Defying Rome E-Book

Guy de la Bedoyere

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 393

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The power of the Roman Empire was under constant challenge. Nowhere was this truer than in Britain, Rome's remotest and most recalcitrant province. A succession of idealists, chancers and reactionaries fomented dissent and rebellion. Some, like Caratacus and Boudica, were tribal chiefs wanting to expel Rome and recover lost power. Others were military opportunists such as Carausius and Allectus, who wanted to become emperor and were prepared to exploit everything Britain had to offer to support their bids for power. Each of these rebellions reads like a story in itself, combining archaeology with the dramatic testimony of the historical and epigraphic sources, and explains why Britain was such a hot-bed of dissent.

Leseprobe

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing

T. Jefferson

First published 2003

This edition 2007

Tempus Publishing

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Stroud, Gloucestershire, gl6 8pe

www.tempus-publishing.com

Tempus Publishing is an imprint of NPI Media Group

© Guy de la Bédoyère, 2003, 2007

The right of Guy de la Bédoyère to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 18039 9942 5

Typesetting and origination by NPI Media Group

Printed in Great Britain

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1    The Battle of Britain

CASSIVELLAUNUS

2    The Bitter Bread of Banishment

CARATACUS

3    Bleeding from the Roman Rods

BOUDICA

4    Damned in a Fair Wife

VENUTIUS

5    Band of Brothers

XIV GEMINA MARTIA VICTRIX

6    The Fog and Filthy Air

THE NORTHERN TRIBES

7    Ambition’s Debt is Paid

CLODIUS ALBINUS

8    From Here to Eternity

ST ALBAN

9    The Old Pretender

POSTUMUS

10    Total Recall

CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS

11    The Empire Strikes Back

MAGNENTIUS

12    Ill-Weaved Ambition

MAGNUS MAXIMUS

13    End of Days

CONSTANTINE III

14    Abominable and Noxious Teaching

PELAGIUS

15    Patriots and Tyrants

Principal Dates in Romano-British History

Further Reading

NOTE ABOUT THE BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

From Plutarch’s Life of Corialanus, J. Tonson 1727

Contents

From The Parallel of Architecture (2nd ed.), trans. John Evelyn 1707

Introduction

Sestertius of Nero, depicting Roma

Chapter 1

Central motif from the late Iron Age ‘Battersea Shield’

Chapter 2

Reverse of a coin of Caratacus

Chapter 3

Chariot wheel from a Yorkshire Iron Age burial

Chapter 4

Roman cavalry horse decoration from Newstead

Chapter 5

Denarius of Mark Antony naming the XIV legion

Chapter 6

Britannia on a sestertius of Antoninus Pius

Chapter 7

Denarius of Clodius Albinus

Chapter 8

Christian medallion from the Water Newton Treasure

Chapter 9

Postumus on a radiate from the Normanby hoard

Chapter 10

Carausius radiate

Chapter 11

Magnentius centenionalis

Chapter 12

Magnus Maximus

Chapter 13

Constantine III siliqua

Chapter 14

The Hinton St Mary villa mosaic ‘Christ’

Chapter 15

The Gorgon from the temple pediment at Bath

Principal Dates

See Contents

Further Reading

Victory on a denarius of Maximinus I (235-8)

INTRODUCTION

We know from our own lives how much happens because of the dynamic of personalities, flawed individuals and their reaction to the unpredictable natural disasters and events that maintain the ebb and flow of prosperity and disaster. The prehistorian can know this in general but is powerless to reconstruct the people, episodes and phenomena that influenced events in the world he or she seeks to understand. Even Stonehenge is unavoidably relegated to the emotional neutrality of generalisations, detached forever by the illiteracy of its builders from the idiosyncratic minds that thought the building up and organised its execution, and the factors that had motivated them. But the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote around the beginning of the second century, knew only too well how unpredictable occasions impacted upon human history, and it was what helped provoke his interest in the way his world had been shaped. Eventusque rerum, qui plerumque fortuiti sunt, ‘events and affairs are generally due to chance’, he said, and amongst these were the rise and fall of idiosyncratic emperors, soldiers, rebels, chancers and even imperial impersonators (Histories i.4).

The rebels of Roman Britain attracted the attention of ancient historians for precisely the same reasons that we today look back at the personalities who defined the cataclysmic events of, say, the American War of Independence or the Second World War. Historians also use personalities as vehicles for opposing ideologies, or to present good against evil. The result is always a kind of caricature, and we can see this perfectly in the accounts of the Boudican Revolt of AD 60-1. Boudica, the woman with a man’s qualities, is juxtaposed by Tacitus and the third-century historian Dio Cassius against the decadent Roman leadership mainly in the person of Nero, presented as an effeminate pervert acting through his agent, the governor Suetonius Paullinus. It was typical of Roman narcissism that a remote provincial rebellion could be commemorated in history this way. Boudica became a moral lesson for the Roman world; indeed she may even have been created in the form we know as a literary device to that end. Her leadership, valour and determination symbolised the very qualities that had brought Rome the empire men like Nero nearly destroyed.

