THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.
In the year 41 after Christ’s birth the short madness of Caligula’s
dominion over the world was ended by his assassination in one of the
long corridors of the Palatine. His uncle Claudius, the despised
weakling of the imperial family, dragged forth trembling from his
hiding-place behind a curtain, and to his intense surprise acclaimed
as Augustus by the mutinous Prætorians: this was the man for whom by a
strange destiny was reserved the glory of adding Britain to the Roman
Empire. Yet Claudius, for all his odd ways, his shambling gait, his
shaking head, his stammering speech, was by no means the mere fool whom
his relatives, ashamed of his physical deficiencies, had affected to
consider him. He wrote in countless books the story of his imperial
ancestors and his own; he knew the old Etruscan tongue, a knowledge,
alas! now lost to the world, and translated treatises written therein;
he cleared out the harbour of Ostia; he planted flourishing colonies;
he brought water to Rome from the Æquian hills by the aqueduct which
bears his name. Could the poor timorous old man have ventured to rely
on himself, and to act on his own initiative, his name had perhaps
been revered as that of one of the best emperors of Rome. It was his
reliance on his wives and his freedmen, the government of the boudoir
and the servants’ hall, which ruined his reputation with posterity.
It was probably in the same year in which Claudius succeeded to the
empire, or it may have been a year later, that old King Cunobelinus
died in Britain and was succeeded by his two sons, Caratacus[7] and
Togodumnus. There was, as usual, an exiled prince (whose name was
Bericus) claiming Roman assistance for his restoration to his country,
but whether he was one of the sons of Cunobelinus or not, neither
history nor the coins inform us. The petition of the exiled Bericus
was granted by Claudius, and an expedition was resolved on, nominally
for his restoration (from this point onwards his name disappears
from history), in reality for the conquest of Britain (A.D. 43). The
command of the expedition was entrusted to Aulus Plautius, a senator of
high rank--he had been consul fourteen years before with the Emperor
Tiberius--and was possibly a kinsman of Claudius by marriage. Under his
orders marched four legions[8]:--
The Second: Augusta.
The Ninth: Hispana.
The Fourteenth: Gemina Martia; and
The Twentieth: Valeria Victrix.
All of these but the Ninth were withdrawn from service in Germany,
and that legion came from Pannonia, in modern language Hungary west
of the Danube. The Second and the Twentieth legions found a permanent
home in our island; the Ninth, a grave; the Fourteenth after a
brilliant career was withdrawn to Italy after about twenty-five years
of British service. We have no exact statement of the number of the
army of Plautius. The legions, if at their full complement, should
stand for 20,000 men: the cavalry and cohorts of the allies should at
least double that number. We are probably not far wrong in putting
the invading force at 50,000, but the difficulty of forming an exact
estimate is shown by the divergence between the calculations of two
such experts as Mommsen and Hübner, the former of whom reckons the
total at 40,000, and the latter at 70,000 men.
Not without great difficulty (says our sole authority, Dion Cassius)
was the army induced to depart from Gaul. The soldiers grumbled
sorely at being called to do military service “outside of the
habitable world,” and Claudius deemed it advisable to send to them
his freedman-minister Narcissus to overcome their reluctance. The
glib-tongued Greek mounted the general’s rostrum and began to harangue
them greatly to his own satisfaction. But it was too much for the
patience of the veteran legionaries to hear this imperial lackey, this
liberated slave, preaching to them about their military duty. They
shouted him down with a well-concerted cry of _Io Saturnalia_ (Hurrah
for the slaves’ holiday), and then with the curious illogicality of
soldiers they turned to Plautius and said that for his sake they would
willingly follow wherever he led them. All this hesitation had caused
considerable delay, but at last the flotilla bearing the soldiers
embarked in three divisions, in order that the whole expedition might
not be put to the hazard of a single landing. The soldiers were much
disheartened when they found the winds or the tides apparently drifting
them back to the port from which they had started, but then a meteor
flashing from east to west seemed to indicate that their voyage
would be prosperous and encouraged them to proceed. Their landing,
or, more properly speaking, their three landings, were accomplished
without difficulty, for the Britons, believing that the expedition was
postponed on account of the mutiny, had made no preparations, and now
fled to the forests and the marshes, hoping that the experience of the
great Julius would be repeated and that this expedition also might soon
return empty-handed.
Plautius had therefore hard work to discover his foe, but he did
at last come to close quarters, first with Caratacus and then with
Togodumnus, both of whom he overcame. Either now or in the following
operations, Togodumnus perished, but his brother survived to be for
many years a thorn in the side of the Roman general. A British tribe
named the Boduni, of whose geographical position we are ignorant,
but who were subjects of the Catuvellauni, came in and offered their
submission. Plautius left a garrison among them and marching forward
arrived at the banks of a river, possibly the Medway, which the
barbarians fondly hoped could not be traversed without a bridge.
The Roman general, however, had in his army many Gaulish soldiers,
probably those dwelling near the mouths of the Rhine and the Waal, who
were accustomed to swim with all their armour on across the swiftest
streams. These men, at the word of command, plunged into the river,
swam across, attacked the dismayed and carelessly encamped barbarians,
and directing their weapons especially against the horses harnessed to
the chariots made the usual cavalry tactics of the Britons impossible.
