Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (24 page)

The Druids worshipped natural spirits, including trees, and believed in reincarnation. They were an intellectual élite, dedicated to philosophic enquiry and the pursuit of nature's secrets, ancestors perhaps of the medieval alchemists: ‘In intellect lofty and united in brotherly societies, they scorned matters mortal and preached the eternity of the soul; prophesying the eventual ending of the world in a deluge of water and fire.'
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They were also society's arbiters and peacemakers: doves made hawks by the knowledge that Roman victory would mean their dissolution. No major religious ceremony was possible without them. Though the Britons, like the Germans, worshipped in woods, a number of pre-Roman temples have been found: usually small and rectangular, like the one under Heathrow Airport. A custom which preserved some of their best metalwork was the throwing of votive objects into rivers and lakes. In addition there were sacred springs and wells containing human and animal bones, the deepest of which, at 140 feet, was found in Bavaria. There was also a cult of the severed head. Skulls, real or carved, adorned lintels of houses as well as gates and stockades of forts, though whether to glorify defenders or horrify attackers is not known.

Round houses, based on wooden uprights, leaning inwards, were the prehistoric norm, since this is the easiest way to make a shelter. The roof structure of an oblong or square building is more difficult, though once mastered there are advantages when it comes to division into rooms or fitting into rows to make streets. Rectangular buildings had long been standard in the Mediterranean. The Celts were now in transition between the two styles, though in Britain circular huts were dominant still: thatched and either all-timber or timber on low, dry-stone walls.

Another symptom of British conservatism was the use of war chariots, already obsolete on the Continent and long abandoned by the Romans (though still used for ceremony and racing). The idea of driving them through city streets, or of chariot-mounted generals leading the legions, is cinematic licence. The British chariots fascinated Caesar and he gave a detailed description of their tactics and the drivers' acrobatics.
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Obviously they were worthless against forts and other substantial defences. Furthermore, they represented a fighting method based on individual prowess and difficult to subordinate to a battle plan. Their real value had been as a shock weapon, but by now they had become something of an heroic cliché; except in south-eastern Britain, where echoes of the Celtic dream-world still resounded and chariots were an aspect of its
bravura.

Strabo, geographer of the Augustan period, draws together several impressions in the following passage:

In Rome I have myself seen British youths, six inches taller than the city's tallest, though bowlegged and of a displeasing appearance generally. In habits they are not unlike Gauls, but simpler and more barbaric. In warfare they use chariots. Their cities are the forest, for they enclose large areas of it by felling trees, building huts and keeping cattle within. The climate is rainy rather than snowy. Sometimes, on days otherwise fine, the fog hangs about so long that the sun comes through only for three or four hours around noon. The deified Caesar visited the island twice but did not stay long and accomplished little.
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Such was southern Britain in the last years of her prehistory: defiant in isolation; in some ways advanced yet stranded psychologically in the heroic age; an apple ripe apparently for biting, though one which would prove unexpectedly sour.

Let us return to the young Colonel Vespasian, now in the heart of Thomas Hardy country, where resistance was most resolute, tradition longest and forts strongest. There is, of course, a limit to what we may make of one sentence in Suetonius. But archaeology assists with the exciting concordance between ancient pen and modern spade which emerged from Mortimer Wheeler's 1930s excavation at Maiden Castle. Twenty-eight war graves were discovered near the east gate, containing skeletons with severe wounds of sword-thrust type, one with the head of a Roman
ballista
bolt lodged in the spine. The gateways had been slighted, the site evacuated and the inhabitants moved, perhaps to become the first residents of nearby Dorchester. Further, in the 1950s, Ian Richmond's excavation inside the fort of Hod Hill (near Blandford Forum) found fifteen bolts in a cluster round the largest house. The rampart's height, plus the hilltop situation, mean that fire must have been directed from a tall observation tower outside. After surrender the circumvallation was partially lowered and a Roman fort built into the north-west corner. A third hillfort thought to have received the artilleryman's attention is Cadbury Castle, Somerset.

Two of Vespasian's methods are now clear. The first was to drive the defenders away from an entrance with artillery fire, climaxing in an infantry rush. The timber gates would then yield to burning. Alternatively bombardment could be conclusive on its own, especially if observation of shot-fall were feasible and where defended areas were small enough to be within the field of fire, as in the case of Hod Hill. The
oppidum
would soon become a place of panic, with people and animals rushing about; and wherever they ran the guns could be directed to follow. So, of the ‘more than twenty
oppida'
said to have fallen to Vespasian, we have evidence for two and the likelihood of three; a fair score when one considers the odds against finding a few pieces of roundshot or boltheads buried in those vast and numerous earthworks. It is also likely that Vespasian directed a sizeable resettlement operation: demolishing the stockades, with which the forts were crowned, reducing the ramparts and allocating lowland sites. It has been estimated that some 30,000 hilltop dwellers were in due course displaced in Hereford and Shropshire alone.
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It is probable that Vespasian found, in Exeter, a suitable site for a legionary base and cornerpost for his flank of the advance; as had Plautius, in Lincoln, for its eastern end. Joining them was the Fosse Way, later name for a prehistoric track following a discontinuous limestone ridge for over 200 miles from Devon to Lincolnshire. This would be the approximate halt-line of the Claudian invasion. It is not clear whether the location was preselected or the offensive ran out of steam; whether Claudius thought he could hold southern Britain and ignore the rest; or whether he had no diagnostic insight and simply left his field commanders to amputate as best they could.