This book then is really a series of short stories. Most are historical accounts built around one of the more dramatic personalities in Roman Britain’s history, loosely drawn together because each of them in his or her own way rebelled against Roman power. They are necessarily short because the material we have is extremely limited. But compared to what normally survives from antiquity, these people are remarkably well recorded and that reflects their importance both at the time and to later historians. Like all historical accounts though they suffer from bias, additions, outright fabrications, contradictions and excisions, but to a historian like myself their overriding appeal is being able to see the effect of individuals on the way things happen and the way they illustrate a pattern.

But every historian has an agenda so not only do we know a good deal less than we would like, but also we have to decide what that agenda was and why Boudica, for instance, was portrayed as she was by Tacitus and Dio. After all, a historian’s ‘flattery brings the nauseating charge of subservience, and malignity poses as independence’ (Tacitus, Histories i.1). Tacitus reminded his readers that people listen far too easily to tales of obtrectatio et livor, ‘disparagement and malice’, something the present-day tabloid press makes the most of. But Tacitus, outstanding though he is amongst Roman historians, still had his own perspective. The speeches he placed in the mouths of Rome’s enemies in some respects read like an incongruous attack on Rome, especially the one ‘attributed’ to the northern tribal leader Calgacus in 84, and certainly lean towards a graphic objectivity. Such sentiments broadened the perspective of the stories Tacitus wanted to tell, and prevented them becoming banal, but they also enhanced the contrast he wished to draw between the more enlightened Empire of his own time (including especially his father-in-law Agricola) and the corrupt and decadent early principate. So how much of the historical Caratacus, Boudica and Calgacus is literary invention, and how much is the real thing?

Conversely, Carausius (286-93) exists for us mainly in the form of his own regime’s propaganda on coinage, countered by the ‘malice’ circulated by the Empire’s spin machine in which Carausius was slated as a criminal, not even worthy of being named. In the sixth century Gildas produced a pseudo-historical tract called De Excidio Britanniae, ‘On the Ruin of Britain’. Essentially a moralising rant on the consequences of evil deeds, it is selectively peppered with tantalising glimpses of real events in the latter days of Roman Britain. Yet while the revolt of Magnus Maximus (383-8) is included, that of Constantine III (407-11) passes without mention. Bias is nothing new in history, whether the bias of selection or the bias of malice. Indeed it would be absurd if there were no such thing, since bias is what makes history: one person’s spin on his time or another’s. As the Boudica we possess in the record clearly is a Roman invention in part, what does that tell us about those who wrote accounts of her rebellion? When we come to Gildas, what can be believed, and what cannot? Sometimes it is impossible to know.

All the individuals covered in this book, from Caratacus to Pelagius, share a common thread. Each took on Rome with an army, or with an ideology, and mostly the trails they blazed began abruptly, as sudden storms, with uprisings, coups, or even religious conversions. They included tribal leaders who wanted to repel the Roman conquest, a Christian martyr, those who wanted to become emperors in their own right, and even a legion with its eye on the main chance. Every one of them came from Britain, or began their rebellions in Britain, or used Britain for its resources. Britain was not unique in this respect. Plenty of other provinces generated rebellious generals, local usurpers, troublemakers or nationalist uprisings. But Britain was remarkably productive in this way, and each of these stories helps us to understand not only the more general character of Roman Britain, but also the character of rebellion at other times and places.

To the Roman world Britain was a perplexing mass of contradictions. The modern world map or globe shows Britain not only as a peripheral feature to the colossal mass of Europe and Asia but also as a kind of midway point between the Old and New Worlds. The role is reinforced by the Greenwich Meridian that centralises Britain in the concept of the daily cycle: it is forever high noon in the British Isles. The Roman mindset, indeed most ancient mindsets, was entirely different and it is essential to grasp that concept. Looking down on the Earth from some imaginary point in space was scarcely considered, except by those Greek mathematicians and astronomers who had realised the Earth was a globe and even measured it with starling accuracy.

Instead the world simply radiated out and away from Rome and the Mediterranean. In every direction it eventually faded into unfathomable remoteness and dissipated into the oblivion of endless oceans, trackless wastes and deserts, and the terrifying gloom of fog-laden mountainous forests, reflected on maps of the period. Even those who knew the earth to be ‘a solid spherical mass gathered into a globe’ still perceived the world in a Rome-centric way (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods ii.98).

