Dover lighthouse. Birgitta Hoffmann
Claudius left Britain to celebrate his victory in Rome. In the meantime in Britain Aulus Plautius continued to turn the relatively easy success of one summer’s campaigning into a lasting gain of a British province for the Roman Empire. Aulus Plautius, the governor or more accurately the legatus pro praetore (literally ‘an official with judicial powers in the provinces sent by the Emperor’), had considerable power, but governors were not allowed to just act on their own instinct; on appointment they were given a set of instructions by the Emperor (mandata), which contained their mission brief for the term of their office (by this time usually 3/4 years). We know very little of what these mandata looked like. But it seems their legality died with the Emperor and most governors waited for new instructions on the accession of a new Emperor. Claudius’ instruction, ‘Carry on with the rest!’ may have been the one line summary of his orders to Plautius; but we hear little in the historical record of what happens next.
We know that various British people surrendered, that oppida (towns, usually fortified) were taken and that the Isle of Wight was conquered, but whether that was before, during or after Claudius came to Britain, Suetonius does not tell us. It is tempting to turn at this point to the next available chronological boundary and proceed with a tale of conquest, but this would be to miss the vital role that the Roman army was playing in the period immediately after the surrender at Colchester.
Unlike almost all modern states, the Roman governors were military commanders within their province as well as civilian administrators. In addition, there would usually be one other high ranking official: the procurator, a salaried official in the direct employ of the Emperor, who would be in charge of the financial aspects of the province and it seems part of the logistics of supplying the army, as well as keeping an eye on the governor, while the governor appears to have on occasion returned the compliment.
The two areas of competence overlapped in the everyday administration by necessity: the money raised by the procurator paid for the army of the governor and the governor’s decisions regarding the day-to-day running of the province had repercussions for the finances of the procurator. At the same time the wrong decision on the implementation of taxes or financial administration by the procurator could lead (as we will see) to riots and rebellions.
Romans, or at least Strabo during Augustus’ time, expected their provinces to make a profit; a generation later this is not likely to have changed. As a result, the administration was kept small; neither the governor nor the procurator had a large salaried staff, but were encouraged to find a solution to any problems out of their own pockets or with the help of their friends and relatives – and as we have seen from Cicero’s comments, the Roman participants expected to profit from this work. Exploitation of positions of power was considered normal, there is not really a term for corruption in provincial administration in Latin, although there is a concept that you should not be too greedy. The governor himself could be prosecuted if found to be excessive in the exploitation of the provincials (although there is more than a suggestion in the historical writers that conviction for this extortion did not so much reflect the guilt of the accused, as much as the number of political enemies the man in question had made in Rome).
The only other body that could be drawn upon for the emerging administration of the province was the army. Military personnel could be seconded to work in the office of either the governor or procurator, or be sent on missions to implement their commands.
The army would also have been the only police force available, as at least in the directly administered areas, it would have been illegal to keep free men or slaves under arms or to use violence or to threaten it, unless commissioned to do so by the Emperor.
This is an explosive mix and in a newly conquered province this could and frequently did lead to disturbances, when Roman rule was imposed. (The Varian disaster in Germany in 9 AD was caused by a governor being too keen to impose Roman rule on recently conquered people.) The resulting need was to identify indigenous people who were willing to cooperate with the Romans and administer their own regions or tribes on their behalf. This could be in the form of the civitas administration with its own council. How much or little this agreed with the Mediterranean practice remained a matter of negotiation, and the amount of time spent by Aulus Plautius to negotiate these administrative terms should not be underestimated.
An alternative was to use client kings (as before) and let them do the administration. Again this would not have been without problems, as terms needed to be negotiated and probably a team of ‘advisers’ selected to help with the implementation of some of the requests. We know that by the late 50s we have Togidubnus (sometimes also still known as Cogidubnus; possibly king of the Chichester or Silchester area), Prasutagus of the Iceni and Cartimandua of the Brigantes. These are the three that have for their very different reasons made it into the history books; it is quite likely that others existed, but we lack their names or that of their kingdoms.
