BRITAIN.

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.

Resistance in West Britain.They were masters of the level country, but not of the mountains or of the sea. The west above all gave trouble to the Romans. No doubt in the extreme south–west, in what is now Cornwall, the old nationality maintained itself, probably more because the conquerors concerned themselves but little about this remote corner than because it directly rebelled against them. But the Silures in the south of the modern Wales, and their northern neighbours the Ordovici, perseveringly defied the Roman arms;Mona. the island Mona (Anglesey), adjacent to the latter, was the true focus of national and religious resistance. It was not the character of the ground alone that hindered the advance of the Romans; what Britain had been for Gaul, that the large island Ivernia was now for Britain, and especially for this west coast; the freedom on the one side of the channel did not allow the foreign rule to take firm root in the other. We clearly recognise in the laying out of the legionary camps that the invasion was here arrested. Under the successor of Plautius the camp for the 14th legion was laid out at the confluence of the Tern with the Severn near Viroconium (Wroxeter, not far from Shrewsbury);105 presumably about the same time, to the south of it, that of Isca (Caerleon = Castra legionis) for the 2d; to the north that of Deva (Chester = Castra) for the 20th; these three camps shut off the region of Wales towards the south, north, and west, and protected thus the pacified land against the mountains that remained free. Into this region the last prince of Camalodunum, Caratacus, threw himself, after his home had become Roman. He was defeated by the successor of Plautius, Publius Ostorius Scapula, in the territory of the Ordovici, and soon afterwards delivered up by the terrified Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge, to the Romans (51), and conducted with all his adherents to Italy. In surprise he asked, when he saw the proud city, how the masters of such palaces could covet the poor huts of his native country. But with this the west was by no means subdued; the Silures above all persevered in obstinate resistance, and the fact that the Roman general announced his purpose of extirpating them to the last man did not contribute to make them more submissive.Paullinus. The enterprising governor, Gaius Suetonius Paullinus, attempted some years later (61) to bring into Roman power the chief seat of resistance, the island of Mona, and in spite of the furious opposition with which he was met, and in which the priests and the women took the lead, the sacred trees, beneath which many a Roman captive had bled, fell under the axes of the legionaries. But out of the occupation of this last asylum of the Celtic priesthood there was developed a dangerous crisis in the subject territory itself; and the governor was not destined to complete the conquest of Mona.

Boudicca.In Britain, too, the alien rule had to stand the test of national insurrection. What was undertaken by Mithradates in Asia Minor, by Vercingetorix among the Celts of the continent, by Civilis among the subject Germans, was attempted among the insular Celts by a woman, the wife of one of those vassal–princes confirmed by Rome, the Queen of the Iceni, Boudicca. Her deceased husband had, to secure the future of his wife and his daughters, bequeathed his sovereignty to the emperor Nero, and divided his property between the latter and his own relatives. The emperor took the legacy and, in addition, what was not meant for him; the princely cousins were put in chains, the widow was scourged, the daughters maltreated in more shameful fashion. Then came other wrongs at the hands of the later Neronian government. The veterans settled in Camalodunum chased the earlier possessors from house and homestead as it pleased them, without the authorities interfering to check them. The presents conferred by the emperor Claudius were confiscated as revocable gifts. Roman ministers, who at the same time trafficked in money, drove in this way the Britannic communities, one after the other, to bankruptcy. The moment was favourable. The governor Paullinus, more brave than cautious, was just then, as we have said, with the flower of the Roman army in the remote island of Mona, and this attack on the most sacred seat of the national religion exasperated men’s minds as much as it paved the way for insurrection. The old vehement Celtic faith, which had given the Romans so much trouble, burst forth once more, for the last time, in a mighty flame. The weakened and far separated camps of the legions in the west and in the north afforded no protection to the whole south–east of the island with its flourishing Roman towns.