Occasional stories of the rest of the world flickered in and out of this twilight zone. Britain was considered so extraordinary some people even doubted it really existed. In 54 BC, Cicero received a letter from his brother Quintus, then on campaign in Britain with Caesar. Cicero was transfixed by the tale and excitedly replied that, ‘the Ocean terrified me, and I was scared by the coast of the island!’ (Letters ii.16.4). Around 150 years later Plutarch commented that Caesar’s exploits in Britain had gone beyond the limits of the known world, and silenced scholars who had gone about saying Britain was just a figment of popular imagination (Caesar 23). Tales of India and China also existed, and Africa’s endlessness was hinted at. Under Nero, an expedition of troops from the Praetorian Guard was sent to Ethiopia to see if it was worth conquering (Pliny, Natural History, vi.181). It turned out to be only ‘desert’ so the plan was abandoned. Of America, the poles and the Pacific, of course no one in Europe knew anything, despite the recent theory based on stone axe and DNA evidence that some Europeans might have made their way along the edge of the North Atlantic ice around 16,000 BC to settle in North America.

The basic concept of a two-dimensional world has survived in modern fantasy literature, as readers of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings know well. In each the imagined worlds of Narnia and Middle Earth rest in the centre of maps, surrounded by increasingly remote, frightening and forbidding distant lands and sea. So it was for Rome, which was in every sense the physical, emotional and scientific centre of the world. As late as 396 St Jerome used Britain as one of his four reference points to mark the end of the world. The others were India, the Atlantic and the ‘ice-bound north’ (Letters lx.4). A scattered collection of remote and windswept islands, Britain was little understood as a geographical feature and instead she served more as a living metaphor for the unknown. To traders and chancers Britain was less inscrutable thanks to occasional voyages of exploration and more often of commerce. In any case tribal links existed between Britain and northern Gaul, while older traditions circulated about settlers from Spain and other places. Britain had resources, her peoples could be traded with, and it was known that Britain extended sufficiently far north for the length of day and night to vary by extremes with the seasons and for its coastline to be washed by tides of epic dimensions.

Even once Britain was brought within the Roman orbit, she never evolved into a trusted component of the classical world. She was, as Tacitus called her, feroci provincia, ‘a warlike province’ (Agricola 8). This is perfectly illustrated by the figure of Britannia occasionally depicted on Rome’s coins. No other province ever appeared exactly this way. Britain as Rome’s Britannia is a military personification, forever defined in Roman consciousness as the frontier where reason met resistance, and order met chaos. She sits as Roma does on other coins, with her spear and shield but invariably bareheaded. The figure is not a representation of the Britons in their defeat. The coins of Antoninus Pius of 143 show Britannia with a shield and Roman standard. This is Roman Britain, not British Britain, and she represents the garrison world of an island province that was incontrovertibly defined as the wild North-West. The endless parade of rebels and troublemakers only reinforced the image.

The Romans admired the spirited leadership of Caratacus and Boudica but poured resources into annihilating them. Britain was regarded by Rome in every rational sense as a waste of space, a home to undesirables, crass provincials, and a frustrating source of problems. She was also a source of undisguised fascination. Included in the Empire as a curiosity and trophy, and as an example of Rome’s munificent accommodation, she was permanently excluded from full integration with long-lasting consequences. What the Britons thought of Rome is altogether more difficult to assess since as an historical society they largely exist to us only in the Roman record. The only alternatives to that are systems and structures imposed on the artefact record by archaeologists from an intellectual resource of anthropological observations of contemporary societies. Both are subjective for entirely different reasons. There is no doubt that prehistoric artefacts and monuments point to a rich culture that was as complex as any of the time, and indeed existed in numerous variants across Europe throughout the first two millennia BC. But by the first century AD most of the Mediterranean world had mutated into something different. The growth of literacy and more sophisticated concepts of order, recording information, architecture, and a political system that operated outside the idiosyncrasies of leaders in the classical world meant Britain was becoming something of an anachronism. In being almost entirely illiterate, the world of prehistoric Britain was by definition one founded on ignorance. Not empirical ignorance of course, because the farmers, smiths and artisans of Britain had an abundant fund of hand-me-down skills and verbal traditions that allowed them to produce works of art of an exceptional standard. But there is an exponential impact on society when information becomes recorded on paper, and can be read not just then but generations later. This is how new ideas are circulated, and in the end it is the most liberating dynamic in human society.