In the areas that were under direct control, armed forces were needed to keep the peace. In Modern Britain we tend to differentiate between civilian police forces and the military, although many European states have military bodies conducting policing duties. The same applied in Rome; in addition to any possible civitas’ watch or royal guards, the army was mostly responsible for the upkeep of the peace. This of necessity demanded a spreading of the available forces over a substantial area. This decision also allowed for a more manageable form of keeping the forces supplied, by dispersing the army closer to their potential food sources and cutting down on the need to guard supply transports, provided the necessary infrastructure was in place.
A Roman army on invasion could be supplied from its area of origin, so initially it is more than likely that the Roman army was supplied from the Rhine and/or Gaul, although we have little evidence for this, except for the rapid speed with which the supply base at Richborough developed. Increasingly it was assumed that the newly conquered area would take over the supply of the army. This would mean that the army needed to have a road/river system that allowed for transport to be brought up to the bases. Britain with its extended coastline and good harbours provided just the conditions for such a system to be put into operations.
The basic underlying pattern of the early road transport system appears to link the major harbours (in Kent, on the Humber, on the Thames and along the south coast) with the major legionary bases (e.g. Colchester, Exeter, Lincoln and Wroxeter) and other large civilian settlements (e.g. Cirencester, Silchester and London). Seven Roman roads criss-crossing the country achieved the links between the river network and these towns: Ermine Street (running from London to the Humber), Watling Street (from London to Wroxeter), the Fosse Way (from Topsham near Exeter to Lincoln and on to the Humber), as well as the road from Cirencester to Silchester, and then on to London, the road from Silchester to Chichester and the roads from London to Colchester and to Richborough. Research on these roads suggests that some may have had pre-Roman origins (such as in the Wroxeter area), but that the new roads were not all built overnight and the beautifully engineered cambered roads with rammed gravel may have taken several decades to complete (Salway, 1981, 96–97). Nevertheless, the laying out of the routes, rather than the engineering of tracks appears to have happened relatively early and was most likely performed by the army in the first few years after the conquest.
As a result the new province gained an infrastructure which allowed traffic to flow with comparative ease. The fact that many of the forts of the early period were sited along these roads, and the rapidity with which London, which lies at the heart of the eastern part of this road system, had developed, attests to the need for a transport system that allowed for heavy goods, as well as personnel, to safely cross the province.
As stated, the security of the province was mainly in the hands of the military and we know of a number of military sites from the first twenty years after the conquest. In addition further sites have been proposed for various reasons (spacing, strategy, ill defined ditches found during excavations). The Roman army may have been stationed in forts and fortresses at the time, but it also operated within civilian towns and it seems losses of military equipment, especially cavalry equipment may attest to operations, but not necessarily to forts, e.g. at Silchester.
The strategic hubs of the troop deployment at this period are the legions. Some appear to be stationed as a whole in fortresses such as Colchester/Camoludunum, but the majority were accommodated in vexillation fortresses (now often and possibly more accurately termed campaign bases), sizeable military sites of c. 8–12 ha that could accommodate substantial parts of a legion as well as some auxiliary troops. Over a dozen of these bases are known from the first twenty years of the occupation, including Longthorpe, Lake Farm, or Mancetter. In between, we know of a number of auxiliary forts, large enough to take around 500 troops. The large number of these sites suggests a very rapidly changing landscape of troop deployment, something that archaeology (our most important tool in the understanding of this period) has only rarely been able to unravel in the necessary detail (e.g. in two year intervals). Archaeological finds, especially on sites that underlay later Roman towns, can be rare and thus hard to date, and a dozen finds of probable military origin and a few Samian sherds offer little chance of refining the date beyond a general bracket of ‘Claudian/Neronian’.
