Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (21 page)

Though Rome could have taken Britain she declined to do so. In the first place the Britons are no threat, having insufficient strength to cross over and attack us. In the second, there would be little to gain. It seems that we presently get more out of them in duty on their exports than we would by direct taxation, especially if the costs of an occupation army and of tax collecting be discounted. The same goes even more for the islands round about Britain.
11

For Claudius the temptation of Britain lay not in strategic or fiscal advantage but in newsworthiness and the stir which would be created by extending the empire across ‘outer ocean', seen by Romans as a symbolic barrier. But though Britain possessed the potential for a quick propaganda
coup,
it was less easy to predict events in the long term, to foresee that the problem would not be crossing perilous water or landing on a hostile shore, but deciding how far to go and where to stop. This search for a stopping place would be long and vexatious, with no comfort in the knowledge that the Channel had been best in the first place. It would, alas, be characteristic of policy toward this island that practical arguments were overruled by emotional. Fame awaited the conqueror of Britannia. Conversely, infamy awaited whoever might relinquish her. So, once started, the line of action would be difficult to retract. Indeed, within ten years Nero was already wishing he could ditch the enterprise but found it politically prudent to stay, since ‘not to do so would have belittled the glory won by Claudius'.
12

Glory was what Claudius most needed. Claudius the family fool; the coward who, during the desperate hours following Caligula's assassination, had been found cringing behind a curtain in the palace. Claudius the insecure, who had bribed his way to the throne with payments of 3,750
denarii
to each Praetorian guardsman, equivalent to sixteen years' pay for a legionary private. Now he would show them. Subjugation of the ‘Celtic world' had taken centuries and was still incomplete. Claudius would strike the culminating blow.

Ninety-seven years earlier Caesar had charted a comparable course. He too had recognized Britain's power to stir the imagination. His visits may be connected with sensation-seeking and rivalry with Pompey, rather than with practical benefit. In the military sense they were reckless in the extreme. Gaul was not yet fully subdued and he had no business leaving her in his rear. But as the lion-tamer crowns his act by turning his back upon the lions, so it was Caesar's
pièce de résistance
to leave the Gauls lightly guarded while turning with seeming nonchalance to the Britons.

In 55
BC
Caesar had set sail with the bulk of his force in order to test the problems of crossing and the British reaction, anticipating a more ambitious operation in the summer following. He landed in East Kent, traditionally on the shingle at Walmer or, if his estimate of seven miles beyond the end of the cliffs is taken strictly, at Deal.

They embarked around midnight and Caesar, with the leading ships, reached the British Coast at about nine the following morning. He could see the enemy armed and in large numbers on all the hills. Hereabouts are steep cliffs, so close to the sea that missiles may be thrown from cliff top to beach. This seemed no place to land, so they pressed on for about seven miles to where the ships could be beached on a level and open shore.
13

The sensation created by Caesar's despatches, as well as the Roman view of the hazards of crossing, may be guessed from the Senate's vote of a twenty-day thanksgiving on the army's safe return.

On his second visit Caesar crossed by the same route. His army forded a river, doubtless the Stour, and took a hillfort, probably Bigbury near Canterbury. They then marched west, perhaps along the North Downs, and swung north to wade neck-deep across the Thames in the vicinity of future London, despite sharpened stakes hidden below the water's surface. From here they penetrated the forest
14
ringing north London, of which Epping is a remnant. After defeating a tribal confederation, said to have included 4,000 war chariots, they stormed and occupied the stronghold of Cassivelaunus, the British leader and paramount chief of south-eastern England,
15
probably at Wheathampstead, north of present-day St Albans. But Caesar was soon obliged to retire to the coast, where his base camp was under attack; finally re-embarking before the autumn gales jeopardized safe passage.

This profitless adventure instigated a deception which could not fail to influence those who followed. It inferred that by seizing a major
oppidum
in tamest Hertfordshire the keys to Britain had somehow been secured. Geography seems to vindicate this view. Britain smiles toward the Continent, concealing troubles which will be revealed only gradually. In terms of terrain, climate and fertility, barely a third of the island lives up to its promise. What appears from the south to be an extension of France would, if seen from the north, be more like an extension of Norway. Even so, we must not leave the impression that antiquity was entirely ignorant of Britain's physical and human geography. Evidence existed, some of it from Caesar's own pen, on which a more realistic assessment might have been based.