Here we leave the army of Britain, about to deploy along its overstretched and not overstrong frontier, while Vespasian returned to Rome, a hero's welcome and the governorship of Africa. Claudius died in
AD
54, reputedly poisoned by his wife. No matter, Vespasian continued to enjoy favour under Nero; that is until the calamitous lyre recital, when a career of promise was shattered in the winking of an eye. Suetonius develops the story:

In Greece, as a member of the imperial entourage, he committed the most appalling
faux pas,
falling asleep during one of Nero's recitals. The upshot was total disfavour and dismissal from court. He then fled to some obscure country town, where he went into hiding for fear of his life. But in the end he was offered a province and an army command.
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The province was Judaea. The command to crush the Jewish rebellion of
AD
67. ‘In the end' meant at the age of fifty-eight, twenty-three years after he had last seen service in Britain. Why this sudden recall; this amnesty, so seldom offered by the spiteful Nero; this reinstatement of which Ovid had vainly dreamed? It was because the Jews had gone on the rampage, murdered their
procurator
and destroyed a legion. Now, bold behind strong city walls, they defied Nero and all his works. Artillery was needed; a general who understood guns and knew how to use them against great fortresses. Then someone thought of that fellow, long rusticated, who bred mules; the one who had done so well against the Britons.

In Judaea, Vespasian's first task was to reduce the Galilean stronghold of Jotapata.
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Here the Romans faced skilful and desperate defenders, led by the historian Josephus, one of the few eyewitnesses of the Roman army in action, whose descriptions throw light on the effects of artillery as a terror weapon:

Placing his 160 pieces in a ring facing the wall's defenders, Vespasian commanded the bombardment to begin. A salvo followed, the scorpions shooting bolts, the
ballistae
hurling stones weighing over 100 lbs, plus flaming torches and a hail of arrows. All this not only cleared our men off the wall but also from a broad zone where the missiles were landing within; for the Arab archers, the javelin throwers, the slingers and the guns were all firing in unison.
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Such was the artillery's power that a single bolt transfixed a row of men. The stones removed battlements, even dislodging the corners of towers. The formation does not exist that can stand against rocks like this which carve through rank after rank. A man beside me on the wall was decapitated, his head rolling three furlongs. Most frightening of all was the rushing sound as the missiles flew through the air and the sickening thump of impact. Added to this was the thud of bodies as they fell from the wall. Soon the sentry-walk could be reached simply by scrambling up the corpses. Inside was the wailing of women, outside the groans of the dying.
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The master had not lost his touch. Of the siege of Jerusalem, at which Vespasian's elder son Titus later commanded, Josephus described how lookouts, seeing the
ballista
-shot on its way, shouted warnings in time for the defenders to take cover. In response, the gunners blackened the stones, making their flight almost invisible. Reminiscent of Hod Hill, though using larger ordnance, catapult balls up to eighteen inches across have been found beneath the convent of the Sisters of Zion and at other Jerusalem locations.

The siege of Jotapata ended with the city's fall and Josephus' capture. Hearing his prisoner had the gift of prophecy, Vespasian requested that his own fortune be told. Anticipating Macbeth's witches, the Jew assured the Roman that he would be emperor thereafter. The superstitious Vespasian was greatly impressed. Josephus was held under gentle duress and persuaded to act as interpreter and mediator, in which role he witnessed the six-month agony of Jerusalem from the Roman side. He would later become Vespasian's friend, living as a pensioner in Rome and writing his history of the war.

Now Vespasian's fortunes were about to take another extraordinary turn. The year after Jotapata, events in Rome caused the rebellion to be shelved, forgotten almost, and the rebels at least temporarily reprieved. Nero had been toppled. The Delphic oracle is said to have told Nero to beware the age of seventy-three. Only thirty-one, the emperor congratulated himself on having forty-two years to live. But already Galba, governor of Spain, aged seventy-three, was marching on Rome.
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Deserted by the Praetorians, disowned by the army, reviled by the Senate: time was running out for the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Hiding in a servant's house on the city's edge, Nero stabbed himself in the throat and expired, crying, ‘Jupiter, what an artist dies in me!' This was June,
AD
68. The following year, known as the Year of the Four Emperors, was one of Rome's worst. ‘The vacancy of the throne', as Gibbon commented darkly, ‘is a moment big with danger and mischief.'
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So it was that Vespasian, a highly successful and popular general, whose rocklike character had immense appeal after the caprices of Nero and Caligula, happened, at that perilous moment, to be far from the dangers of Rome and close to the protection of armies. The prefect of Egypt broke the ice by declaring in Vespasian's favour. Emerging one morning from his tent, soldiers began to greet him as emperor, soon followed by the entire Judaean expeditionary force. Finally Syria, jewel of the eastern provinces, came out on his side. Now he could wait while the western claimants killed each other. When the time was right he would intervene as
restitutor orbis,
putter-to-rights of a Roman world gone wrong.

Toga muddied by Caligula, pelted with turnips in Africa, caught napping by Nero, hiding in hick towns, breeding mules: such was the improbable path to power of T. Flavius Vespasianus who, in the ten years remaining him, would do more than any emperor until that time to caulk Rome's leaky frontiers and bring Rome's insulation from the outside world a step closer to completion.

Four characters now enter the picture. First Vespasian's sons, Titus and Domitian. Mindful of the Year of the Four Emperors, Vespasian insisted that the Senate accept them as his heirs. The elder, Titus, who completed his father's work in Judaea, succeeded him in
AD
79. His reign is memorable for the eruption of Vesuvius and the inauguration of the Colosseum. He was dashing, generous and popular. However, at the age of forty-two his health gave way and he died after little more than two years on the throne.