The young Vespasian (future emperor, and conqueror of the Jews) and his
brother Sabinus were ordered to lead some more troops across the stream
and complete the victory, which they did, slaying multitudes of the
barbarians. Still the Britons made a stubborn resistance, till at last
an officer named Cnæus Hosidius Geta, a kind of Roman paladin who had
before this done knightly deeds in fighting against the Moors, almost
single-handed and at the imminent risk of capture, achieved a victory
which compelled them to retire, and for which he received the honours
of a triumph.
Hereupon the Britons withdrew behind the Thames, at that time and place
a broad and shallow stream flowing wide over the marshes of Essex.
The barbarians knew well its deeps and its shallows, and could find
their way across it in safety. Not so the Romans, who suffered severe
loss in attempting to follow them. As a mere question of strategy
Plautius could probably have marched up the stream and crossed it at
some narrower part of its course. He determined, however, to reserve
this achievement for the emperor who had apparently already arranged
to visit Britain and pluck the laurels planted for him by his general.
Claudius prepared reinforcements, including, we are told, a number
of elephants (not very serviceable, one would have thought, in the
Essex marshes), sailed from his own port of Ostia to Marseilles,
then travelled, chiefly by water, up and down the great rivers of
Gaul, arrived at the camp of Plautius, crossed the Thames, the proper
appliances having no doubt been prepared by the loyal general, and then
marched on Camulodunum, which he took, making the palace of Cunobelinus
his own. The fall of the powerful kingdom of the Catuvellauni brought
with it the submission, voluntary or forced, of many neighbouring
tribes.
Claudius was saluted not once but many times as Imperator by his
soldiers, and returning to Rome after a six months’ absence he was
hailed by the Senate with the appellation of Britannicus, an honour
which was also bestowed on his six-year-old son. He rode in his
triumphal chariot up to the capitol, and he erected some years later in
honour of this conquest a triumphal arch which spanned the Via Lata
(now the Corso), and which was still standing almost perfect till the
seventeenth century, when it was destroyed (1662) by Pope Alexander
VII. Some fine sculptured slabs from this arch are still preserved in
the Villa Borghese at Rome, along with fragments of an inscription
which record that “Tiberius Claudius Augustus, Germanicus and Pious,
tamed the Kings of Britain without any loss [to the republic], and was
the first to bring her barbarous races under the control of Rome”.
* * * * *
The capture of Camulodunum involved the downfall of the house of
Cymbeline, and the acceptance, at any rate the temporary acceptance,
of Roman domination in all the south-eastern part of Britain. While
Caratacus escaped to South Wales and there organised a desperate
resistance to the Roman arms among the Silures, most of the smaller
British chieftains seem to have bowed their necks beneath the yoke. An
inscribed stone still standing in Goodwood Park, but originally found
at Chichester, seems to record the building of a temple to Neptune and
Minerva for the safety of the imperial house, at the command of King
Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, “legate of Augustus in Britain”. This
inscription is an interesting confirmation of the statement made by
Tacitus that “certain cities were handed over to King Cogidubnus who
remained till our own day most faithful to the emperor, according to
the old and long-established custom of the Roman people to make even
kings the instruments of their dominion”.[9]
It was probably about the same time that Prasutagus, King of the Iceni,
who inhabited Norfolk, Suffolk and a part of Cambridgeshire, became
a subject ally of Rome. Farther south the invaders were making less
peaceful progress, if it be true, as we are told by the biographer
of the future Emperor Vespasian, that he in these early years of the
conquest “fought thirty battles as commander of the Second legion,
subdued two powerful nations, took more than twenty towns and brought
into subjection the Isle of Wight”. We learn from another source
that he was once, when surrounded by the barbarians and in imminent
peril of his life, rescued by his brave son Titus, and further that
it was the elder soldier’s distinguished successes in this British
war which won him the favour of the Roman people, and led to his
being eventually clad in the imperial purple. An interesting evidence
of the rapid development of this first act of the Roman conquest is
afforded by the fact that a pig of lead mined in the Mendip Hills has
been discovered, bearing the name of Claudius and his son with a date
equivalent to A.D. 49, only six years after the landing of the legions.
In the year 47, Aulus Plautius left Britain to receive the honour of
an ovation, then almost exclusively reserved for the imperial family,
and to find his wife Pomponia (a woman of gentle nature but touched
with sadness) tending towards “a foreign religion” which, there is
good reason to believe, was none other than Christianity. He probably
left the frontier of the Roman dominion nearly coincident with a line
drawn diagonally from the Bristol Channel to the Wash, though outlying
districts like Cornwall and Devonshire were not yet assimilated by the
new lords of Britain. But even so the fairest and most fertile half of
Brythonic Britain was now apparently won for the empire.
To the new Roman _legatus_, Ostorius Scapula, fell the hard labour of
fighting the Goidelic nation of the Silures who occupied the hills
and valleys of South Wales and were nerved to desperate resistance by
the counsels of their willingly adopted leader Caratacus. Wales must
therefore undoubtedly have been the main objective of the general, but
meanwhile even the part of the country already conquered was not too
secure. The lands of the friendly tribes were being overrun by the
still unsubdued Britons beyond the border, who thought that winter
and the change of commander would both be in their favour. Ostorius,
who knew the importance of first impressions, hurriedly collected a
sufficient number of troops to repel and harass these marauders, but
the stern measures which he took for the defence of the line between
Severn and Trent so angered the Iceni (proud of their unconquered
condition, “the allies not the subjects” of Rome) that they took up
arms, gathered round them a confederacy of the neighbouring tribes
and drew themselves up in battle array in a position difficult of
access and protected by an embankment, probably of turf. Without
much difficulty, Ostorius stormed this rude fort, using only the
irregular allied troops and without moving the legions from their
quarters. As these irregulars were mostly cavalry and the Icenian
camp was impervious to horsemen, the riders had to fight on foot,
but nevertheless they won. Deeds of great valour were performed on
both sides, and the son of Ostorius won the civic crown for saving
the life of a Roman citizen. With the Iceni forced back into sullen
tranquillity, and with the wavering tribes round them now siding
with the victors, Ostorius was free to turn his attention to the
difficult problem of Wales. He led his army into the territory of the
Decangi,[10] who probably inhabited what is now Flintshire; he ravaged
their fields; he gazed on the sea which separated him from Ireland; he
would perhaps have anticipated the conquest of Anglesey had not some
hostile movements among the Brigantes of Yorkshire, threatening his
communications with the Midlands, warned him against a further advance.