Attack on Camalodunum.Above all, the capital, Camalodunum, was utterly defenceless; there was no garrison. The walls were not completed, although the temple of their imperial founder, the new god Claudius, was so. The west of the island, probably kept down by the legions stationed there, seems not to have taken part in the rising, and as little the non–subject north; but, as frequently occurred in Celtic revolts, in the year 61 on a concerted signal all the rest of the subject territory rose in a moment against the foreigners, the Trinovantes, driven out of their capital, taking the lead. The second commander, who at the time represented the governor, the procurator Decianus Catus, had at the last moment sent what soldiers he had to its protection; they were 200 men. They defended themselves with the veterans and the other Romans capable of arms for two days in the temple; then they were overpowered, and all that was Roman in the town perished. The like fate befell the chief emporium of Roman trade, Londinium, and a third flourishing Roman city, Verulamium (St. Albans, north–west of London), as well as the foreigners scattered over the island; it was a national Vesper like that of Mithradates, and the number of victims—alleged to be 70,000—was not less. The procurator gave up the cause of Rome as lost, and fled to the continent. The Roman army, too, became involved in the disaster. A number of scattered detachments and garrisons succumbed to the assaults of the insurgents. Quintus Petillius Cerialis, who held the command in the camp of Lindum, marched on Camalodunum with the 9th legion; he came too late to save it, and, assailed by an enormous superiority of force, lost in the battle all his infantry; the camp was stormed by the Brigantes. The same fate well–nigh overtook the general–in–chief. Hastily returning from the island of Mona, he called to him the 2d legion stationed at Isca; but it did not obey the command, and with only about 10,000 men Paullinus had to take up the unequal struggle against the numberless and victorious army of the insurgents. If ever soldiers made good the errors of their leader it was on the day when this small band—chiefly the thenceforth celebrated 14th legion—achieved, doubtless to its own surprise, a full victory, and once more established the Roman rule in Britain. Little was wanting to bring the name of Paullinus into association with that of Varus. But success decides, and here it remained with the Romans.106 The guilty commandant of the legion that remained aloof anticipated the court–martial, and threw himself upon his sword. The queen Boudicca drank the cup of poison. The otherwise brave general was not indeed brought to trial, as seemed to be at first the intention of the government, but was soon under a suitable pretext recalled.

Subjugation of West Britain.The subjugation of the western portions of the island was not continued at once by the successors of Paullinus. The able general Sextus Julius Frontinus first under Vespasian forced the Silures to recognise the Roman rule; his successor Gnaeus Julius Agricola, after obstinate conflicts with the Ordovici, effected what Paullinus had not achieved, and occupied in the year 78 the island of Mona. Afterwards there is no mention of active resistance in these regions; the camp of Viroconium could probably about this time be dispensed with, and the legion thereby set free could be employed in northern Britain. But the other two legionary camps still remained on the spot down to the time of Diocletian, and only disappeared in the later arrangements of the troops. If political considerations may have contributed to this (p.190), yet the resistance of the west was probably continued even later, perhaps supported by communications with Ivernia. Moreover, the complete absence of Roman traces in the interior of Wales, and the Celtic nationality maintaining itself there up to the present day, tell in favour of this view.

Subjugation of Northern Britain.In the north the camp of the 9th Spanish legion in Lindum (Lincoln) formed the centre of the Roman position to the east of Viroconium. In closest contact with this camp in north England was the most powerful principality of the island, that of the Brigantes (Yorkshire); it had not properly submitted, but the queen, Cartimandus, sought to keep peace with the conquerors and showed herself compliant to them. The party hostile to the Romans had attempted to break loose here in the year 50, but the attempt had been quickly suppressed. Caratacus, beaten in the west, had hoped to be able to continue his resistance in the north, but the queen delivered him, as already stated, to the Romans. These internal dissensions and domestic quarrels must have partly influenced the rising against Paullinus, in which we find the Brigantes in a leading position, and which fell with all its weight upon this very legion of the north. Meanwhile the Roman party of the Brigantes, however, was influential enough to obtain the restoration of the government of Cartimandus after the insurrection was defeated. But some years afterwards the patriotic party there, supported by the tidings of revolt from Rome, which during the civil war after the downfall of Nero filled all the west, brought about a new rising of the Brigantes against the foreign rule, at the head of which stood Cartimandus’s former husband, set aside and scorned by her—the veteran warrior Venutius. It was only after prolonged conflicts that the mighty people was subdued by Petillius Cerialis, the same who had fought unsuccessfully under Paullinus against these same Britons, now one of the most noted generals of Vespasian, and the first governor of the island nominated by him. The gradually slackening resistance of the west made it possible to combine one of the three legions hitherto stationed there with that stationed in Lindum, and to advance the camp itself from Lindum to the chief place of the Brigantes, Eburacum (York). But, so long as the west offered serious resistance, nothing further was done in the north for the extension of the Roman bounds; at the Caledonian forest, says an author of the time of Vespasian, the Roman arms were arrested for thirty years.