There is no question of a moral judgement here. It is simply a matter of fact that a prehistoric type of society will eventually evolve into something else, and that process is graphically accelerated when it happens by force. It is paradoxical that, while most people are intensely conservative and become more so as they age, society is galvanised by the tensions brought through change. In other words, most people hate change but are at their best when dealing with it. In fact, Britain was already changing and for two main reasons. Firstly, the successful exploitation of the landscape by prehistoric communities had generated population growth with increasing pressure on primary land. This contributed to the emergence of tribal identities and leaders, which was the natural sociological consequence of human beings living in increasingly concentrated communities. Knowing one’s identity becomes more important, and knowing one’s enemies even more so. Pressure on resources led to the inevitable friction and disputes that characterise all human societies trying to assert control over limited food and land. Secondly, the world of prehistoric Britain was unavoidably part of greater Europe and had been so ever since people settled there. This meant that part of British society began to adopt symbols, goods and even subtler influences like language, from the continent. By the first century BC, the continent meant the Roman world.

This absorption of influence from Rome created a fundamental tension, not least because the absorption was so unbalanced. It was a choice exercised by the élite in British society in the south-east, and even those who resisted were bound in some way to be affected by Roman culture. When it came to the actual process of military invasion, some of the tribes were disposed to accept the fact. Others resisted, sometimes in dramatic fashion, but within two generations of the conquest of AD 43, southern and central Britain was settled as a Roman province and remained that way. Ultimately, it is compliance that makes conquest work. No one has ever achieved a durable conquest exclusively by force. It is easy enough to present the Roman world as exclusively an oppressive state. That matches our own contemporary revulsion at the fascist dictatorships of the twentieth century. But this overlooks the reality of a very remarkable balance of power, accommodation and compliance, and as such reduces history to a simplistic state of monochrome alternatives. Those who instinctively slate conspicuous imperial power rarely recognise the control or power systems within their organisations or regimes, and also never countenance the possibility that a supremely powerful nation’s ruling class might operate with a modicum of moral leadership. The truth as ever is much more opaque. Imperial power structures have both good and bad elements, and the places or peoples they come to control both win and lose from the arrangements.

There is no such thing as absolute power, and no such thing as freedom, though political rhetoric throughout the ages has talked in such terms. Roman coins that depicted ‘Libertas’ were meaningless in a world where universal suffrage was inconceivable and the machinery that kept the world going was slavery. Boudica was not selling her people ‘freedom’, but simply an alternative source of power. What she meant by freedom (and even that was put into her mouth by a Roman historian) was her freedom to rule instead of a Roman governor. It is very easy to equate the status of ‘freedom’ in antiquity, compared to slavery, with modern freedom. It is certainly true that being a slave in the ancient world meant a total lack of self-determination, but ‘free’ people then enjoyed very few of the privileges modern citizens of liberal democracies take for granted. Most in fact experienced something closer to feudalism, and were tied financially, legally and practically to men of higher status or to their jobs. So being conquered by Rome did not in any sense resemble what it would mean for a citizen of modern Europe being conquered by a violent dictatorship. It is probably impossible for us to make a valid comparison in any case. A Roman or Briton might very well regard his modern counterpart as incomprehensibly incarcerated in a world of unlimited restrictive legislation and burdensome taxation enforced by electronic surveillance, and hag-ridden by fears of pensions disappearing, obscure new diseases and the rising price of oil.

Caratacus was fighting for his position as a tribal leader, which was his birthright; he was not a political or ideological revolutionary. He was also probably having the time of his life, revelling in the electrifying thrill of facing up to the greatest world power in history and giving it a monumental run-around. In the warrior society he led, the war against Rome was a highly prestigious life-or-death struggle. It is as well to remember that for the men who fought alongside him, this was their chance for immortality as legendary heroes. Like General Patton who once said how much he loved war, Caratacus was nothing without it. Had it not been for the Roman record of his exploits in battle we would know nothing about him, and not even his whole name.

However, Roman power was pervasive and decisive and that was why Caratacus had to carry his war into Wales to find tribes prepared to carry on the fight, notwithstanding the possibility that the rapidity of the Roman advance left pockets of resistance behind. In general, human beings make their long-term choice or acceptance of government based on the prospect of certainty, stability and security. Faced by the stark terrors of the uncontrollable natural world, the permanence of Rome represented a choice that most people easily made. If that represented foregoing the theoretical freedoms, or even self-esteem, of tribal society, it seems to have been a sacrifice many were prepared to make. It is also absurd for the modern commentator to assume that ordinary people automatically shared their leader’s beliefs or concerns and even if they did, that they would continue to do so. Coercion and diversion play a role too, and there are plenty of well-recorded historical rebellions that lost momentum when supporters drifted away into the night once the prospect of easy plunder faded, and disaffection grew.