Some sites are exceptions in this context: the finds of gate timbers in the annex of the legionary/vexillation fortress of Alchester which can be dated to 44 together with a gravestone of the legio II Augusta, allow us to suggest Alchester as one of the first bases of this legion and thus possible home for a winter or so of Vespasian, its commander and later Emperor (70/79) (Sauer 2005).
In later periods we know that legionary fortresses had access to land that was reserved for their usage. One of the problems of the rapidly changing landscape of the early years is that it is next to impossible to establish whether this was already the case in Claudius’ reign. We are also still very badly informed about what units were present at this time, but four legions (legio XIV Gemina, legio II Augusta, legio IX Hispana and legio XX Valeria Victrix) have left early gravestones of the period in Britain, such as the one of the centurio Favonius Facilis of legio XX in Colchester. If he died as a serving soldier, it would suggest that legio XX was stationed at Colchester, but centuriones rarely indicate on their gravestones that they are retired and it is just possible that the stone belongs to one of the first residents of the later colonia. In addition there are auxiliary units such as the ala I Thracum of which we also possess a gravestone from Colchester.
In many ways it is not surprising to find this rapidly changing military landscape in Britain, as progress appears to have been rapid; but what is more striking is the uneven spread of military sites throughout the province. While there are numerous military sites in the Midlands and around Exeter and Lincoln, large parts of the country are still empty, in some areas such as west of the Tamar, this may reflect a lower level of research, but apart from Richborough (which may have been military or civilian in character in its early phases), no forts are known in Kent now that Syndale has been disproved (Brit. Arch. no. 77(2004)), and similar sparsely occupied areas exist amongst others in Hertfordshire and south of the Thames. It is a possibility that these territories were not under direct Roman control, but may represent further otherwise unnamed client kingdoms, but there is no further evidence for this theory.
Having established the main administration of the province and a military infrastructure, a further point to organize would have been taxation, revenue and excise. We are told in Tacitus’ Agricola (chapter 19) that forty years later there were problems with the grain that the civilians were forced to deliver to the forts, which suggests that some of the taxes were paid in kind to feed the army. But we know little about this early aspect of the province – not even the names of the early procurators.
One of the privileges the Emperor reserved for himself in any province was the right to all valuable ore deposits, especially those containing silver and gold. Silver is rarely found by itself, but more often in combination with other metal ores such as lead. While Caesar after his invasions was still of the opinion that there was little of value on the island, the Claudian invaders would have known better: by 49 lead pigs from the Mendips were in circulation, the accompanying silver no doubt was used for coinage or silver vessels. British ingots of the same period have been recorded in northern France, indicating that lead was being exported to the Continent only six years after the Claudian invasion. It has been suggested that a cistern at Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, was made of British lead. The level to which the army was involved in the exploitation of these deposits seems to differ; according to the inscriptions on the ingots, some deposits were leased and worked by civilian consortia, others are found in close proximity to army installations, suggesting a close relationship.
A final point to consider is the Imperial Cult. While Roman citizens in Rome would agree that the Emperor was anything but a living god, the Roman state since Augustus had found that organized prayers for the guardian spirit of the Emperor (genius Augusti) or his numen (a hard to define term in English, but close to the divine essence that made him a good Emperor) by the residents of the provinces formed an act of loyalty that should be encouraged. One final duty of the governor (although probably not of the army) was to convince the elite of the province to establish such a cult site for the entire area. We know that by 60, this site was the temple of Divus Claudius in Colchester, but it can only have had this title since 54, when Claudius died. What earlier shape the cult took is so far unknown, and although numerous suggestions have been made that the central seat of the administration of the province must have been either in Colchester or London, there is little convincing evidence to support either suggestion and it is just as possible that during the early years the governor and the procurator found themselves too busy to establish one permanent headquarters, but instead toured the province (Haensch 1997, 120–125).
