The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 1

by Theodor Mommsen

Caesar and the Julian Emperors.Ninety–seven years elapsed from the time when Roman troops had entered, subdued, and again abandoned the great island in the north–western ocean, before the Roman government resolved to repeat the voyage and permanently to occupy Britain. Certainly Caesar’s Britannic expedition had not been, like his campaigns against the Germans, a mere forward movement of defence. So far as his arm reached, he had made the individual tribes subject to the empire, and had regulated their annual tribute to it in this case as in Gaul. The leading tribe, too, which was to be firmly attached to Rome by its privileged position and thereby to become the fulcrum of Roman rule, was found; the Trinovantes (Essex) were to take up on the Celtic island the same part—more advantageous than honourable—as the Haedui and the Remi on the Gallic continent. The bloody feud between the prince Cassivellaunus and the princely house of Camalodunum (Colchester) had been the immediate cause of the Roman invasion; to reinstate this house Caesar had landed, and the object was for the moment attained. Beyond doubt Caesar never deceived himself as to the fact that the tribute, as well as the protectorate, were in the first instance mere words; but these words were a programme which could not but bring about, and was intended to bring about, the permanent occupation of the island by Roman troops.

Caesar himself did not get so far as permanently to organise the affairs of the subject island; and for his successors Britain was a perplexity. The Britons who had become subject to the empire certainly did not long pay—perhaps never paid at all—the tribute which was due. The protectorate over the dynasty of Camalodunum must have been still less respected, and had simply as its effect, that princes and scions of that house again and again appeared in Rome and invoked the intervention of the Roman government against neighbours and rivals. Thus king Dubnovellaunus, probably the successor of the prince of the Trinovantes confirmed by Caesar, came as a refugee to Rome to the emperor Augustus, and so, later, one of the princes of the same house came to the emperor Gaius.[97]

In fact the expedition to Britain was a necessary part of the heritage left by Caesar. Already during the Dual Rule Caesar the younger had projected such an expedition, and had only desisted from it on account of the more urgent necessity of procuring quiet in Illyricum, or on account of the strained relation with Antonius, which proved useful to the Parthians in the first instance as well as to the Britons. The courtly poets of the earlier years of Augustus celebrated variously in anticipation the Britannic conquest; the programme of Caesar was thus accepted and adopted by his successor. When the monarchy was consolidated, all Rome thereupon expected that the close of the civil war would be followed by the Britannic expedition; the complaints of the poets as to the dreadful strife, but for which the Britons would long since have been led in triumphal procession to the Capitol, became transformed into the proud hope of adding to the empire the new province of Britain. The expedition was, moreover, repeatedly announced (727, 728)27, 26., yet Augustus, without formally abandoning the undertaking, soon desisted from carrying it out; and Tiberius, faithful to his maxim, adhered in this question also to the system of his father.[98] The worthless thoughts of the last Julian emperor roamed doubtless also over the ocean; but serious things he was incapable of even planning. It was the government of Claudius that first took up the plan of the dictator afresh and carried it out.

The reasons for, and against, the occupation of Britain.What were the determining motives, on the one side as on other, may be at least partially discerned. Augustus himself laid it down that the occupation of the island was not necessary from a military point of view—seeing that its inhabitants were not in a position to annoy the Romans on the continent—and was not advantageous for the finances; that what could be drawn from Britain flowed into the exchequer of the empire in the form of import and export duties at the Gallic harbours; that at least a legion and some cavalry would be requisite as garrison, and after deduction of its cost from the tribute of the island not much would be left.[99] All this was indisputably correct, but it was not the whole truth. Experience showed later that a legion was far from sufficient to hold the island. We must further take into account, what the government certainly had no occasion to say, that, considering the state of weakness to which the Roman army had been brought by the internal policy of Augustus, it could not but appear very hazardous to banish a considerable fragment of it, once for all, to a distant island of the North Sea. There was presumably only the choice of keeping aloof from Britain or increasing the army on its account; and with Augustus considerations of internal policy always outweighed those of an external character.

Conviction of its necessity predominant.But yet the conviction of the necessity for subduing Britain must have predominated with Roman statesmen. Caesar’s conduct would be inconceivable if we do not presuppose that conviction in his case. Augustus at first formally recognised, and never formally disowned, the aim proposed by Caesar, notwithstanding its inconvenience. It was precisely the governments that were the most far–seeing and most tenacious of purpose—those of Claudius, Nero, and Domitian—that laid the foundation for the conquest of Britain, or extended the work; and, after it had taken place, it was never regarded in any such light as, let us say, the conquest by Trajan of Dacia and Mesopotamia. If the maxim of government, elsewhere adhered to almost inviolably, that the Roman empire had simply to fill, but not to extend, its bounds, was permanently set aside only in respect of Britain, the cause lies in the fact that the Celts could not be subdued in such a way as Rome’s interest demanded, on the continent alone. This nation was to all appearance more connected than separated by the narrow arm of the sea which parts England and France; the same names of peoples meet us on the one side and on the other; the bounds of the individual states often reach over the Channel; the chief seat of the priestly system, which here more than anywhere else pervaded the whole nationality, was from of old the islands of the North Sea. These islanders indeed were not able to wrest the continent of Gaul from the Roman legions; but, if the conqueror of Gaul himself, and, later, the Roman government in Gaul, pursued other aims than in Syria and Egypt—if the Celts were to be annexed as members to the Italian nation—this task remained quite impracticable, so long as the subjugated and the free Celtic territories touched each other over the sea, and the enemy of the Romans as well as the Roman deserter found an asylum in Britain.[100] In the first instance the subjugation of the southern coast sufficed for this purpose, although the effect was naturally the greater, the farther the free Celtic territory was pushed back.[101] The special regard of Claudius for his Gallic home and his knowledge of Gallic relations may also have played a part in the matter.