Traditional devices and offices of the Roman Republic were designed to prevent anyone from becoming too powerful. Magistrates, for example, were never appointed as singletons. Instead they were placed in post in pairs, or in larger numbers. This prevented any one man from overstepping the mark; his colleagues could simply veto him. But by the first century BC the system was falling into disarray. Corruption on a grand scale meant certain families increased their power, almost totally uncontrolled. At the same time, generals used their personal wealth and power to conquer territories that increased their power and wealth, and at the same time their own prestige. Their armies thus became their own personal armies and inevitably the result was a massive power struggle that culminated in the war between Octavian and Antony. In 31 BC Octavian won, and ‘restored liberty to the Republic’ in what was in effect an empire ruled by a monarch, though he posed as simply an office holder in the Republican system. But under the Empire, the emperor held too many of the offices to sustain the balance. He could be, all at once, tribune, consul, censor, general and chief priest. Instead of the old collegiate balance based on the veto, the only check was the personality of the emperor himself. A republic in name, it was an absolute monarchy in practice. So, it is all the more remarkable that Roman power was usually exercised in so subtle a fashion. The truth was that a Roman emperor’s real power was very restricted for simple practical reasons of distance and limitations of ancient technology. So the power was moderated by the need to rely on delegation and compliance.

Oppression and exploitation there was, but the deal was never just one-way. Not only that, but some of the most extreme oppression came from individuals abusing their power as governors, generals, or centurions on the ground. Roman historians were equally aware of the impact of abuse. Tacitus recorded that the Britons came to muse on the replacement of their individual tribal leaders by a pair of ‘kings’: the governor, who exploited them through bloodshed, and a procurator, who ripped off their wealth (Agricola 15.2). It was a key component in the unrest that led to the Boudican Revolt. But the Roman system did have sanctions. At the end of the first century AD for example, Marius Priscus, former governor of Africa, was tried at Rome for his crimes of corruption. In Britain, Agricola was said to have instigated a programme of wiping out corrupt tribute-collecting practices. The Roman Empire could never have lasted as long as it did without such controls.

In the first century AD Rome began to experience a crisis of conscience. A succession of decadent rulers like Caligula and Nero made it look as if the acquisition of Empire had been at a terrible price. Paradoxically, Roman historians were inclined to interpret the qualities of a rebel like Boudica as a reflection of Rome’s better days. The problems of the first century were rectified by the relatively stable rule of the Flavians (Vespasian, Titus and Domitian), and more definitively in the second century, but as Tacitus observed, the secret was already out: an emperor could be made in places other than Rome. In the third century a succession of opportunist usurpers brought the Empire almost to its knees. In the middle of all this a new class of rebel emerged. So all encompassing had the concept and manner of presentation of Roman government become, that few of its challengers were able to come up with anything more imaginative than arguing that they would make better Roman emperors than the existing incumbents. This is one of the most curious facets of later rebellion against Rome. Rebels like Postumus and Carausius took the Roman world and claimed they could do it better, and in some ways they did. But in the end, it was the fact that they lost that means they have come down to us as rebels.

This book then is about those personalities whose rebellions, revolts and coups, their good luck and their bad luck, provide British history with some of its earliest heroes and villains. By attracting the attention of historians in antiquity these people resulted in written accounts that also provide some of the most detailed evidence for Britain’s time as a Roman province.

Be that as it may, anyone who reads these stories could hardly fail to see that Roman Britain is as much a reflection of human nature in our own time as it is for any other time. The duplicity that ended the life of Carausius, and the retribution meted out by Paul ‘the Chain’ after Magnentius, would be equally at home in the Italian cities of the Renaissance, the court of Elizabeth I, and countless boardrooms in our own time. The tone of the rebellions have reflections in times and places across the world. The time that separates us from Roman Britain is really no time at all. Things have changed for sure, but human beings have not. Ambition, patriotism, power, greed, jealousy, hatred, bravery and steadfastness are all part of the human condition as they always have been. The glory of the history of Roman Britain is that this is the first time the window is thrown open for us to look through and see our own age, and all ages, reflected in the personalities of the time. Of these, the rebels are the most vivid and memorable.

I would like to thank Peter Kemmis Betty for his comments on the text, and especially Richard Reece not just for his observations on and corrections to the text, but also the lucidity he brought to bear on the underlying themes of this book and his help in sorting out the patterns behind the detail. I’d also like to thank Tim Clarke and Emma Parkin at Tempus for their help in seeing the book through the press. The colour illustrations have been chosen to reflect the themes and individuals explored in the text.

Guy de la BédoyèreWelby 2003

1

The Battle of Britain

CASSIVELLAUNUS

Cassivellaunus is the first major British tribal leader and monarch to appear in history. This makes him an exceptionally significant individual, though we know tragically little about him. Cassivellaunus stands at the end of Britain’s prehistory. In him we meet a man whose personal prestige put him into a position where he could take charge of resistance to the first recorded invasion of Britain. Cassivellaunus’ anonymous ancestors stretch back remorselessly into an unknown and unknowable fathomless past, while the names and actions of his descendants would echo down the ages to come. The first to face the full weight of an organised, literate and historical foe, he comes down to us through the words of the Roman world, and specifically those of Gaius Julius Caesar, one of the most famous witnesses to the age of Roman conquest that ever lived. Necessarily then, any account of Cassivellaunus is really an account of Caesar’s invasions as Caesar wanted to describe them.