Given the wide range of duties outlined above, it is perhaps not surprising that little is heard in the written sources about the province under Aulus Plautius’ governorship. In many ways, no news must have been good news, as it seems the province was willing to resolve its various teething problems without too many military interventions.
Most of the events described in this chapter come from Tacitus’ Annals. Tacitus is a historian who wrote several books, including the Agricola (a short piece dealing with the career of his father-in-law as an example of the successful career of a good governor under a bad Emperor), and two historical works, the Annals, which deal with Roman history from the death of Augustus to the death of Nero (and which have a few books missing including the relevant section on the conquest of Britain), and the Histories, which dealt with the history from the death of Nero onwards, but of which we only have the first few years. Tacitus had been a successful lawyer, orator and politician under the Flavian Emperors at the end of the first century, and appears to have been involved in the coup that brought this dynasty to an end in 96, bringing the Emperors Nerva (96–98) and Trajan (98–117) to power. He has been credited with extremely good insight into the social climate in Rome in the first century and the problems generated by a powerful Emperor operating within a military dictatorship behind a façade of continuing Republican traditions. Tacitus throughout his writing displays wonderfully controlled language and some of his historical scenes, when closely analyzed are full of parallels, linguistic and factual allusions to other events, including occasional moments where phrases or events are duplicated on several occasions. All this makes Tacitean history very powerful literature, but harbours numerous problems for the historian in search of detailed information. On the other hand Tacitus has often been accused of being little interested in military affairs, especially campaign details that do not have consequential political repercussions and generally not thinking much of the army as an institution. He certainly throughout his historical writing has the tendency of focusing on people rather than events or places, and his geographical details, in keeping with historical traditions in Rome, are sketchy, as they were deemed of little interest to the readership (Syme, 1963; Mellor, 1993, 1999; Feldherr, 2009).
The priority of peacefully developing an effective administrative system for the province appears to have changed with the arrival of the second governor Ostorius Scapula. Tacitus (Annals Book XII, 31–40; our only source for the events) devotes several chapters to Britain at this point and the hero is Ostorius Scapula. We know little about him, in the same way that we know little about most Roman senators outside the Imperial families, and those we know mostly from the inscriptions that were dedicated to them, listing their careers or brief sketches in the sources; Tacitus’ character sketches of the senators of the first century while vivid, are often also problematic ‘sound bites’. Tacitus’ heroes follow on the whole one of two types: on the one hand the stoic philosopher who holds to the moral high ground against the wicked Emperor, usually with tragic consequences for himself; the other is the ‘old style’ Roman general, a straight-laced warrior and strict disciplinarian, with little time for talking/diplomacy, who achieves substantial military successes for the Roman Emperor (and then usually falls into disgrace when an envious/inept Emperor does not know how to make use of such a ‘true Roman’). It is hard to say whether the people that are portrayed this way really were as described, or whether this is the image in which Tacitus needed to typecast his protagonists in order to be able to make his wider social points. But it is clear from the description that Ostorius Scapula was one of the Tacitean heroes and that due to his exploits in Britain he had apparently few peers. In the absence of any other sources it is hard to judge if this was really the case.
The transfer of power from one governor to the next in any new Roman province could be tricky, as the Romans knew, and to judge from the description by Tacitus, an unnamed party in Britain was willing to exploit the situation by attacking a friendly tribe. Tacitus describes Scapula’s response as swift and to the point: cut down anyone offering resistance, pursue the fleeing, then disarm the suspects to avoid repetition. In addition new forts or camps are built to stop access across the rivers Severn and Avon/Trent (the text of Tacitus is corrupt here and both emendations are in circulation) (Salway 1981, 100–101; Boetticher & Schaefer in: Tacitus 1985, 513).
This intervention, which appears to have focused on the western part of the province (to judge from the mention of the Severn), caused the Iceni to revolt. They came together at a defended site that was hard to access, especially for the cavalry. The auxiliaries under the governor’s command stormed the fortification.