In the passage following, Caesar refers to the ‘coastal' and the ‘interior' regions. By the former he meant the south-east, whose areas of recent Belgic settlement included Kent, the counties north of London and the Sussex coast. Here the wealthiest tribes lived. By the ‘interior' he especially meant upland Britain; in modern terms the North, Scotland, Wales and the South-West. He contrasts the two ways of life, considering the interior peoples to be less advanced. Caesar also thought Britain's axis lay north-west-south-east instead of north-south, so that the west coast faced toward Spain and the east coast in a more northerly direction.

The coastal regions are inhabited by Belgic invaders who came for plunder and stayed. The Belgians are numerous, with many cattle and farms, similar to those in Gaul. Like Gaul, too, there is ample timber, though without beech and fir. The climate is more temperate, with winter's less severe than Gaul.

The island is triangular. One side, some 500 miles long, faces Gaul. A second faces westward, toward Spain. In this direction lies Ireland, thought to be half Britain's size. Between Ireland and Britain is the Isle of Man; and it is believed there are also a number of smaller islands where some writers have described a total winter darkness lasting thirty days. This western side, according to the natives, is 700 miles long. The third faces north. There is no land opposite this, though its eastern corner faces Germany. Its length is reckoned as 800 miles.

By far the most civilized of the Britons live in Kent,
16
where life resembles that of Gaul. Most interior tribes do not grow cereals but live on meat and milk and wear skins. All Britons dye themselves with woad, giving a blue colour and a savage appearance in battle. Hair is worn long; the entire body shaven except the moustache. Wives are held in common among groups of ten or twelve men, usually the males of the same family.
17

This island had also fascinated Claudius' predecessor, Caligula. Suetonius described the farcical events of
AD
40, when the legions mutinied rather than embark. In a bizarre ceremony on the beach near Boulogne, Caligula declared Britain annexed, as it were,
in absentia.
The campaign would be sold to the Roman public as a victory against Ocean.

He deployed the army in line of battle facing the sea, with the artillery in readiness. Everyone was wondering what it all meant when suddenly Caligula shouted ‘Gather sea-shells!' By this he meant ‘spoils of ocean', as an offering at the Roman Capitol. So the soldiers had to fill their helmets and kilts with shells. Then he promised a bounty of four gold pieces per man. The triremes used in the Channel on this occasion were transported to Rome, largely overland; and he wrote ahead, ordering a Triumph more spectacular than any yet seen.
18

There can be no doubt that seasoned soldiers quailed at the sight of open sea. It was not that the Channel is rougher than the Mediterranean or Black Seas. The fear arose from a world picture consisting of three continents moated by a dark and savage deep, within which were sea monsters and beyond which was nothing. There were also superstitions regarding Britain herself: for example, the eerie story that she was the abode of the dead and that souls were rowed across in unmanned boats, which left the coast of Gaul at nightfall and returned before dawn. Thanet,
19
the name of Kent's north-eastern extremity, may originate in this legend.

It is therefore not surprising that the Claudian version of the same project should have started in much the same way. Again there was near mutiny when the soldiers realized they were to go ‘beyond the known world'.
20
On this occasion there was present one Narcissus, an imperial civil servant and former slave of the punctilious type Claudius liked to employ as his secretaries. This man, who we may suspect was empowered to offer an inducement, now mounted the general's rostrum and attempted to calm the lads. Some wag then shouted
‘Io Saturnalia!'
(hurrah for the feast of Saturn) a greeting roughly equivalent to ‘merry Christmas'. For just as it is some armies' custom that on Christmas Day the officers wait on the men, so for the holiday period beginning on 17 December, Roman masters and slaves traditionally swapped roles. The shout was thus a sarcastic reference to the indignity that an ex-slave should address the army in the emperor's place. Taken up by others the whole parade was soon convulsed with laughter, easing the tension to such an extent that the soldiers forgot their fear and obeyed the order to embark.