When the Brigantes were chastised and in a manner reconciled, he turned
again to the work which he probably ought never to have delayed--the
vanquishing of the Silures.
This war against the Silures evidently occupied many years, and it
is almost admitted by the Roman historian that Caratacus won many
victories. Gliding rapidly, however, over this unpleasant interval,
Tacitus brings us to the final battle--decisive so far as Caratacus
was concerned--which, as a result of the strategy of Caratacus, was
fought not in the territory of the Silures but in that of their
northern neighbours the Ordovices. On the border of three counties,
Shropshire, Hereford and Radnor, is the district in which tradition or
the conjecture of learned men has placed the battlefield. High up soars
Caer Caradoc, commanding a splendid view of the distant Wrekin. Not far
off are the strongly marked lines of Brandon Camp (possibly the work of
the soldiers of Ostorius); the quiet little village of Leintwardine,
encircled by the rapid waters of the Teme, sleeps at the foot of hills,
any one of which may have been the chosen position of the British king.
Tacitus describes to us the way in which that position, already strong
by the steepness of the hill and the treacherous deeps and shallows
of the river, was further strengthened by a barrier of stones where
approach seemed least difficult. Caratacus flew from rank to rank,
exhorting his countrymen, descendants of the men who had repulsed the
great Julius, to do their utmost on that eventful day which would
decide their freedom or their slavery for ever. Ostorius, on the other
hand, awed by the strength of the British position, was almost inclined
to evade the encounter, but the legionaries loudly demanded battle and
the officers backed their ardent entreaties. Ostorius thereupon moved
forward and crossed the river without great difficulty. At the stone
wall matters for a time went ill with the Romans and death was busy in
their ranks, but after they had formed a _testudo_, with their locked
shields held on high, they succeeded under its shelter in pulling out
the stones of the roughly compacted wall. Once inside the camp, the
well-drilled ranks of the Romans soon pierced the disorderly crowd
of the barbarians, who had neither helmet nor breastplate to protect
them from the sword and the _pilum_ of the legionary, from the rapier
and the spear of the auxiliary cohorts. The victory was a brilliant
one, and though Caratacus himself escaped, his wife, his daughter and
his brethren fell into the hands of the Romans. The liberty of the
fugitive prince was of short duration. Having escaped to the court of
Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes, he was by her basely surrendered,
in chains, to the victorious general. This event which may possibly
have taken place some time after the battle, happened, as Tacitus
remarks, in the ninth year after the commencement of the British
war. This probably means A.D. 51 or 52, the same year in which the
inscription was engraved on the triumphal arch of Claudius.
The exhibition of the captive British king who had for so many years
defied the power of Rome, was made the occasion of a splendid Roman
holiday. The prætorian cohorts were drawn up in the meadows outside
their camp (near where now stands the Villa Torlonia), and through
the lane formed by their glittering spears passed first the train of
the followers of Caratacus, bearing the golden torques, the embossed
breastplates and other ornaments which he himself had won in former
wars from vanquished kings, then his brothers, his wife and his
daughter, and last of all Caratacus himself. He did not crouch or fawn,
but looked boldly in the emperor’s face, and (if the speech recorded
by Tacitus be not a mere rhetorical exercise) with quiet dignity
reminded his conqueror that but for adverse fortune he might have
entered Rome in very different guise as an ally, not as a captive.
“I had horses, men, arms, wealth. Do you wonder that I was reluctant
to lose them? If you wish to lord it over all the world, must others
at once accept slavery? Slay me if you will, and I shall soon be
forgotten. Preserve my life and I shall be an eternal memorial of your
clemency.” The courageous and manly address touched the not ignoble
nature of Claudius, who granted pardon to the British king and all his
family. He was required, however, to offer thanks for his preservation
to the emperor’s wife, Agrippina, mother of Nero, who sat haughtily
on a tribunal of her own, not far from that of her husband: “a new
and strange sight,” says Tacitus, for Roman soldiers to behold. Far
better known than the speech thus recorded by Tacitus is the remark
of the British king, preserved by the Greek historian Dion. After his
liberation, when he was taken round through the streets of Rome, and
saw all the wonders of the city, he said: “And yet you who possess all
these things, and many others like them, actually covet the shanties
of Britain”. With the capture and pardon of Caratacus, the house of
Cymbeline disappears from history. It is implied that he and his family
spent the rest of their days in Italy.
* * * * *
For the next seven years (A.D. 52–59), under Didius Gallus and
Veranius, the history of Roman conquest was void of striking events.