Not a lot of this account makes sense. Why would the Iceni in Norfolk care what happened in the West Midlands and in Somerset? Why would they even be concerned with this uprising? If these really were outsiders attacking friends of the Romans, i.e. allies or even client kings, the Iceni can have been neither party – so why would any of the outcomes affect them? It is hard to find any coherent reason for the inclusion of this episode, unless Tacitus either did not know where the Iceni were in relation to the Severn (easily done, if he had never been there), or alternatively it was not that important on the scale of things, especially compared with the final sentence: that this engagement led to the son of Ostorius Scapula being awarded the corona civica for rescuing a Roman citizen. Again we are not told why the son was there at all – was he an auxiliary commander, or had he just come along as one of the governor’s voluntary staff discussed at the beginning of the chapter? But his appearance is necessary for the flow of Tacitus’ account, as he will be mentioned again in the later volumes of the Annals, when Nero forces him into suicide in 66 (Birley 2005, 31), thus making both the Iceni and Scapula victims of Nero.
After the Icenian incident we are told that the province returned to peace and the campaigning is renewed against the Deceangi, who we can place along the north Welsh coast. The area is devastated in hit and run warfare, without a major battle; by the time the Roman army has nearly reached the west coast, another uprising is mentioned by the Brigantes, who appear to have occupied large parts of the North of England, the area north of Manchester and Leeds. A punitive campaign followed.
We know from later descriptions of Tacitus that at the time the Brigantes were ruled by Cartimandua, just as the Iceni were ruled by Prasutagus. It is interesting that Tacitus describes two campaigns against possible client kingdoms in the same year without naming their rulers and without later mentioning these earlier problems. Was he at this point of writing not aware of them? Thanks to Pliny the Younger’s letters about Vesuvius, we know that Tacitus contacted eyewitnesses to record their experiences, but the events of the 50s may have been too long ago to still allow this. An alternative interpretation is that the Romans may have decided that it would be easier to return both areas to client control after administering them at first directly, as this would be less likely to cause uprisings. Similar decisions can be seen in the Eastern provinces such as Syria at about the same time, as well as earlier in other provinces – but once again our evidence does not allow us to move beyond hypotheses.
At the end of the first year’s campaigning Ostorius appears to have decided to focus on the Silures (in other sources described as living in south eastern Wales and the Welsh Marches). He moved the legion from Colchester and established a new fortress further west at Kingsholm. Colchester itself was not abandoned, but turned into a colonia, a settlement of retired soldiers with their own land grant. We know from elsewhere, that coloniae need not have been settlements on completely virgin sites, where only Romans lived. Since the Civil Wars of the first century BC the Romans have been known to create these settlements in established towns such as Pompeii, by confiscating some of the property in and around the town, and allocating it to the retiring soldiers. However, Colchester had been a legionary fortress, built inside the Iron Age oppidum, so the buildings of the legionary fortress could be adapted for civilian use with few problems. We have to assume that some of the land outside it was also assigned to the soldiers, but we know that both the nearby settlements at Sheepen and at Gosbecks, which had begun in the Iron Age, continued in existence. Gosbecks especially must have been home to some fairly wealthy British individuals, who were eventually, and clearly after the conquest, buried in the rich funerals at nearby Stanway.
One of the advantages of a colonia was the creation of a settlement that was run on the Mediterranean model and could be used for those wishing to spread Roman culture as a series of model homes. It is unlikely, however, that this was at the forefront of Ostorius Scapula’s thinking. He was renewing the conquest within the British province and needed to free up troops from the ‘policing duties’ outlined above. He could have asked for more troops from the Continent, but with four legions already in the province, it is doubtful if anybody in Rome would have acceded to his wishes. By creating a colonia, into which recently retired troops could be moved, he de facto exchanged a unit in full fighting fitness, for an informal unit (similar to later militias or invalid units) that could still be called upon for service in emergencies.
