Shame and ruin wait for you.”
THE INVASION OF THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS.
(From the painting by Thomas Davidson.)
THE IRON HAND.
“Rome was the whole world, and all the world was Rome.”
The next figure in our pageant to attract attention is again a Roman, but a man cast in a very different mould from the harsh and tyrannical Suetonius. In distant Rome the emperor has taken to heart the moral of the terrible rising led by Boadicea. He now knows that the Britons will never yield to severity. Consequently Agricola, the new governor, is a firm, just man, who strives by every means in his power to make the Roman yoke press as lightly as possible on British shoulders. He rules Britain much as a British Viceroy governs our Indian Empire to-day. He fosters the peaceful arts; he introduces the British nobles and their sons to the pastimes, the dress, the luxuries, and the manners of Rome. In course of time Britain sullenly submits to her bondage, though she is still held down by force of arms. The art and practice of war are now forbidden to the Britons, except to the flower of the youth, who are drafted into legions which garrison lands far from the call of home and kindred. The fiery Briton no longer wields the claymore; he becomes a skilled craftsman, a patient farmer, a delver in the mines.
Still, Agricola has his share of fighting. The Britons of North Wales are subdued in the first year of his governorship. In the second year several tribes in North Britain feel the weight of his hand; and in the succeeding year he pushes into Caledonia, and carries his “eagles” to the Tay. During the following summer he builds a chain of forts from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, vainly hoping that by this means he will pen the fierce Caledonians in their northern fastnesses. His greatest campaign is undertaken in the year 84 A.D., when he pushes into what is now Forfarshire and inflicts a terrible defeat on a host of Caledonians under their doughty chief Galgacus.
Meanwhile his galleys are creeping northward along the coast. They touch at the Orkneys, they round Cape Wrath, run down the western coast with its maze of islands, see the Irish hills on the starboard, and follow the shores of South Britain until they espy Land’s End, and find themselves once more in the familiar waters of the Channel. This voyage proves without a doubt that Britain is an island.