Agricola.It was Agricola who first, after his work was over in the west, energetically set himself to the subjugation also of the north. First of all, he created for himself a fleet, without which the provisioning of the troops in these mountains, which afforded few supplies, would have been impossible. Supported by this fleet he reached, under Titus (80), as far as the estuary of the Tava (Frith of Tay), into the region of Perth and Dundee, and employed the three following campaigns in gaining an exact knowledge of the wide districts between this frith and the previous Roman boundary on the two seas, in breaking everywhere the local resistance, and in constructing intrenchments at the fitting places; with reference to which, in particular, the natural line of defence which is formed by the two friths running deeply into the land, of Clota (Clyde) near Glasgow, and Bodotria (Forth) near Edinburgh, was selected for a basis. This advance called the whole Highlands under arms; but the mighty battle which the united Caledonian tribes offered to the legions between the two friths of Forth and Tay at the Graupian mountains ended with the victory of Agricola. According to his view the subjugation of the island, once begun, had to be also completed, nay, even extended to Ivernia; and in favour of that course there might be urged, with respect to Roman Britain, what the occupation of the island had brought about with respect to Gaul. Moreover, with an energetic carrying out of the occupation of the islands as a whole, the expenditure of men and money for the future would probably be reduced.

Caledonia abandoned.The Roman government did not follow these counsels. How far personal and spiteful motives may have co–operated in the recall of the victorious general in the year 85, who for that matter had remained longer in office than was usually the case elsewhere, must be left undetermined. The coincidence of the last victories of the general in Scotland and the first defeats of the emperor in the region of the Danube was certainly in a high degree annoying. But for the putting a stop to the operations in Britain,107 and for the calling away, which apparently then ensued, of one of the four legions with which Agricola had executed his campaigns to Pannonia, a quite sufficient explanation is furnished by the military position of the state at that time—the extension of the Roman rule to the right bank of the Rhine in upper Germany and the outbreak of the dangerous wars in Pannonia. This, indeed, does not explain why, withal, an end should be put to the pressing forward towards the north, and northern Scotland as well as Ireland should be left to themselves.

Probable grounds for this policy.That thenceforth the government desisted not on account of accidents of the situation for the moment, but once for all, from pushing forward the frontier of the empire, and amidst all change of persons adhered to this course, we are taught by the whole later history of the island, and taught especially by the laborious and costly wall–structures to be mentioned immediately. Whether the completion of the conquest was renounced by them in the true interest of the state, is another question. That the imperial finances would only suffer loss by this extension of the bounds was even now urged, quite as much as it formerly was against the occupation of the island itself; but could not be decisive of the matter.108 In a military point of view the occupation was capable of being carried out, as Agricola had conceived it, beyond doubt without material difficulty. But the consideration might turn the scale, that the Romanising of the regions still free would have to encounter great difficulty on account of the diversity of race. The Celts in England proper belonged throughout to those of the continent; national name, faith, language, were common to both. As the Celtic nationality of the continent had found a support in the island, on the other hand the Romanising of Gaul necessarily carried its influence over to England, and to this especially Rome owed the fact that Britain became Romanised with so surprising rapidity. But the natives of Ireland and Scotland belonged to another stock and spoke another language; the Briton understood their Gaelic probably as little as the German understood the language of the Scandinavians. The Caledonians—with the Iverni the Romans hardly came into contact—are described throughout as barbarians of the wildest type. On the other hand, the priest of the oak (Derwydd, Druida) exercised his office on the Rhone as in Anglesey, but not in the island of the west nor in the mountains of the north. If the Romans had waged the war chiefly to bring the domain of the Druids entirely into their power, this aim was in some measure attained. Beyond doubt at another time all these considerations would not have induced the Romans to renounce the sea–frontier on the north when brought so near to them, and at least Caledonia would have been occupied. But the Rome of that time was no longer able to leaven further regions with Roman habits; the productive power and the progressive spirit of the people had disappeared from it. At least that sort of conquest, which cannot be enforced by decrees and marches, would have hardly succeeded, had they attempted it.