Archaeologically we can identify this redeployment in a series of new bases west of the Fosse Way, close to Siluran territory; including Kingsholm outside Gloucester, which probably became the new legionary base. Further north, along Watling Street, a series of campaign bases have been found at Wall, Kinvaston and a smaller site at Metchley.
There is also a large military site at Wroxeter as there was an ala stationed in the nearby auxiliary fort, Webster (in Webster and Chadderton 1988) argues that the military complex could not have been a legionary fortress at this time. This argument, however, is not cogent, especially as we know that several of the Rhine and Danube legions have an ala or cohors stationed nearby (e.g. Carnuntum, Mainz or Vetera) in the same period, or in the case of Vindonissa possibly stationed within the same fortress. There is thus little reason to delay the arrival of the legio XIV Gemina for several years, just because of the presence of an auxiliary unit close-by. In addition, if we assume that the two tombstones from Colchester refer to two soldiers on active service rather than retirees, there would be a similar scenario even within Britain.
We know that at some point the legio II Augusta had its base in Exeter (probably from 55 onwards), while there are early tombstones of the legio IX Hispana in Lincoln. However, the legionary fortress at Lincoln appears not yet to be occupied at this point and the legio IX Hispana may have been split between Longthorpe and one of the other vexillation fortresses or campaign bases (Jones 2002, 32–36).
As the above already suggests, the exact occupation history of these large military sites is problematic. Hassall (2000, 51–67) wrote a comparative article on the various reconstructions and their underlying reasoning: the intervening years have not substantially altered the argument, except by adding Alchester as a new site into the mix, without resolving the issues. What is not in doubt is that from the late 40s onwards we see an increasing amount of military moving towards the West and especially into the Welsh Marches. Archaeologically, we see increasing numbers of marching camps (the temporary accommodation used on campaign or during training) and forts clustering at the mouth of the Severn tributaries, suggesting that while we are still a long way from developing protective Roman frontiers like those seen a century later, we have developed the concept of a springboard site from where campaigns could be organized and to which troops could be withdrawn between campaigning.
Tacitus continued to describe the target of the next campaigns: the Silures and Caratacus, son of Cunobelinus, who appears to have become the general leading the resistance against Rome in the West. He offers no information about Caratacus’ career between the battle near the Thames estuary and the last battle in the Welsh mountains; and in the absence of any supporting evidence any proposed biography would be pure fiction.
The Scapulan campaign, about which we hear little, ends in a decisive battle ‘in the land of the Ordovices’ (which with the help of other sources we can place in north-east Wales, north of Shrewsbury) and once again the only information we are given is a topographical description of the battle site: Caratacus chose a steep mountain, with the easy access blocked by a rough stone obstacle. At the foot flows a river with a tricky ford. Two protruding parts of the hill are manned with armed men.
Suggestions of the location of this battle site once again abound, including the Llanymynech/Abertanat area, proposed by G.D.B. Jones (in Jones and Reynolds 1987). But the description is that of a generic Welsh hillside; selecting the right one amongst hundreds of candidates would have to (once again) depend on the identification of a scatter of military finds, which so far has failed to materialize.
The result of the battle, however, is reported by Tacitus: after heavy fighting the Roman army is finally victorious, and Caratacus’ wife and brothers are captured. He himself escaped to the Brigantes and unlike the report of a year earlier, this time Cartimandua is named as the queen of the Brigantes, who handed him over to the Roman authorities in the ninth year after the conquest of Britain (43 + 9 = 51/52). We thus have to assume that the war with the Silures has lasted nearly three years, given that Ostorius Scapula became governor of Britain in the winter of 47/48 and spent the first year dealing with the Iceni, Decangi and Brigantes. It should be stressed that Tacitus’ account makes this nowhere clear; we are left with a rapid progression of the narrative between the campaign against the Brigantes, the founding of the colonia and the final battle against the Silures and the capture of Caratacus. As a consequence, it is difficult to date the duration of the events described. How long did it take Caratacus to reach the Brigantes? Did Cartimandua hand him over immediately, or are we faced with a protracted hunting down by the Roman army?