By the mid-first century BC, Cassivellaunus ruled territory in what we now know as Hertfordshire, but his influence extended across much of south-east Britain. He controlled peoples whose origins were closely linked with tribes in northern Gaul and, appropriately enough, they had absorbed practices and a lifestyle that reflected their close links with the continent. But at this stage, Cassivellaunus had no inclination to see his or her tribe’s future in a Roman idiom. Bent on expanding his own power, he had already killed a neighbouring king. The arrival of Julius Caesar both helped and hindered him. The prospect of a Roman war meant that some tribes scuttled to seek the protection of Cassivellaunus, while others took one look at the opposition and decided that sucking up to Rome was altogether more promising a prospect than subjecting themselves to a tribal leader who did not hesitate to wipe out the opposition. This anticipated problems that people like Caratacus and Boudica would face later.

In the mid-first century BC the Roman Republic was in a precarious state. Power was now in the hands of Roman generals who had capitalised on personal wealth and position to accumulate influence on an unprecedented scale. The old Republican system of magistracies, based on election in colleges and the protective force of veto, was simply impotent in the face of vast private armies whose loyalty was exclusively directed at their generals, not the Roman state. In 60 BC the First Triumvirate was established between the three most powerful men in the Roman world: Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus. In essence they had parcelled up Rome’s universe between them though in practice each of them watched the others like a hawk and missed no chance to promote their own interests.

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul exhibited his own military brilliance, his spectacular ability to harness the loyalty of his troops, and the box-office consciousness of a one-man publicity machine. Not only was he allocated legions by the state, but he also used his own wealth to raise others. This tied them firmly to Caesar the man, and not in his guise as a representative of the Roman people. He even went as far as raising a legion from Gauls and awarded them Roman citizenship himself. This brought him colossal prestige but bringing Gaul under Roman power also exposed the extended dominions to remote frontiers and interference from more distant territory. Gaul was linked by tribe and tradition to Britain. Not only did British warriors fight alongside Gauls, but also Britain provided a refuge for the Bellovaci who escaped across the Channel in 57 BC. The Belgic Veneti tribe took on Caesar’s ships because they were worried their trade with Britain would be disrupted if he crossed over there.

Britain thus was easily presented as a ‘legitimate’ military target. The United States used the same justification for bombing Laos in the Vietnam War. But Caesar was equally mindful that Britain presented a brilliant opportunity to grab headlines. Britain’s exotic remoteness was already established in popular lore, and the sheer excitement of taking a military force across the Channel could not have failed to excite interest at home. Of course, in one sense it was a reckless gamble, but Caesar’s whole life had been based on gambles and living on the edge. It was what made him different from the lesser, ordinary, mortals of his time, just as it marks out the inspired lunatic brilliance of men like Napoleon or Lawrence of Arabia, driven by an ‘ambition which swell’d so much that it did almost stretch the sides o’ the world’ (Cymbeline III.iii). All of course we know in the end is that Caesar did not stay in Britain, so we are none the wiser about whether he had actually planned to conquer the place and had to abandon this. As a people ignotos antea, ‘unknown before’, the Britons would make an excellent publicity tool (Suetonius, Julius Caesar xxv.2). Looking back around 150 years later, the historian Plutarch thought the British campaign extraordinarily ‘daring’ for going into the unknown to establish Britain as ‘fact’ rather than fantasy, in spite of the fact that the Britons turned out to be so ‘wretched’ they had not been worth the trouble (Caesar xxiii).

Whether or not Caesar had his eye on historians of later centuries, by 55 BC his position as military commander in Gaul was the most important position he held for maintaining prestige at home. In that year Crassus and Pompey were serving as consuls in Rome. It would have been easy for Caesar, with the bulk of the fighting over, to have faded out of the limelight. Without an excuse to continue fighting, in theory Caesar would have had to give up his position. As Suetonius said, Caesar ‘did not let slip any excuse for a war’ (ibid. xxiv.3). In other words, since Caesar needed a war, the only question was where to fight it. Britain was perfect. Going there at all was something to brag about, and it minimised compromising his hold on Gaul though he still had to take chances.