Didius was elderly and disinclined to risk his already great reputation
by distant operations against the natives. Veranius, who was probably
younger, certainly more adventurous, promised his master Nero (who
succeeded Claudius in 54) that in two years the province should be at
his feet, but died in his first year of office, with his high hopes
unrealised. However, these two governors had apparently succeeded in
pushing the Roman frontier northward as far as Chester and Lincoln:
they had checked, though not subdued, the Silures, and had rescued
their ally Cartimandua from the perilous position in which she had
been placed by her indignant subjects, as a punishment for summarily
dismissing her husband and handing herself over to his armour-bearer.
Probably these seven years of rest were really useful to the cause
of the empire. The more civilised tribes in the south and east were
adopting Roman ways, and some of them, at any rate, were growing fat on
Roman commerce, and if the subordinate officials of the empire would
have used their power with moderation Britain might have become Roman
without more blood-spilling. Unfortunately, these conditions were not
observed, and a day of vengeance was at hand.
In the year 59 Suetonius Paulinus, one of the two greatest generals
that obeyed the orders of Nero (Corbulo, conqueror of Armenia, being
the other), was appointed _legatus_ of Britain, and began his short but
memorable career. Believing that he had a tranquil and easily governed
province behind him, and desiring to rival the fame of Corbulo, he
determined to attempt the conquest of Anglesey, which was invested
with a mysterious awe as the high place of Druidism. After all, the
difficulties of the enterprise were spiritual rather than material. A
flotilla of flat-bottomed boats transported the legionaries across the
Menai Straits; of the cavalry some swam, and some, we are told, forded
the channel. But there on the other side stood not only a dense mass of
armed men, but women, dressed like Furies with their hair hanging down
and with lighted torches in their hands, were rushing about through
the ranks, and Druid priests, with their hands upraised to Heaven, in
terrible voices called down vengeance on the foe. At the unaccustomed
sight the awed legionaries hung back; then the cheering speech of the
general and their own reflection--“We must never let ourselves be
frightened by a parcel of women and priests”--revived their fainting
courage. They carried the eagles forward, hewed down the armed Britons,
and used the terrible torches to burn the hostile camp. A fort and
garrison were placed in the island in order to maintain the conquest,
and the woods in which human sacrifices had been offered and cruel
auguries practised with the bleeding limbs of men, were by Roman axes
cleared from the face of the earth.
All seemed going splendidly for Roman dominion in Britain when a
breathless messenger brought to the tent of Suetonius (A.D. 60)[11] a
tale not unlike that with which we were thrilled half a century ago at
the outbreak of the Indian mutiny. The outburst of the flame of British
discontent was in the country of the Iceni, and the exciting cause was
the shameless and heartless greed of the Roman officials. The capital
of the new province at this time seems to have been Cymbeline’s old
city, Camulodunum (the modern Colchester), which had been turned into
a Roman colony, a place in which the time-expired veterans might spend
their old age, surrounded by their families, and lording it with no
gentle mastership over their British slaves. High in this town, which
took its name from Camulus, the Celtic war-god, rose the great temple
dedicated to Claudius and Rome, a temple which was almost a fortress;
but the town itself was surrounded by no walls, a piece of improvidence
for which Tacitus justly blames the generals, who were thinking more
of pleasurable ease than of military utility. In the chief house of
the colony resided Catus Decianus, the _procurator_, who represented
the emperor in all civil and financial matters, as Suetonius, the
_legatus_, represented him in military affairs. Of all the grasping
and unjust officials who made the name of the empire hated, this Catus
seems to have been one of the worst. While oppressing the peasants by
rigorous exaction of tribute, he demanded from the chiefs the return
of the property (probably the result of confiscations from their own
fellow-countrymen) which Claudius had bestowed upon them, saying that
gifts such as this, of course, reverted to the giver. The financial
distress of the unhappy province was aggravated, according to Dion, by
the selfish timidity of the philosopher Seneca, Nero’s minister, who
chose this opportunity suddenly and harshly to call in loans to the
amount of 10,000,000 sesterces (about £90,000 sterling), which he had
lent at usurious rates of interest to the natives or the settlers in
Britain.
Thus all was ready in Essex for revolt, when Norfolk and Suffolk, the
country of the Iceni, were the scenes of outrages which set fire to the
gathered fuel. King Prasutagus, the old and apparently loyal ally of
Rome, who had long been famous for his wealth, died leaving the emperor
and his own two daughters his joint heirs. There were old examples of
this testamentary liberality in Roman history, both Pergamum and Cyprus
having been bequeathed by their kings to the Roman people. Prasutagus
hoped, we are told, by this display of confidence in the honour of the
emperor that he would, at least, safeguard his kingdom and his family
from violence. Bitterly was this hope disappointed. At the bidding of
the _legatus_, centurions tramped across his kingdom; at the bidding
of the procurator, clerks of servile condition swept bare the palace
of its treasures, just as if all had been lawful prize of war. Nor did
they even stop there. With incredible stupidity, as well as wickedness,
the governor ordered or permitted the widow of Prasutagus, herself
daughter as well as spouse of kings, to be beaten with rods, and gave
over her two daughters to be violated. The chiefs of the Icenian nation
were banished from their ancestral homes, and the kinsmen of the royal
family were treated as slaves. At this all the manhood of the nation
rose in rebellion; the widowed queen, who is known to posterity as
Boadicea,[12] put herself at the head of the maddened confederates (for
the Iceni were at once joined by the Trinobantes, possibly also by some
of the other neighbouring tribes), and the numbers of the insurgent
army are said to have reached 120,000.