Fortifying of the northern frontier.Their aim therefore was to arrange the northern frontier appropriately for defence, and to this object their military works were thenceforth directed. Eburacum remained the military centre. The wide territory occupied by Agricola was retained and furnished with forts, which served as advanced posts for the headquarters in rear; probably the greatest part of the non–legionary troops were employed for this purpose. The construction of connected lines of fortification followed later. The first of the kind proceeded from Hadrian, The wall of Hadrian.and is also remarkable, in so far as it still in a certain sense subsists to the present day, and is more completely known than any other of the great military structures of the Romans. It is, strictly taken, a military road protected on both sides by fortifications, leading from sea to sea for a length of about seventy miles, westward to the Solway Frith, and eastward to the mouth of the Tyne. The defence on the north is formed by a huge wall, originally at least 16 feet high and 8 feet thick, built on the two outer sides of square stones, filled up between with rubble and mortar, in front of which stretched a no less imposing fosse, 9 feet in depth and 34 feet or more in breadth at the top. Towards the south the road is protected by two parallel earthen ramparts, even now 6 to 7 feet high, between which is drawn a fosse 7 feet deep, with a margin raised to the south, so that the structure from rampart to rampart has a total breadth of 24 feet. Between the stone–wall and the earthen ramparts on the road itself lie the camp–stations and watch–houses, viz. at the distance of about four miles from one another the cohort–camps, constructed as forts, independently capable of defence, with gates opening towards all the four sides; between every two of these a smaller structure of a similar kind with sally–ports to the north and south; between every two of the latter four smaller watch–houses within call of each other. This structure of grand solidity, which must have required as garrison 10,000 to 12,000 men, formed thenceforth the basis of military operations in the north of England. It was not a frontier–wall in the proper sense; on the contrary, not merely did the posts that had already from Agricola’s time been pushed forward far beyond it continue to subsist by its side, but subsequently the line, The wall of Antoninus.about a half shorter, from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of Clyde, already occupied by Agricola with a chain of posts, was fortified in a similar but weaker way, first under Pius, then in a more comprehensive manner under Severus—as it were, as an advanced post for Hadrian’s wall.109 In point of construction this line was different from that of Hadrian only so far as it was limited to a considerable earthen wall, with fosse in front and road behind, and so was not adapted for defence toward the south; moreover, it too included a number of smaller camps. At this line the Roman imperial roads terminated,110 and, although there were Roman posts even beyond this—the most northerly point, at which the tombstone of a Roman soldier has been found, is Ardoch, between Stirling and Perth—the limit of the expeditions of Agricola, the Frith of Tay, may be regarded as subsequently still the limit of the Roman empire.

Wars in the 2d and 3d centuries.We know more of these imposing defensive works than of the application that was made of them, and generally of the later events on this distant scene of warfare. Under Hadrian a severe disaster occurred here, to all appearance a sudden attack on the camp of Eburacum, and the annihilation of the legion stationed there,111 the same 9th legion which had fought so unsuccessfully in the war with Boudicca. Probably this was occasioned, not by a hostile inroad, but by the revolt of the northern tribes that passed as subjects of the empire, especially of the Brigantes. With this we shall have to connect the fact that the wall of Hadrian presents a front towards the south as well as towards the north; evidently it was destined also for the purpose of keeping in check the superficially subdued north of England. Under Hadrian’s successor Pius also conflicts took place here, in which the Brigantes again took part; yet more exact information cannot be got.112 The first serious attack upon this imperial boundary, and the first demonstrable crossing of the wall—doubtless that of Pius—took place under Marcus, and further attacks under Commodus; as indeed Commodus is the first emperor who assumed the surname of victory Britannicus, after the able general Ulpius Marcellus had routed the barbarians. But the sinking of the Roman power was henceforth just as apparent here as on the Danube and on the Euphrates. In the turbulent early years of Severus’s reign the Caledonians had broken their promise not to interfere with the Roman subjects, and, resting on their support, their southern neighbours, the Maeates, had compelled the Roman governor Lupus to ransom captive Romans with large sums. For this the heavy arm of Severus lighted on them not long before his death; he penetrated into their own territory and compelled them to cede considerable tracts,113 from which indeed, after the old emperor had died in 211 at the camp of Eburacum, his sons at once of their own accord withdrew the garrisons, to be relieved of their burdensome defence.

