THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND PLINY
In the year 43 A.D. the Emperor Claudius resolved to send an expedition
to the British coast, lying amid the mists and fog of the Northern
Ocean.
A gigantic army landed near the spot where Caesar had landed just a
hundred years before. The discovery and conquest of Britain now began
in real earnest. The Isle of Wight was overrun by Romans; the south
coast was explored. Roman soldiers lost their lives in the bogs and
swamps of Gloucestershire. The eastern counties, after fierce
opposition, submitted at the last. The spirit of Caractacus and
Boadicea spread from tribe to tribe and the Romans were constantly
assailed. But gradually they swept the island. They reached the banks
of the river Tyne; they crossed the Tweed and explored as far as the
Firths of Clyde and Forth. From the coast of Galloway the Romans beheld
for the first time the dim outline of the Irish coast. In the year
83 A.D. Agricola, a new Roman commander, made his way beyond the Firth
of Forth.
"Now is the time to penetrate into the heart of Caledonia and to
discover the utmost limits of Britain," cried the Romans, as they began
their advance to the Highlands of Scotland. While a Roman fleet
surveyed the coasts and harbours, Agricola led his men up the valley
of the Tay to the edge of the Highlands, but he could not follow the
savage Caledonians into their rugged and inaccessible mountains. To
the north of Scotland they never penetrated, and no part of Ireland
ever came under Roman sway, in that air "the Roman eagle never
fluttered." The Roman account of Britain at this time is interesting.
"Britain," says Tacitus, "the largest of all the islands which have
come within the knowledge of the Romans, stretches on the east towards
Germany, on the west towards Spain, and on the south it is even within
sight of France.... The Roman fleet, at this period first sailing round
this remotest coast, gave certain proof that Britain was an island,
and at the same time discovered and subdued the Orkney Islands, till
then unknown. Thule was also distinctly seen, which winter and eternal
snow had hitherto concealed.... The sky in this country is deformed
by clouds and frequent rains; but the cold is never extremely rigorous.
The earth yields gold and silver and other metals--the ocean produces
pearls."
The account of Ireland is only from hearsay. "This island," continues
Tacitus, "is less than Britain, but larger than those of Our Sea.
Situated between Britain and Spain and lying commodiously to the Bay
of Biscay, it would have formed a very beneficial connection between
the most powerful parts of the Empire. Its soil, climate, and the
manners and dispositions of its inhabitants are little different from
those of Britain. Its ports and harbours are better known from the
concourse of merchants for the purposes of commerce."
Not only the British Isles, but a good deal of the wild North Sea and
the low-lying coast on the opposite side were explored by Roman ships
and Roman soldiers. Caesar had crossed the Rhine; he had heard of a
great forest which took a man four months to cross, and in 16 A.D.
a Roman general, Drusus, penetrated into the interior of Germany.
Drusus crossed the Rhine near the coast, made his way across the river
Weser, and reached the banks of the Elbe. But the fame of Drusus rests
mainly on his navigation of the German Ocean or North Sea in a Roman
fleet. Near the mouth of the Rhine a thousand ships were quickly built
by expert Romans. "Some were short, with narrow stern and prow and
broad in the middle, the easier to endure the shock of the waves; some
had flat bottoms that without damage they might run aground; many were
fitted for carrying horses and provisions, convenient for sails and
swift with oars."
The Roman troops were in high spirits as they launched their splendid
fleet on the Northern Ocean and sailed prosperously to the mouth of
the Elbe, startling the Frisians into submission. But no friendliness
greeted them on the farther side of the river. The Germans were ready
to defend their land, and further advance was impossible. Returning
along the northern coast, the Romans got a taste of the storms of this
northern ocean, of which they were in such complete ignorance.
"The sea, at first calm," says Tacitus, "resounded with the oars of
a thousand ships; but presently a shower of hail poured down from a
black mass of clouds, at the same time storms raging on all sides in
every variety, the billows rolling now here, now there, obstructed
the view and made it impossible to manage the ships. The whole expanse
of air and sea was swept by a south-west wind, which, deriving strength
from the mountainous regions of Germany, its deep rivers and boundless
tract of clouded atmosphere, and rendered still harsher by the rigour
of the neighbouring north, tore away the ships, scattered and drove
them into the open ocean or upon islands dangerous from precipitous
rocks or hidden sandbanks. Having got a little clear of these, but
with great difficulty, the tide turning and flowing in the same
direction as that in which the wind blew, they were unable to ride
at anchor or bale out the water that broke in upon them; horses, beasts
of burthen, baggage, even arms were thrown overboard to lighten the
holds of the ships, which took in water at their sides, and from the
waves, too, running over them. Around were either shores inhabited
by enemies, or a sea so vast and unfathomable as to be supposed the
limit of the world and unbounded by lands. Part of the fleet was
swallowed up; many were driven upon remote islands, where the men
perished through famine. The galley of Drusus or, as he was hereafter
called, Germanicus, alone reached the mouth of the Weser. Both day
and night, amid the rocks and prominences of the shore, he reproached
himself as the author of such overwhelming destruction, and was hardly
restrained by his friends from destroying himself in the same sea.
At last, with the returning tide and a favouring gale, the shattered
ships returned, almost all destitute or with garments spread for
sails."
[Illustration: HULL OF A ROMAN MERCHANT-SHIP. From a Roman model in
marble at Greenwich.]
The wreck of the Roman fleet in the North Sea made a deep impression
on the Roman capital, and many a garbled story of the "extreme parts
of the world" was circulated throughout the Empire.
Here was new land outside the boundaries of the Empire--country great
with possibilities. Pliny, writer of the _Natural History_, now arises
and endeavours to clear the minds of his countrymen by some account
of these northern regions. Strabo had been dead some fifty years, and
the Empire had grown since his days. But Pliny has news of land beyond
the Elbe. He can tell us of Scandinavia, "an island of unknown extent,"
of Norway, another island, "the inhabitants of which sailed as far
as Thule," of the Seamen or Swedes who lived in the "northern half
of the world."
"It is madness to harass the mind with attempts to measure the world,"
he asserts, but he proceeds to tell us the size of the world as accepted
by him. "Our part of the earth, floating as it were in the ocean, which
surrounds it, stretching out to the greatest extent from India to the
Pillars at Cadiz, is eight thousand five hundred and sixty-eight
miles ... the breadth from south to north is commonly supposed to be
half its length."
But how little was known of the north of Europe at this time is shown
by a startling statement that "certain Indians sailing from India for
the purposes of commerce had been driven by tempests into Germany."
"Thus it appears," concludes Pliny, "that the seas flow completely
round the globe and divide it into two parts."
How Balbus discovered and claimed for the Empire some of the African
desert is related by Pliny. He tells us, too, how another Roman general
left the west coast of Africa, marched for ten days, reached Mt. Atlas,
and "in a desert of dark-coloured sand met a river which he supposed
to be the Niger."
The home of the Ethiopians in Africa likewise interested Pliny.
"There can be no doubt that the Ethiopians are scorched by their
vicinity to the sun's heat, and that they are born like persons who
have been burned, with beard and hair frizzled, while in the opposite
and frozen parts of the earth there are nations with white skins and
long light hair."
Pliny's geography was the basis of much mediaeval writing, and his
knowledge of the course of the Niger remained unchallenged, till Mungo
Park re-discovered it many centuries after.
[Illustration: A ROMAN GALLEY, ABOUT 110 A.D. From Trajan's Column
at Rome.]