Of the long harangue which Dion represents Boadicea as having
delivered to her army “from a tribunal made after the Roman fashion
of peat-turves,” it is not necessary to quote anything here, as it
is obviously but a literary exercise by a Greek rhetorician. The
most interesting things which it contains are the description of the
grievances endured under the Roman rule, as the rhetorician imagines
her to have painted them, and her invocation of the Celtic goddess,
Andraste,[13] whom she seems to invoke as the special protectress
of her nation. The description which the same author gives of the
appearance of the warrior-queen is life-like, and we must hope that it
is trustworthy. “Tall in stature, hard-visaged and with fiercest eye:
with a rough voice: with an abundance of bright yellow hair reaching
down to her girdle: wearing a great collar of gold: with a tunic of
divers colours drawn close round her bosom and a thick mantle over it,
fastened with a clasp. So she was always dressed, but now she bore a
lance in her hand to make her harangue more terrible.”
The first onset of the barbarian army was directed against the hated
colony, and thus there were soon a hundred thousand or more enraged
Britons howling round, not the walls, but the unwalled enclosure of
Camulodunum. Help for the defenceless city there was none or next to
none. The four brave legions were far away: one in quarters at Caerleon
upon Usk, two fighting with Druids in Anglesey or quartered at Chester,
one, the nearest, at Lincoln. The greedy procurator, Catus, when
appealed to for help, sent two hundred imperfectly armed soldiers to
reinforce the scanty garrison, and then began to arrange for his own
speedy flight to Gaul. Within the city there were treachery and the
paralysis of despair. No ditch was dug nor even the hastiest rampart
reared: the non-combatants, the old men and the women, were not sent
away; as passive as if in profound peace they awaited the approach of
the multitude of the barbarians. The city was stormed at once: the
great temple-citadel, in which the few soldiers were collected, stood a
two days’ siege and then likewise fell. Both here and in the two Roman
cities which were yet to fall, indescribable horrors of murder, rape,
ghastly and insulting mutilations are reported to have been practised
by the barbarians. The Ninth legion under its commander (Petillius
Cerialis), marching southward to the rescue, was met by the exultant
conquerors, routed and almost destroyed. All the foot soldiers perished
in the battlefield or in the flight; only Cerialis himself with his
cavalry escaped to his former camp and was sheltered behind its
fortifications.
Some part of these dismal tidings must have been brought to Suetonius
on the shore of the Menai Straits. “With marvellous constancy,” says
Tacitus, “he marched through the midst of enemies to Londinium, a place
which is not indeed dignified with the name of colony, but which is
greatly celebrated for the number of its merchants and the abundance of
its supplies.” This is the first mention of London in history. At this
time it had not apparently attained anything like the dimensions of
which even Roman London could boast in later times. It formed an oblong
which measured probably about 800 yards from east to west and 500 from
north to south, and covered a little more than 600 acres. The northern
boundary was almost certainly the line of Cheapside and Cornhill, the
southern that of Upper and Lower Thames Street. The eastern and western
frontiers of the city are still obscure, but it is generally admitted
that neither St. Paul’s on the west nor the Tower on the east would
have been included within it. Such was the little busy city which
Suetonius reached at the end of his daring march. He heard there, if
he had not heard before, the terrible news of the loss of the Ninth
legion. He probably also learned at the same time that the officer in
charge of the Second legion, daring to disobey his general’s orders,
was lingering at Caerleon, instead of marching to join him in the
defence of the eastern portion of the province. The double ill-tidings
upset all his plans for the defence of London. His army, which
consisted of the Fourteenth legion and a detachment of the Twentieth,
amounted only to about 10,000 men; provisions were running short, and
the perpetual raids of the enemy made foraging difficult. It was too
late to save Verulam, once a British capital, now a Roman _municipium_,
which Boadicea had taken and where the bloody scenes of Camulodunum
had been only too faithfully repeated. Now, with a heavy heart,
notwithstanding the prayers and the tears of the citizens, Suetonius
decided that London also must be left to its fate; by the loss of that
one city all the rest of the province might haply be saved. Only this
much he could grant, that those of the male inhabitants who could march
with his troops might do so. Those whom the weakness of their sex or
the weariness of age, or even their attachment to their homes, retained
in the city were left, and were soon massacred by the barbarians, who
took no captives and had no desire for ransoms, feeling that now was
their day of vengeance, and foreboding that that day would be short.
The Roman historians compute the loss of life in the three cities at
70,000 persons, by no means all Romans, but including many of British,
perhaps also of Gaulish extraction, who in the years of peace had
become peaceable and trade-loving subjects of the empire.
The movements of Suetonius, after he had decided to abandon Londinium
to its fate, are not clearly indicated by Tacitus, but it seems
probable that he retraced his steps northward in order to effect a
junction with the troops which he had left at Chester and with the
wreck of the Ninth legion still bravely defending itself at Lincoln.
Boadicea with her vast horde of exultant Britons was probably hanging
on his rear. Battle was inevitable, but the Roman general had some
power of choosing the ground, and he chose it in a place protected on
each side by the steep hills of a narrow defile and on the rear by a
forest. The enemy could only move towards him across the open plain
in front and there could be no lurking in ambush. The line was not too
long to prevent the legionary soldiers from being drawn up in close
ranks; on each side of them were the more lightly armed cohorts of the
allies, and the cavalry were massed upon the wings. In great disorderly
squadrons the Britons prepared to charge, full of fierce exultation at
their past successes and so certain of their impending triumph that
they had brought their wives, in waggons drawn up at the farther side
of the plain, to behold their victory.