The Tacitean account at this point switches from Britain to Rome and the next two and a half chapters (36/38) deal mainly with the confrontation of Caratacus and Claudius in Rome. This offered Tacitus another chance for one of his set piece confrontations of the uncivilized, but morally sound barbarian, against the ruler of the world or his general; civilized, but definitely far from heroic. In nearly all these confrontations, whether face to face as here, or vicarious through opposing speeches, Tacitus managed to make the barbarian appear as the more noble, the more deserving, and the one with the better lines, even if Rome always wins in the end. This goes some way to explain why Rome’s enemies always make such good heroes, as they definitely have in Tacitus the better ghost writer. In this particular case, Caratacus refused to be cowed by Rome’s grandeur and offered Claudius some philosophical insights into the turns of fate and how his resistance is in many ways a favour to Claudius, as he thus had a more formidable enemy and therefore a greater reputation as a winner due to Caratacus being talked about for the ten year duration of the war. Caratacus then argued that by having him killed, Claudius would just have ended this reputation; while pardoning him would mean that there would be a permanent reminder of Claudius’ glory. Claudius (who is depicted by Tacitus as learned, not clever or wise, but easily influenced) did as suggested and pardoned Caratacus and his family. Scapula is awarded the triumphal insignia.
When returning to Britain, Tacitus’ account (chapter 38) shows the situation in the province as deteriorating. In the aftermath of the capture of Claudius, Ostorius Scapula faced large amounts of opposition. A prefect of the camp and those legionaries left in Siluran territory to build a fortification were attacked, and despite the success of the rescue mission, the prefect and eight centurions (and we have to assume numerous legionaries) were killed; a further attack on troops gathering fodder led to the Romans fleeing the scene. While the battle could eventually be turned into success, the fighting continued with the Silures being singled out as the most dangerous enemies (which implied that other unnamed tribes were involved as well). The situation appears to have been further aggravated by the undiplomatic suggestion of the governor that the Silures should be treated like the Sugambri, a German tribe, and were either exterminated or resettled in Gaul. Eventually Scapula died during the fighting, but not in battle.
The next governor Didius Gallus appears to have spent considerable time earlier in his career ‘campaigning’ for the position without success, but seems to have spent the interim gaining substantial military success elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Claudius now appointed him as the successor to Scapula, which according to the sources he did not appear to have appreciated very much (Birley 2005, 35).
Didius Gallus was apparently already an older man, and unwilling to campaign in person, despite the continuously deteriorating situation. Apparently the Silures continued to attack Roman positions, and Tacitus accused both the Britons and the incoming governor of exaggerating the situation, wishing to obtain more glory for eventually resolving the situation: Gallus’ exact position. In addition, Didius Gallus and his army were requested to intervene in Brigantian territory, after Venutius and Cartimandua had divorced each other and begun a civil war, which appears to have finally involved an intervention from outside (by whom we are not told), whereby Didius Gallus managed to rescue the queen. Once again we are not given any firm indication as to when this rescue took place. As already discussed, the last event described by date is the capture of Caratacus in the ninth year after the conquest, and Tacitus states clearly that he wished to treat the two governorships together ‘so that ripped apart it would not leave too weak an impression’. We know that Didius Gallus’ successor died in Britain after less than a year in post in 58. So the above events must fall somewhere between 52 and 57.
The second time Tacitus returned to the events in the province at this time is at the introduction to the circumstances surrounding the Boudiccan rebellion. Setting the scene in a couple of sentences, Didius’ career is summarized as having done nothing but retain the ground already won, while his successor Veranius is credited with a few moderate raids against the Silures before he died. The equally short summary in the Agricola (chapter 14) adds that Didius Gallus built a few forts, so that he could claim to have extended the Roman territory. Veranius’ successor, Suetonius Paullinus is another of Tacitus’ ‘men of iron’, who was in public esteem a rival to Corbulo, possibly the greatest general of Nero’s reign.