Caesar’s first effort to invade Britain was a virtual debacle though he took care to modify his account so that it seemed otherwise. The pretext was that Gaulish resistance had been actively supported from Britain. Of course, Caesar wrote about the event afterwards so he was bound to dress it up appropriately. For this reason he took care to claim that despite it being late summer, even if there was no fighting to be had he could at least reconnoitre the place. This was apparently essential since the only people with any information were traders, and they knew nothing about inland Britain and certainly nothing about how the tribes were organised or how they fought.

To prepare the way, Caesar sent Gaius Volusenus to see what he could find out, though as it turned out the scout was disinclined to land anywhere and spent less than five days off the coast of Britain. In the meantime news of Caesar’s plans was getting around, and as a result some of the British tribes sent representatives who reputedly promised advance capitulation and hostages. This was a conventional spoiling tactic to put invaders off their guard and buy time. About 250 years later, Septimius Severus would find a northern confederation of tribes called the Maeatae trying the same trick. Caesar also sent his own puppet king, Commios, of the Gaulish Atrebates across to Britain to try and break down resistance on the spot. It backfired. The quisling Commios was instantly imprisoned in Britain and was not returned until the peace negotiations on the beach a few days later.

The campaign was to be prosecuted with just two legions and cavalry. The legions embarked at one port, probably Boulogne (used the next year for certain), and the latter following from a different port. Caesar initially faced cliffs lined with British warriors, a hopeless place to land and had to wait for the whole fleet to gather before moving on to a level beach seven miles away. This is now thought to have been somewhere near Deal. Just offshore here is The Downs, a place later used as a sheltered mooring thanks to raised areas of seabed. The landing was almost a disaster. The Britons attacked the landing troops, who were confounded by trying to beach heavy ships on too gradual a slope. This made it impossible to sail in fast enough to let the boats ride up onto the shore under their own momentum. The Roman troops were terrified by the thought of wading in through deep water. If it had not been for the famous standard-bearer of the X legion leading the way, and the use of warships to bombard the Britons with artillery, it is doubtful if the invasion would have got much further than the shingle.

Caesar painted a fairly promising picture of the initial fighting, but Dio (writing 250 years later) was less convinced and pointed out that since the Britons were either on horseback or in chariots and could make a rapid get-away, few were captured or killed. Nevertheless, the Britons were apparently struck by the fact that the Romans had crossed at all, and they must have heard plenty about Caesar’s wars in Gaul. The Britons sued for peace and handed over Commios, but within a few days, the whole campaign nearly went under – literally. The ships already in Britain were wrecked by a high tide, and the cavalry’s transports were forced back to Gaul by a storm. The British tribal leaders spotted their advantage and instantly started to melt away from the Roman camp. The VII legion was promptly assaulted while foraging by Britons who had waited for them by hiding in woodland. This theme would be played out constantly during the centuries of campaigning ahead. The problem was that although Caesar arrived to take control, the highly mobile enemy was able to escape easily. At the same time, tribal contacts were being used to seek help much more widely across Britain. These were used to publicise the small size of the Roman force, and the prospect of easy pickings for any warriors who could come and join in. Caesar claimed that when the Britons gathered to attack the Roman camp, they quickly gave up and offered peace once more. Both sides were trying to fight two different wars and neither could defeat the other on its own terms. Thus the elusive charioteers confounded Caesar, but the Britons had no strategy to cope with a fortified Roman camp. Caesar was in no mood to argue the toss, fully aware that his fleet was damaged and winter was approaching. He lacked either the forces or the supplies to do any more. Since the weather was now good, he decided to take advantage of it and made for Gaul.

In this first campaign, Caesar provides no detailed evidence about the British tribes or their leaders. He may not even have been party to the information. At this time, Roman influence had had little impact on the way the tribal leaders portrayed themselves, so there is not much we can add to the picture. Celtic tribal coinage was still anonymous, and it would not be for at least another generation that we have any numismatic verification of historically-testified leaders. Coins of Commios are known, but because a few are marked ‘COM COMMIOS’ (for Commi Commios, ‘Commios, son of Commios’), it is believed he was a son of the Commios Caesar knew. The following year Caesar decided to revisit Britain and finish off the business. This time he was considerably more prepared, and he provides a great deal more information.

Caesar’s plans to invade Britain again were delayed. Some of the Gaulish Treveri were said to be ‘inciting the Trans-Rhine Germans’ (Gallic War v.2). This turned out to be connected with a dispute within the Treveri between two of the chieftains, Indutiomarus and Cingetorix. To prevent the trouble compromising the British campaign, Caesar took hostages from Indutiomarus (the source of the problems) and set off for Boulogne.