The barbarians came on with loud clamour and menacing war-songs; the
Romans awaited them in silence and perfect order till they were within
reach of a javelin’s throw. Then at the signal given, raising the
battle-cry, they hurled the _pilum_ and rushed at the double against
the slow-marching barbarians, broke their ranks, and pierced through
the dense mass like a wedge. After a desperate hand-to-hand struggle,
the barbarians, whose lack of defensive armour had caused them to
suffer terribly from the arrows and the _pila_ of the Romans, fled in
disorder before them. The fugitives reached and were stopped by the
waggons. The pursuers, maddened probably by the remembrance of the
horrors of the sack of the three Roman cities, hewed down not only the
fugitive combatants but the women, and even the horses that drew the
chariots. So the victory was won. The Romans admitted a loss of some
800 killed and wounded, and claimed to have slaughtered a little less
than 80,000 Britons. The apparent accuracy of these words, “a little
less,” need not deceive us as to the general untrustworthiness of such
estimates as these, but the victory was undoubtedly decisive, and, as
such things are reckoned, glorious. Boadicea is said by Tacitus to have
ended her life by poison. Dion Cassius, with less probability, says
that she died of disease.
Far away in Monmouthshire there was another suicide, the result of
this great encounter. “Poenius Postumus, prefect of the camp of the
Second legion” (who had presumably held the command in the temporary
absence of the _legatus_), “when he heard how well things had gone with
the Fourteenth and the Twentieth, enraged with himself because he had
cheated his own legion of like glory, and had, contrary to military
rule, disobeyed the orders of his superior, pierced himself through
with his own sword.” Possibly he was neither a coward nor a mutineer,
but a man suddenly called to assume a crushing load of responsibility
in a terrible crisis, who had failed to read aright the signs of the
times. The Fourteenth legion, which had borne the greatest part of the
work in the suppression of the rebellion, was called, when its officers
would stimulate its military pride, the “Tamers of Britain” (_Domitores
Britanniæ_). The renown which it had acquired caused its services to
be eagerly sought for in the great game of Cæsar-making which followed
upon the death of Nero. It was transferred to Belgic Gaul in A.D. 70,
helped to quell the insurrection of Civilis, and never afterwards
returned to Britain.
The tenure of office by Suetonius Paulinus was a very short one. He had
indeed shown himself
A daring pilot in extremity;
but Nero, who with all his viciousness was not destitute of
statesmanlike ability, probably considered that the pilot ought not to
have taken his ship into such dangerous channels. After replacing the
losses of the Ninth legion by the transfer of some 7,000 soldiers from
Germany, the emperor sent a certain Julius Classicianus as successor to
the detested _procurator_ Catus. Suetonius seems to have been in favour
of stern repression, laying waste with fire and sword the territories
of all the tribes of doubtful loyalty. Classicianus, on the other hand,
held that the real foe that had now to be fought was famine, especially
since the insurgents, intent on the plunder of the Roman warehouses,
had neglected the sowing of their spring corn. Differences soon arose
between the merciful _procurator_ and the stern _legatus_. To settle
the quarrel Nero sent one of his freedmen, named Polyclitus, who
travelled with great pomp and a long train of attendants, burdensome
to the provinces through which he passed, but calculated to impress
the Roman soldiery with a sense of his importance. The barbarians, on
the other hand, who had heard from what a low and servile condition
Polyclitus had risen, marvelled that so great a general and so brave an
army should tamely submit to the arbitrament of a slave. They profited,
however, by that docility; for Polyclitus, though, as his after career
showed, not averse from plundering on his own account, made a report to
the emperor in favour of the lenient policy of the _procurator_, and
Suetonius, after an eventful lieutenancy of not more than two years,
was recalled to Rome (A.D. 61).
In the ten years that followed the recall of Suetonius (A.D. 61–71),
years which witnessed the downfall of Nero and the terrible civil war
which shook the empire after his death, no great commotion disturbed
the much-needed repose of the exhausted province. In the career of
Trebellius Maximus, the governor who held nominal power for the greater
part of this time, we have a typical instance of the bickerings,
sometimes between the civil and military authorities, sometimes, as in
this case, between the chief _legatus_ and his military subordinates,
which varied the monotony of existence in a conquered province. Tacitus
tells us that Trebellius, who was an indolent man, with no experience
of camp life, endeavoured to hold the province by mere good nature; a
policy not altogether impracticable, because the barbarians had now
begun to look more favourably on the pleasant vices of civilisation.
The army, however, despised and hated the governor for his avarice and
meanness, and their discontent was fomented and forcibly expressed by
Roscius Coelius, the _legatus_ of the Twentieth legion. “It is your
fault,” said the governor to him, “that discipline is relaxed and the
troops are on the verge of mutiny.” “It is yours,” replied Coelius,
“that the soldiers are kept poor and defrauded of their pay.” Soon
not the legionaries only, but the humbler auxiliaries, dared to hurl
their taunts at the governor, who, at last alarmed for his safety, fled
to some obscure hiding-place. Drawn out from thence, he prolonged,
apparently for a little while, the precarious tenure of his rule; the
implied bargain between him and the army being: “To you licence to
do as you please; to me unthreatened life”. Then the situation again
became desperate. The miserable Trebellius escaped to Germany, took
refuge in the camp of the insurgent Emperor Vitellius, did not share
his transient success, and never returned to Britain.