Caledonians and Scots.From the third century hardly anything is told us of the fate of the island. Since none of the emperors down to Diocletian and his colleagues derived the name of conqueror from the island, there were probably no more serious conflicts in that quarter; and, although in the region lying between the walls of Pius and of Hadrian the Roman system doubtless never gained a firm footing, yet at least the wall of Hadrian seems to have rendered even then the service for which it was intended, and the foreign civilisation seems to have developed in security behind it. In the time of Diocletian we find the district between the two walls evacuated, but the Hadrianic wall occupied still as before, and the rest of the Roman army in cantonments between it and the headquarters Eburacum, to ward off the predatory expeditions, thenceforth often mentioned, of the Caledonians, or—as they are now usually called—the “tattooed” (picti), and the Scots streaming in from Ivernia.

Fleet.The Romans possessed a standing fleet in Britain; but, as the marine always remained the weak side of Roman warlike organisation, the British fleet was temporarily of importance only under Agricola.

Garrison and administration in the 2d and 3d centuries.If, as is probable, the government had reckoned on being able to take back the greater part of the troops sent to the island, after it had been occupied, this hope was not fulfilled; only one of the four legions sent thither was, as we have seen, recalled under Domitian; the three others must have been indispensable, for no attempt was ever made to shift them. To these fall to be added the auxiliaries, who were called out apparently in larger proportion than the burgess–troops for the far from inviting service in the remote island of the North Sea. In the battle at the Graupian Mount in 84 there fought, besides the four legions, 8000 infantry and 3000 horsemen of the auxiliary soldiers. For the time of Trajan and Hadrian, when of these there were stationed in Britain six alae and twenty–one cohorts, together about 15,000 men, we shall have to estimate the whole British army at about 30,000 men. Britain was from the outset a field of command of the first rank, inferior to the two Rhenish commands and to the Syrian perhaps in rank, but not in importance, towards the end of the second century probably the most highly esteemed of all the governorships. It was owing only to the great distance that the British legions appear in the second rank amidst the rival armies of the earlier imperial period; in the soldiers’ war after the extinction of the Antonine house they fought in the first rank. But it was one of the consequences of the victory of Severus that the governorship was divided. Thenceforth the two legions of Isca and Deva were placed under the legate of the upper province, the legion of Eburacum and the troops at the walls—consequently the main body of the auxiliaries—under the legate of the lower province.114 Probably the transference of the whole garrison to the north, which, as was above remarked, would doubtless have been appropriate on mere military grounds, was not carried out—partly because it would have put three legions into the hands of one governor.

Taxation and levy.That financially the province cost more than it brought in (p.172), can accordingly excite no surprise. For the military strength of the empire, on the other hand, Britain was of considerable account; the balance of proportion between taxation and levy must have had its application also to the island, and the British troops were reckoned alongside of the Illyrian as the flower of the army. At the very beginning seven cohorts were raised from the natives there, and these were constantly increased onward to the time of Hadrian; after the latter had brought in the system of recruiting the troops as far as possible from their garrison–districts, Britain appears to have furnished the supply, at least in great part, for its strong garrison. There was an earnest and brave spirit in the people; they bore willingly the taxes and the levy, but not the arrogance and brutality of the officials.

Communal organisation.As a basis for the internal organisation of Britain, the cantonal constitution existing there at the time of the conquest offered itself, which differed, as we have already remarked, from that of the Celts of the continent essentially only in the fact that the several tribes of the island, apparently all of them, were under princes (iv.233)iv.222.. But this organisation seems not to have been retained, and the canton (civitas) to have become in Britain as in Spain a geographical conception; at least we can hardly otherwise explain the facts that the Britannic tribes, taken in the strict sense, disappear as soon as they fall under Roman rule, and of the individual cantons after their subjugation there is virtually no mention at all. Probably the several principalities, as they were subdued and annexed, were broken up into smaller communities; this was facilitated by the fact that there did not exist on the island, as there did on the continent, a cantonal constitution organised without a monarchic head. With this is doubtless connected the circumstance that, while the Gallic cantons possessed a common capital and in it a political and religious collective representation, nothing similar is stated as to Britain. The province was not without a concilium and a common cultus of the emperor; but, if the altar of Claudius in Camalodunum115 had been even approximately what that of Augustus was in Lugudunum, something would doubtless have been heard of it. The free and great political remodelling, which was given to the Gallic country by Caesar and confirmed by his son, no longer fits into the framework of the later imperial policy.