It was a mark of the relative insecurity of his hold on Gaul, and a portent for what lay ahead, that Caesar had to take a number of Gaulish chiefs with him to Britain to prevent them starting rebellions while he was away. One of them, Dumnorix of the Aedui, even absconded and the efforts to bring him back delayed sailing even more. This makes the idea of invading Britain all the more curious, since it could only have added similar problems, and suggests Caesar can have had no intention of occupying Britain. He could not possibly have managed to control both Gaul and Britain in the same way at the same time. Five legions and a body of cavalry set off in around 800 ships, only to find themselves becalmed and at the mercy of what we now call the Gulf Stream. The current sent the fleet towards the North Sea, with Britain off to port. When the tide turned, the opportunity was made to land, probably somewhere on Kent’s east coast.

The Britons had been waiting for the invasion but vanished when they saw how big it was – or at least that was how Caesar put it. It is perfectly possible that they knew their best defence lay in drawing Caesar inland, away from supplies and help. Caesar took the bait, and although he initially engaged the Britons with some success his fleet was partly wrecked by the force of the tides. Caesar had to sort this out, allowing most of the Britons the opportunity to regroup and making the radical decision to abandon unilateral tribal action and combine instead under one commander. It was something their descendants might have profitably thought about a century or more later.

The Britons threw in their lot with Cassivellaunus. Caesar says he controlled land to the north of the Thames. This ties Cassivellaunus firmly to the area we know later belonged to the Catuvellauni, a name that does not appear again until the mid-second-century Geography of Ptolemy, and Dio’s early third-century account of the invasion of AD 43. The suffix -vellaunus, shared with the tribal name, means ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. The prefix is thought to invoke a magnification of that quality. Thus Cassivellaunus is ‘exceptionally good’, while his tribe bore a name that meant something like ‘very good warriors’.

They lived up to their name, which was just as well under the circumstances. Caesar found that Britons on horseback or in chariots constantly harassed his troops. The charioteers continually engaged the Roman cavalry, which were trying to protect the slower and more cumbersome infantry. Using woodland to their advantage the Britons drew the Roman escorts off and insisted in fighting in small, dispersed, groups. As the fighting progressed, the Britons simply deployed fresh warriors so that the others could withdraw and rest. Cassivellaunus was justifying his position and Caesar was forced to admit that his foot soldiers were totally unable to fight effectively in that sort of engagement. Equally, we have only Caesar’s account and it would not have served his purpose to present the enemy as an ineffectual bunch of incompetents. A pushover was fine, so long as the opponents stood up long enough to be pushed over in a gratuitously dramatic way.

A near miss followed when a foraging party made up of three of the legions was pounced on. Only swift action by the Roman cavalry saw off the Britons who had, presumably, come to regard the Romans as remarkably easy pickings. According to Caesar there was no further attempt by the Britons to take them on in such numbers again. Cassivellaunus withdrew his forces across the natural barrier of the Thames, and fortified the north bank with stakes. The precaution appears to have had little effect on the Romans as they forded, and once more the Britons withdrew. Cassivellaunus was said by now to have given up the idea of confronting the Romans in battle. He demobilised most of his forces but held on to four thousand charioteers to harass the Romans. Although there is no archaeological confirmation of a force like that, the substantial scale of chariot-fitting production found at the late Iron Age settlement of Gussage All Saints in Dorset demonstrates the existence of support and service industries. At 1.2 hectares Gussage was only a small defended enclosure settlement, but enough material was found there to suggest around fifty chariots could have been kitted out from a couple of seasons’ worth of output by this site alone.

From now on, although Caesar’s campaign continued, the progress was really limited to the line of advance. Every time a unit of cavalry was sent off to seize supplies and destroy settlements, it was set on by bands of Britons in chariots who had kept the Romans under surveillance the whole way. This was not something the Romans were used to. The Gauls might have been closely connected to the Britons, but they had gone over largely to cavalry in preference to chariot-based warfare. The Britons had resorted to the more effective technique of steadily wearing down their enemies by attrition. Eventually, Caesar had to keep his force together and only start devastating land with whole legions, rather than vulnerable small cavalry wings.

The Trinovantes were a large tribe whose lands lay to the east of the Catuvellauni in an area now called Essex. They had an axe to grind and had not joined Cassivellaunus’ federation. Cassivellaunus had killed their king as part of his own personal aggrandisement; in this respect, the Roman invasion must have played directly into his hands. Mandubracius, the Trinovantian heir, had already come to Caesar for help in Gaul. Now the Trinovantes asked that Mandubracius be given back to them, and promised to side with Caesar in return. This was a turning point for Caesar, and it must have been a major setback for Cassivellaunus. Several more tribes surrendered to Caesar and provided him with vital intelligence. Although their names are unfamiliar, one of these was called the ‘Cenimagni’, which is almost certainly an early variant on ‘Iceni’, with the suffix magni or ‘great’. If the Iceni were prepared to surrender to Caesar now, their descendants would take a very different approach.

Caesar discovered that the oppidum