When the civil war was ended by the triumph of the strong, sensible,
common-place emperor Vespasian, a new impulse was given to Roman
conquest in Britain. Petillius Cerialis, a near relative of the new
emperor, a capable if somewhat rash soldier, the same who, at the
head of the Ninth legion, had vainly sought to stem the torrent
of Boadicea’s rebellion, held office for four years (A.D. 71–75),
during which time he humbled and perhaps subdued the Brigantes,
who ever since Cartimandua’s marital troubles had been more or less
at enmity with the empire. This conquest, if really made at this
time, involved the addition of Yorkshire to the empire, perhaps the
foundation of Eburacum (York), once the capital of Roman Britain.
Julius Frontinus (A.D. 75–78) followed Cerialis, and completed the
long-delayed subjugation of the Silures in South Wales, who at this
time, twenty-four years after Caratacus had been led in triumph through
the streets of Rome, were still unreconciled to the Roman dominion. An
interesting point in connexion with the name of Julius Frontinus is
the fact that nearly twenty years after his return from Britain (A.D.
97) he was appointed by the Emperor Nerva _Curator Aquarum_, and in
that capacity, though he was already advanced in years, carried great
reforms and corrected many abuses which had grown up in connexion with
the water-supply of the Eternal City. His treatise on the subject
is still the source from which we derive almost all our information
concerning the splendid aqueducts of Rome.
In the year 78, the Emperor Vespasian appointed as his _legatus_ the
most celebrated and probably the greatest of the governors of Britain,
Gnæus Julius Agricola. Verging as he was upon his fortieth year he was
in the very prime of his matured and disciplined strength. He knew
Britain well, having served when quite a young man as tribune (a rank
nearly corresponding to our lieutenant) under Suetonius Paulinus,
and having probably heard the clamour of the barbarian multitude who
crowded round the chariot of Boadicea. Again, ten years later, he
had been sent over to Britain to confirm the doubtful loyalty of the
Twentieth legion. Since then he had been governor of the important
province of Aquitaine, afterwards consul, and he was actually holding
the distinguished and well-paid office of Pontifex Maximus when he
was appointed to the British command. What was more important for his
future fame and for our knowledge of the history of Britain, he had
given his daughter in marriage to that master of grave historic style,
shot with indignant epigram, Cornelius Tacitus. When the new governor
landed in Britain, both soldiers and natives thought that, the summer
being now nearly ended, there would be no more fighting that year.
Not so, decided Agricola. The Ordovices, dwellers in North Wales, had
lately almost destroyed an _ala_ (squadron) of cavalry stationed
within their borders. This insolence, it was felt, must be chastised,
and the might of Rome speedily displayed by the new _legatus_, who at
once marched against them with a moderate force of legionaries and
allies. The Ordovices refused to descend into the plain and fight there
on equal terms. Agricola having climbed the hills of Denbighshire at
the head of his troops, defeated and all but destroyed that clan of
mountaineers. He looked westwards to the sacred Isle of Anglesey,
once conquered by his old general Suetonius, but almost immediately
abandoned on account of the terrible tidings from Camulodunum. He
had no ships in which to cross the Menai Straits, but he had among
his auxiliary troops men, probably from the mouths of the Rhine and
the Waal, expert swimmers and skilled in finding possible fords, and
these men laying aside the cumbrous loads which the Roman soldier was
accustomed to carry, dashed into the stream, appeared on the shore
of Mona and received the submission of the surprised and terrified
islanders, who thought that till ships appeared in the straits they at
least were safe from conquest. Having thus displayed his power, the
governor now set himself to win the hearts of the natives by reforms
in the administration, especially the financial administration, and
redress of grievances. The burdens which rested upon the provincials
of Britain were of two kinds, the _tributum_ and the _annona_: the
former a payment in money which was, it may be presumed, remitted by
the revenue officers direct to Rome; the latter a payment in kind of
the various stores needed for the sustenance of the army--fodder, lard,
fish, firewood, but pre-eminently corn; and these things would of
course not be sent out of the country but consumed in the various camps
and cities where the soldiers were quartered. There was some good work
to be done by Agricola in equalising the assessments to _tributum_,
or rendering them proportionate to the ability of the British town or
village responsible for its payment. But the chief abuses seem to have
arisen in connexion with the _annona_. Fraudulent revenue officers
would probably contract for the harvest on low terms before it was
reaped, would gather it into the granaries, close the doors and laugh
in the faces of the unhappy natives who were ordered to furnish so
many bushels of corn and could only comply with the order by buying it
from them at their own extortionate price. Then they would purposely
fix the place where the _annona_ had to be delivered, as far off as
possible, in districts traversed by the poorest of roads. All these
various abuses were, we are told, at once removed or greatly mitigated
by the firm hand of Agricola.
It was not enough to remove causes of complaint. He would also win
over the natives to positive affection for the Roman rule. He was
constantly urging all the wealthier Britons to come into the towns and
to take part in building operations. Everywhere temples, market-places,
well-built houses were rising, reared by British natives, and pledges
for their future loyalty. He gathered round him the sons of the chiefs,
had them instructed in liberal arts, praised their aptness to learn
at the expense of their Gaulish contemporaries, listened before long
to eloquent declamations, delivered, of course, in the Latin tongue,
by young Britons, gracefully clad in the Roman toga. The bath and the
luxurious banquet offered their attractions not in vain to the late
hunter of the forests, and as Tacitus sarcastically observes “the
simple folk called that civilisation (_humanitas_) which was really the
beginning of slavery”.