We have already mentioned the founding, nearly contemporary with the invasion of Britain, of the colony Camalodunum (p.176), as it has also been already noticed that the Italian urban constitution was early introduced into a series of British townships. Herein, too, Britain was treated more after the model of Spain than after that of the Celtic continent.

Prosperity.The internal condition of Britain must, in spite of the general faults of the imperial government, have been, at least in comparison with other regions, not unfavourable. If the people in the north knew only hunting and pasturing, and the inhabitants there as well as those adjoining them were always ready for feud and rapine, the south developed itself in an undisturbed state of peace, especially by means of agriculture, and along with it by cattle–rearing and the working of mines, to a moderate prosperity. The Gallic orators of Diocletian’s time praise the wealth of the fertile island, and often enough the Rhine–legions received their corn from Britain.

Roads.The network of roads in the island, which was uncommonly developed, and for which in particular Hadrian did much in connection with the building of his wall, was of course primarily subservient to military ends; but alongside of, and in fact taking precedence over the legionary camps Londinium occupies in that respect a place which brings clearly into view its leading position in traffic. Only in Wales were these imperial roads solely in the immediate neighbourhood of the Roman camps, from Isca to Nidum (Neath) and from Deva to the point of crossing to Mona.

Roman manners and culture.In respect of Romanisation, Britain seems to have been very similar to northern and central Gaul. The national deities, the Mars Belatucadrus or Cocidius, the goddess Sulis treated as equivalent to Minerva, after whom the modern city of Bath was named, still received much worship on the island even in the Latin language. The language and manners that penetrated thither from Italy were yet more an exotic growth on the island than on the continent; still towards the close of the first century the families of note there shunned as well the Latin language as the Latin dress. The great urban centres, the seats proper of the new culture, were more weakly developed in Britain; we do not precisely know what English town served as seat for the concilium of the province and for the common worship of the emperor, or in which of the three legion–camps the governor of the province resided; if, as it seems, the civil capital of Britain was Camalodunum, and the military capital Eburacum,116 the latter can as little measure itself with Mentz as the former with Lyons. The ruined sites even of places of note, of the Claudian veteran–town Camalodunum, and the populous mercantile town Londinium, and not less the camps of the legions for several hundred years, at Deva, Isca, Eburacum, present inscribed stones only in trifling number; towns of name with Roman rights like the colony Glevum (Gloucester), and the municipium Verulamium, have hitherto yielded not a single one; the custom of setting up memorial–stones, on the results of which we are for such questions largely dependent, never really prevailed in Britain. In the interior of Wales and in other less accessible districts no Roman monuments at all have come to light. But there exist withal clear traces of the stirring commerce and traffic brought into prominence by Tacitus, such as the numerous drinking–cups which have come out of the ruins of London, and the London network of roads. If Agricola exerted himself to transplant municipal emulation in the embellishment of one’s native city by buildings and monuments to Britain, as it had been transferred from Italy to Africa and Spain, and to induce the islanders of note to adorn the markets of their home and to erect temples and palaces, as this was usual elsewhere, he was but in a slight degree successful as regards the public buildings. But it was otherwise as regards private economics; the stately country–houses constructed and embellished in Roman fashion, of which now nothing is left but the mosaic pavements, are found in southern Britain—so far north as the region of York117—as frequently as in the land of the Rhine. The higher scholastic training of youth penetrated gradually from Gaul into Britain. It is specified among Agricola’s administrative successes that the Roman tutor began to find his way into the leading houses of the island. In Hadrian’s time Britain is described as a region conquered by the Gallic schoolmasters, and “even Thule speaks of hiring a professor for itself.” These schoolmasters were in the first instance Latin, but Greeks also came; Plutarch tells of a conversation which he held at Delphi with a Greek teacher of languages from Tarsus returning home from Britain. If in modern England, apart from Wales and its borders, the old native language has disappeared, it has given way not to the Angles or to the Saxons, but to the Roman idiom; and, as usually happens in border–lands, in the later imperial period no one stood more faithfully by Rome than the man of Britain. It was not Britain that gave up Rome, but Rome that gave up Britain. The last that we learn of the island is the urgent entreaty of the population addressed to the emperor Honorius for protection against the Saxons, and his answer, that they might help themselves as best they could.