CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN INFLUENCES.—AGRICOLA.—THE WALLS AND RAMPARTS OF ADRIAN, ANTONINUS, AND SEVERUS.—BONOSUS.—CARAUSIUS.—THE CONSTANTIAN FAMILY.—FRANKS AND ALEMANNI IN BRITAIN.—FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN THE ROMAN LEGIONS.
The steady and continuous operation of Roman influences may be said to begin in the reign of Claudius, A.D. 43; the sceptre of Cynobelin having passed into the hands of his sons. Against these, and against the other princes of Britain, such as Caradoc (Caractacus) and Cartismandua, the active commanders Aulus Plautius and Ostorius Scapula are employed. Three lines diverging from the parts about London give us the direction of their conquests. One running along the valley of the Thames takes us to the Dobuni of Gloucestershire, and the Silures of South Wales; both of which are specially enumerated as subdued populations. The other, almost at right angles with the last, gives us the operations against the town of Camelodunum in Essex, the Iceni who afterwards revolted, and the Brigantes of Yorkshire. The third is indicated by Paulinus' campaigns in North Wales, and his bloody deeds in the Isle of Anglesey, a line of conquest which probably arose out of the reduction of the midland counties[91] of Northampton, Leicester, Derby, Stafford, and Shropshire. I do not say that these give us the actual movements of the Roman army. They serve, however, to note the points where the special evidence of Roman occupation is most definite.
In the reign of Vespasian the conquests were not only consolidated but extended. Agricola builds his line of forts from the Forth to the Clyde, and penetrates as far north as the Grampians. Whether the warriors whom he here met under Galgacus were Britons, like those whom he had seen in the south, or Gaels, is a matter which will be considered hereafter; but he fought against them with foreign as well as with Roman soldiers. The German Usipii formed one, if not more, of his cohorts; a circumstance which shews what will be illustrated, with fuller details, in the sequel, viz., that the Roman conquerors of Britain were far from being exclusively Roman. The Usipii, however, are the first non-Roman soldiers mentioned by name. On the west coast of Britain, Agricola had to deal with the pirates from Ireland—undoubted Gaels whatever the warriors of the Grampians may have been.
Roman civilization took root rapidly in Britain, though in a bad form. The early existence of lawyers and money-lenders shew this. During the reign of Domitian the advocates of Britain were[92] known to the satirists of Rome; and, as early as that of Nero, the calling-in of a loan by the philosopher Seneca helped to create the great revolt under Boadicea. But except in respect to the use of the Roman language, it is doubtful whether the culture was much different from that which had developed itself under Cynobelin—a civilization which though being due, in a great degree, to Gaul, was also, more or less indirectly, Roman as well; but, nevertheless, a civilization which was unattended with any loss of nationality.
The rampart from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway is referred to the reign of Adrian; the conversion of Agricola's line of forts into a continuous wall to that of Aurelius Antoninus. These boundaries give us two areas. North of the Antonine frontier the Roman power was never consolidated, although the eastern half was occasionally traversed by active commanders like the Emperor Severus. It was the county of the Caledonians and Mæatæ.
Between the frontier of Agricola and the rampart of Adrian, the occupation was less incomplete. Incomplete, however, it was; even when, in the fourth century, it was made a province by Theodosius, and in honour of the Emperor of Valens, called Valentia. A.D. 211, Severus, after strengthening the Antonine fortifications, dies at[93] York; his reign being an epoch of some importance in the history of Roman Britain. In the first place, it is only up to this reign that our authorities are at all satisfactory. Cæsar, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius, have hitherto been our guides. For the next eighty years, however, we shall find no cotemporary historian at all, and when our authorities begin again, the first will be one of the worthless writers of the Panegyrics. In the next place, the great divisions of the Britannic populations have hitherto been but two—the Britons proper and the Caledonians. The next class of writers will complicate the ethnology by speaking of the Picts. The chief change, however, is that in the British population itself. The contest, except on the Welsh and Scotch frontiers, is no longer between the Roman invader and the British native; but between Britain as a Romano-Britannic province, and Rome as the centre and head of the empire: in other words, the quarrels with the mother-country replace the wars against the aborigines. This, however, is part of the civil history of Rome, rather than the natural history of Britain. The contests of Albinus against Severus, and of Proculus and Bonosus against Probus, are the earliest instances of the attempts upon the Imperial Purple from these quarters; attempts which give us the measure of the extent to[94] which the island was Roman rather than Keltic—at least in respect to its political history.
Bonosus, himself, had British blood in his veins although born in Spain, for his mother was a Gaul; but as he is called "Briton in origin," we may infer that his father was from our own island. Probus allowed the Britons the privilege of growing vines and of making wine.
In the last ten years of the third century events thicken. The revolt of Carausius, the assumption of the empire by Allectus, and the adoption of Constantius Chlorus by Diocletian as Cæsar, are events of ethnological as well as political influence. This they are, because they indicate either the introduction of foreign elements into Britain, or the infusion of British blood in other quarters. Carausius, for instance, was a Menapian, and he is not likely to have been the only one of his times. The Constantian family, I believe, to have been more British than even the usual opinion makes them.