer as encircling the entire inhabited world. Britain was therefore seen as a land beyond the limits of civilisation. Britannia was first brought to the attention of the Roman people by the campaigns of Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC, but was not proven to be an island until the early eighties A.D., when the governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola sent an exploratory naval expedition around the north coast of Scotland. This section describes Britannia as the Romans knew it, utilizing the British sections from the main classical geographies, also the works of Caesar, Livy, Pliny, and many more of the most learned men of the Roman era.
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| Ptolemy's Geography | (c.AD140) The first two chapters of Book II deal with the British Isles; Hibernia (Ireland) in chapter 1, and Albion (Mainland Britain) in chapter 2. | |
| Antonine Itinerary | (c.AD220) A list of fifteen routes throughout the Roman province of Britannia, with several repetitions and several notable omissions. | |
| Notitia Dignitatum | (c.AD395-430) A late Imperial administrative document is the unique historical source for the Saxon Shore Forts, a network of coastal defenses built around southeast Britain in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. | |
| Ravenna Cosmology | (c.7th century AD) A list of Roman posting-stations, forts and towns, compiled by an unknown monk from Ravenna on the Adriatic coast of Italy. | |
| Peutinger Table | (c.11th century AD) This Roman map was cut into several pieces sometime during the Middle-Ages, a surviving portion of which shows a few towns in south-east England. | |
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Geographical