The summer of A.D. 79, the second year of Agricola’s command, seems
to have been chiefly occupied in measures for completing the military
occupation of the recently conquered territory, that is, probably,
Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland, the country of the Brigantes.
“He himself chose the site of the camps; he himself reconnoitred the
forests and the estuaries” (probably of the Tees, the Wear and the
Tyne, and perhaps also Solway Firth), “and meanwhile he gave the enemy
no rest, but was for ever harassing them by sudden excursions, and when
he had terrified them sufficiently, then by holding his hand he gave
them an inducement to desire peace. In consequence hereof many native
states which up to that time had treated the empire on a footing of
equality now gave hostages and laid aside their animosity. They found
themselves surrounded with forts and garrisons, and all was done with
so much science and system as had never before been applied to any
newly conquered part of Britain.” It is possible that Eburacum, which
at this time, or very soon after, became the headquarters of the Ninth
legion, was one of the strong places thus founded or fortified by
Agricola.
The record of the year 80, the third year of Agricola’s command, is
one of the most interesting to all north-country Englishmen, but it is
unfortunately also one of the most obscure. It will be well to quote
the words of Tacitus as they stand, without attempting conjectural
amplification. “The third year of expeditions opened up to us new
tribes, all the nations up to the estuary called Tanaus having their
lands laid waste. The enemy cowed by these operations did not dare to
harass the army, though it was buffeted by fierce tempests, and thus
a respite was afforded which was employed in building more forts.
It was observed by military experts that no general ever showed
greater ability in his choice of suitable sites for such defences.
No fort founded by Agricola was ever stormed by hostile violence,
or surrendered, or abandoned by its fugitive garrison: yet frequent
sallies were made from them, for they were fortified against a tedious
siege by a yearly renewed stock of provisions. This gave the defenders
courage for the winter; each garrison relied on itself for its safety,
and the enemy were driven to despair by the uselessness of their
attacks. For aforetime they had been wont to recoup themselves for the
losses of the summer by the successes of winter, but now they found
themselves repelled in both seasons alike.” We have here evidently to
deal with an extensive system of fortification; but we are provoked by
being unable precisely to identify the region in which it took place.
What is the meaning of the estuary called Tanaus “up to which Agricola
ravaged the land”? It is certainly not the Tay (which was indicated
by the corrupt reading Taum); it may be the Firth of Forth; only that
estuary is immediately after called Bodotria. The little Scottish river
Tyne near North Berwick has a kind of estuary, and Mommsen’s conjecture
that this is the Tanaus of Tacitus would have much probability, were
it not so near to the far mightier estuary of the Forth that it is
difficult to imagine any one choosing it as a landmark. The better
known Tyne of Newcastle would be clearly the strongest claimant if the
course of the narrative did not seem to have already carried us to the
north of it. No piece of water would meet the geographical condition
better than the splendid estuary of the Tweed, so well fitted by
nature for a limitary stream, but no other passage of any author has
been found in which any name resembling Tanaus has been applied to
that river. In the next year (A.D. 81) Agricola undoubtedly reached
and fortified the narrow neck of land between Clyde and Forth (Clota
and Bodotria); but the point practically at issue is this: “May we
understand that we have in this passage of Tacitus a description of
the building by Agricola of some at least of the forts between Tyne
and Solway on the line which was afterwards marked by the Roman wall?”
It has been often suggested, and in the opinion of the present writer
with some probability, that we may. In that case great additional
interest attaches to Chesters, Housesteads and others of the ruined
Roman stations in Northumberland, when we think that they may have been
planned by the exceptional military genius of Agricola.
With the three remaining campaigns of this general (A.D. 82–84) we
have no special concern, as they were all fought beyond the limits of
England. We must not follow him as he cruises about the Kyles of Bute
and the Mull of Cantire, gazes across to Ireland (an island, Tacitus
thinks, with better harbours and more frequented by merchants than
England), nor discuss his opinion, often expressed to his son-in-law,
that with one legion and a moderate supply of auxiliaries he could
have added Hibernia to the empire. Nor must we linger over Tacitus’
celebrated description of the great fight on the Mons Graupius,[14]
and the spirited war-speech of the Caledonian hero Galgacus, which
according to Tacitus preceded the encounter. Almost immediately after
this victory--perhaps more dearly bought and less decisive than would
appear on the surface of the Tacitean narrative--Agricola, whose term
of command was already of exceptional length, was recalled to Rome.
The Emperor Domitian’s jealousy of a soldier whose admiring legions
might insist on proclaiming him as a candidate for the empire, may have
been, as Tacitus suggests, the sole reason for his recall; but nearer
danger was also threatening Rome from the region of the Danube, and,
as Mommsen has pointed out, one of the British legions was actually
recalled for service in Pannonia. True statesmanship as well as mean
personal jealousy may have prompted the recall of so adventurous a
general from the scene of his triumphs. Agricola made no attempt to
resist his supersession, but returned to Rome, lived there as a private
but harassed citizen, declining the governorship of Syria (which was
offered to him with a hint that it would be dangerous to accept it),
and died at Rome in the fifty-fourth year of his age on August 23, A.D.
93. The suggestions of foul play and of poison stealthily administered
by order of Domitian are mentioned, but hardly endorsed, even by the
suspicious pen of his son-in-law. That son-in-law was absent from Rome
at the time of his death, but describes the deathbed scene from the
reports of the bystanders; and his farewell to the departed spirit of
the beloved one, the celebrated peroration of the Life of Agricola, is
one of the most beautiful things in Roman literature.