For the campaign which followed, our principal source is Cassius Dio, writing 130 years later. By contrast Suetonius is brief and dismissive: ‘Claudius' only campaign was of little importance. The Senate had already voted him an honorary Triumph but this he refused, lighting on Britain as the place to seek the real thing. Her conquest was a project which had lain dormant since Caesar's day.'
21

Four legions were mustered, one from the Danube and three from the Rhine, which had fallen unexpectedly quiet since the Varian Disaster. Aulus Plautius, ‘a distinguished senator'
22
was appointed to command, with the youthful Vespasian leading the legion II
Augusta.
In essence the thrust would follow that of Caesar. Dio specifies embarkation in three groups, at least one of which sailed westwards from Boulogne,
23
raising the possibility that a diversionary force beached in Chichester Harbour. Nevertheless, it remains likely that the main force landed unopposed at Richborough, Kent. Plautius then advanced to a river, too wide to be bridged, presumably the lower Medway. Here the crossing was strongly contested. In an action, probably near the future Rochester, Vespasian sprang to prominence, both because of his spirited attack and as the first senior officer across. The Britons fell back on the Thames and Plautius advanced to a position facing one of the fords: at Southwark, Westminster, or Battersea. Here, in temporary camps somewhere under today's South London, the army settled to a long wait while a prearranged plan was set in motion. Claudius sailed from the Tiber to Marseilles, then probably up the Rhone and overland to the Channel, arriving in Britain with a large entourage of VIPs, guardsmen and elephants. All this involved a delay of six to eight weeks. The weather had been bad and on three occasions the imperial flotilla was almost shipwrecked.

At last Claudius joined the legions waiting by the Thames. Assuming command, he crossed the river, ‘defeated the barbarians' and took the capital of the late king, Cynobellinus (Shakespeare's Cymbeline) at Colchester. However, the real leader, Prince Caratacus, a stout fighter and clever tactician, fled to south Wales, where he would live to lead again. It seems unlikely that Claudius met much resistance. Suetonius states bluntly that ‘he fought no battles and took no casualties'.
24
Nothing is heard of the elephants. Doubtless their main contribution was in Claudius' victory parade where their effect would be stunning, lumbering through the streets of a Colchester only days removed from prehistory.

Elsewhere elephants had proved a dubious asset. Their trial against the Celtiberians at Numantia
25
had been a
débâcle,
when the drivers lost control and the trumpeting animals ran amok. It is strange that while we spend hours in zoos or make expensive trips to Africa to look at elephants, the ancients tended to regard them with revulsion. In warfare there was a real risk that they would frighten the enemy less than the side which was using them. Thus Ammian: ‘With them came a striking sight: ponderous lines of soldier-laden elephants, bodies repulsively wrinkled; the most hideous of all forms of horror, as I have always maintained.'
26

Having cracked champagne against the hull of the new province, the emperor returned the command to Plautius with instructions ‘to subjugate the remaining districts', and retired to Rome. In all he had spent sixteen days in Britain. So much for the victory. What of the territory? What to take and what reject, where to terminate the conquest and how to round it off? These were quite other matters and Claudius may have been content to leave them to his generals.

We do not know at what point Vespasian's legion was detached from the main force and sent on the separate mission which would win him fame as perhaps the greatest gunnery officer the ancient world produced.
27
Suetonius mentions that officers decorated in Britain marched in the Triumph, suggesting Vespasian returned to Rome for this purpose and the conquest was not resumed till the following spring. Then, as the ponderous Plautius moved north, Vespasian swung west. For his part in the war one must be content with a single sentence in Suetonius, though a good one: ‘He went to Britain, where he fought thirty battles, subjugated two tribes and took more than twenty
oppida,
the Isle of Wight besides.'
28
In fact Vespasian overran the south and south-west of England at least as far as Exeter, ending perhaps with a sweep to the lower Severn. His offensive resembles that of 1944 when Patton, pivoting on the slower-moving Montgomery, sped across France. Vespasian does not lose from the comparison, for here was a commander who seized three quarters of the ground with a quarter of the army. What is more, he faced, in Wessex,
29
one of the most formidable concentrations of forts in the ancient world. His answer to these citadels of soil was artillery.