Occasion for the war.What furnished occasion for the war was the fact that that very principality which sustained a certain dependence on Rome under the leadership of its kingCunobelinus. Cunobelinus—this was Shakespeare’s Cymbeline—extended widely its rule,[102] and emancipated itself from the Roman protectorate. One of his sons—Adminius, who had revolted against his father, came to the emperor Gaius desiring protection, and upon his successor refusing to deliver up to the British ruler these his subjects, the war arose in the first instance against the father and the brothers of this Adminius. The real motive, of course, was the indispensable need for completing the conquest of a nation hitherto but half vanquished and keeping closely together.

Military arrangements for occupying the island.That the occupation of Britain could not ensue without a contemporary increase of the standing army was also the view of those statesmen who gave occasion to it; three of the Rhine–legions and one from the Danube were destined thither,[103] but at the same time two newly instituted legions were assigned to the Germanic armies. An able soldier, Aulus Plautius, was selected as leader of this expedition, and at the same time as first governor of the province; it departed for the island in the year 43. The soldiers showed themselves reluctant, more doubtless because of the banishment to the distant island than from fear of the foe. One of the leading men, perhaps the soul of the undertaking, Narcissus, the emperor’s cabinet–secretary, wished to instil into them courage; they did not allow the slave to utter a word for their shouts of scoffing, but did withal as he wished and embarked.

Course of the occupation.The occupation of the island was not attended by any special difficulty. The natives stood, in a political as in a military point of view, at the same low stage of development which Caesar had previously found in the island. Kings or queens reigned in the several cantons, which had no outward bond of conjunction and were at perpetual feud with one another. The men were doubtless possessed of bodily strength, endurance, and bravery—despising death; and were in particular expert horsemen. But the Homeric war–chariot, which was still a reality here, and on which the princes of the land themselves wielded the reins, as little held its ground against the compact squadrons of Roman cavalry as the foot soldier without coat of mail and helmet, defended only by the small shield, was with his short javelin and his broad sword a match in close combat for the short Roman knife, or even for the heavy pilum of the legionary, and sling–bullet and arrow of the light Roman troops. To the army of about 40,000 well–trained soldiers the natives could oppose no corresponding defensive force. The disembarkation did not even encounter resistance; the Britons had accounts as to the reluctant temper of the troops and no longer expected the landing. King Cunobelinus had died shortly before; the opposition was led by his two sons Caratacus and Togodumnus. The invading army had its march at once directed to Camalodunum,[104] and in a rapid course of victory it reached as far as the Thames; here a halt was made, chiefly perhaps to give the emperor the opportunity of plucking the easy laurels in person. So soon as he arrived, the river was crossed; the British levy was beaten, on which occasion Togodumnus met his death; Camalodunum itself was taken. His brother Caratacus, it is true, obstinately continued the resistance, and gained for himself, in victory or defeat, a proud name with friend and foe; nevertheless, the progress of the Romans was not to be checked. One prince after another was beaten and deposed—the triumphal arch of Claudius names eleven British kings as conquered by him; and what did not succumb to the Roman arms yielded to the Roman largesses. Numerous men of rank accepted the possessions which the emperor conferred on them at the expense of their countrymen; various kings also submitted to the modest position of vassals, as indeed Cogidumnus the king of the Regni (Chichester) and Prasutagus the king of the Iceni (Norfolk) bore rule for a series of years as dependent princes. But in most districts of the island, which had hitherto been monarchically governed throughout, the conquerors introduced their communal constitution, and gave what was still left to be administered into the hands of the local men of rank—a course which brought in its train wretched factions and internal quarrels. Even under the first governor the whole level country as far as the Humber seems to have come into Roman power; the Iceni, for example, had already submitted to him. But it was not merely with the sword that the Romans made way for themselves. Veterans were settled at Camalodunum immediately after its capture; thus the first town of Roman organisation and Roman burgess–rights, the “Claudian colony of victory,” was founded in Britain, destined to be the capital of the country. Immediately afterwards began also the profitable working of the British mines, particularly of the productive lead–mines; there are British leaden bars from the sixth year after the invasion. Evidently with like rapidity the stream of Roman merchants and artisans poured itself over the field newly opened up; if Camalodunum received Roman colonists, Roman townships, which soon obtained legally urban organisation, were formed elsewhere in the south of the island as a mere result of freedom of traffic and of immigration, particularly at the hot springs of Sulis (Bath), in Verulamium (St. Albans to the north–west of London), and above all in the natural emporium of trading on a great scale—Londinium at the mouth of the Thames.

The advance of the foreign rule asserted itself everywhere, not merely in new taxes and levies, but perhaps still more in commerce and trade. When Plautius after four years of administration was recalled, he entered Rome in triumph, the last citizen who attained such honour, and honours and orders were lavished on the officers and soldiers of the victorious legions; triumphal arches were erected to the emperor in Rome, and thereafter in other towns, on account of victory achieved “without any losses whatever;” the crown–prince born shortly before the invasion received, instead of his grandfather’s name, that of Britannicus. We may discern in these matters the unmilitary age disused to victories with loss, and the extravagance in keeping with political dotage; but, if the invasion of Britain has not much significance from a military standpoint, testimony must withal be borne to the leading men that they set about the work in an energetic and persistent fashion, and that the painful and dangerous time of transition from independent to foreign rule in Britain was an unusually short one.

After the first rapid success, it is true, there were developed difficulties and even dangers, which the occupation of the island brought not merely to the conquered but also to the conquerors.