Indeed, the famous speech of Caractacus, when taken captive to Rome, shows a nobility of character, nay, we may add, an amount of civilization that would not have been anticipated. “If I had made,” said the noble Briton, “that prudent use of prosperity which my rank and fortune enabled me to do, I might have come hither as your friend rather than as your prisoner; nor would you have disdained the alliance of a king descended from illustrious ancestors, and ruling over many nations. My present condition, degrading as it is to me, reflects glory on you. I once had horses, men, arms, and money; what wonder is it if I was reluctant to part with them! Your object is to obtain universal empire, and we must all be slaves! If I had submitted to you without a blow, neither my own fortune nor your glory would have been conspicuous, and all remembrances of me would have vanished when I had received my punishment; but spare me my life, and I shall be a lasting monument of your clemency.”
The course of commerce with Rome.
When the course of events is considered, it is not surprising that the ancient Britons should have made less opposition to Claudius than they had done ninety-seven years before to Julius Cæsar. They had learned in the interval the advantages to be derived by intercourse with a much more wealthy and more polished people than themselves. They saw that not only the enlightenment of the mind accompanies civilization in its progress, but that, as civilization increases, it creates wants which require to be supplied, and luxuries which crave to be satisfied.
The routes taken by merchants and travellers continued for many centuries much as they had been in the earliest times. Claudius, however, when he left Rome for the seat of war in Britain, set sail from the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, went by sea to Massalia (Marseilles), and afterwards journeying, partly by land and partly by the rivers till he reached the coast of Gaul on the English Channel,[446] crossed over to Britain, and there joined “the forces which awaited him near the Thames.” “There were then four ports,” remarks Strabo,[447] “at which voyagers generally crossed from the mainland to the island, at the mouths respectively of the river Rhône, the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne; but the travellers who crossed from the country about the Rhine did not set sail from the mouth of that river, preferring to pass through the Morini and to embark at its port of Boulogne.”
Inland water traffic.
The ordinary traffic of those times was conveyed either on the backs of mules or horses, across Gaul, as was the case with tin, or by the rivers of that country: indeed, for a long period the merchant vessels of Britain were not of a construction to brave the heavy gales and stormy seas of the rude Atlantic, while Gaul was a country peculiarly favoured in the conveniences it afforded for such an inland water transit. Everywhere intersected by navigable rivers running in very opposite directions, goods could be carried between the Mediterranean and the English Channel, or the shores of the Atlantic, with little assistance of land carriage. From Narbo, an ancient commercial port of first-class importance already noticed, goods were carried a few miles overland and re-shipped on the Garonne, which carried them to Burdigala (Bordeaux). In the same way the Loire, the Seine, and the Rhine afforded navigable facilities into the very heart of the country, while all of them were easily connected with the Rhône or its great navigable branches, thus completing the inland water-carriage between the Mediterranean and the western and northern shores of Gaul.
Transit duties.
British goods destined for Rome, or for any port of the Mediterranean, were chiefly conveyed by either of these inland routes, or across country by the few highways or beaten tracks then in use.[448] In the centre of this inland conveyance, at the junction of the Rhône with the Saône (Arar), and within an easy distance of the other navigable rivers flowing in the opposite direction, stood the great inland emporium of Lyons (Lugdunum), a city then of much commercial importance and second only to Narbo. This inland navigation, while of material advantage to the inhabitants of the districts traversed, was, even before the Roman conquest, a source of considerable emolument to the proprietors of the lands adjacent to the rivers, as they were thus able to levy a toll or transit duty on the boats passing through their territories. These duties, we may presume from Strabo, were transferred to the Roman coffers soon after Gaul became a Roman province, as he distinctly asserts that (in his day at least) the duties on the imports and exports of Britain constituted the only species of revenue derived from Gaul by the Romans.[449] It is, moreover, not likely that the government of Rome would permit its subjects to levy dues for their own individual benefit.
Articles of commerce, and knowledge of manufactures and of the arts.
“The commercial and friendly intercourse,” remarks Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce,[450] “between the Britons and Gauls, which had subsisted before the invasion of Julius Cæsar, still continued, and was probably increased in consequence of the greater assortment of goods now in the hands of the Romanized Gallic merchants.” Tin, which was still the chief article of British commerce, after being cast into cubic masses, remained, and long continued, the general staple of the British trade. “But besides it,” continues the same author, “there was then exported to Gaul, either for sale in that country, or for further transit, lead, corn, cattle, hides, under the description of which, perhaps, wool is included; gold, silver, iron, ornaments for bridles, and various toys made of a substance which the Romans called ivory, but more probably the bone of some large fish; ornamental chains, vessels made of amber and of glass, with some other trifling articles; also precious stones and pearls; slaves, who were captives taken in the wars carried on by the tribes against each other; dogs of various species, all excellent in their kinds, which were highly valued by the Roman connoisseurs in hunting, and by the Gauls, who used them not only against wild animals in the chase, but also against their enemies in the field of battle; and bears for the sanguinary sport of the Roman circus, though probably not so early as the age of Augustus.”