Tacitus’ language in these passages is clearly designed to create opposing characterizations. Ostorius Scapula and Suetonius Paullinus are great military men; Didius Gallus and Veranius are ‘no hopers’. Very little blame attaches to Veranius, due to his early death. Didius Gallus, however, is charged with delegating work to others instead of campaigning himself, because he was old and sluggish and surfeit with honours. He is also accused of exaggerating the successes and dangers, and with portraying consolidation (building forts) as conquest, to artificially inflate his achievements. Tacitus clearly did not get this information from a friend of Didius Gallus. He also appears to have had some problems with the character ascribed to this general. Either the governor was too lazy to seek military glory, or he was exaggerating his achievements; both combined in the same man seems a very unlikely combination. We know from other sources, summarized by Birley (1981, 45–49; 2005, 32–37) that Didius Gallus had substantial military experience: he had been on the German campaign with Germanicus, and as well as being curator aquarum (in charge of the water supply of Rome) in the forties, he was in the Crimea during the disturbances caused by the accession of Cotys (Annals 12.15.1). He may also have been involved with the creation of the Danube provinces and the violent integration of the client kingdom of Thrace into the Roman state, although the evidence is thin at this point. In an inscription from Olympia he was described as a legate of Claudius, holding triumphal ornaments (the third governor in a row decorated with the highest military honours available to a Roman senator in this province). All this suggests that Didius Gallus was well qualified for the ‘military man’ image that Tacitus bestowed on Scapula and later on Suetonius Paullinus.
Jarrett (1964, 32) argued that some of the problems in Britain might have been caused by the death of Claudius in 54, which may have been followed by a rethink and change of direction in British policy in the early years of Nero. Again there is no further evidence to support this scenario, nor is it likely to come to light any time soon. We do not know what happened to Didius Gallus after he left Britain, and there is no explanation for Tacitus’ clear animosity.
However, we also have problems with the details of the Welsh campaigns as described by Tacitus. Apparently, the province at the arrival of Didius Gallus is in complete upheaval due mostly to the Silures, but all this vanished when the new governor arrived, but then Veranius had to campaign against the Silures again. The Silures are in the mid 50s a clear and present danger to the province. However, with the arrival of Suetonius Paullinus we hear about him campaigning on Mona/Anglesey, and after two years of success, conquering tribes and establishing strong forts (Agricola, chapter 14). Welsh topography suggests that if you remove the Roman troops from the Gloucester and Wroxeter area to go to Anglesey, it is next to impossible to keep the southern and central Welsh Marches protected. It would also seem risky to campaign at the north-western part of Wales, when the tribes resident in the adjacent areas, the Deceangli on the coast, Ordovices inland and in Snowdonia, are not pacified. Was Suetonius Paullinus an (unnecessary) risk taker, or are we missing substantial parts of the account of the Welsh campaigning due to Tacitus’ need to concentrate on the ‘highlights’, i.e. Caratacus under Scapula and Boudicca under Suetonius Paullinus? As we will see later, Wales was clearly not fully pacified in the late 50s as further campaigns appear to have been conducted later, so what other information can be used to resolve the issue?
We have already briefly touched on the fact that the Welsh Marches are home to a cluster of Roman forts and camps. Davies and Jones (2006) have recently compiled the available evidence for the temporary camps in Wales. This evidence suggests that in addition to the series of pre-Flavian forts in the Welsh Marches, there are a substantial number of camps of sizes between 1.5 ha to over 20 ha that are likely to be associated with the campaigning in Wales. On the whole the marching camps in Wales are between 1.5/20 ha in size, 13–15 are under 5 ha, 11 are between 5/12 ha, while 14 or 15 are between 12/20 ha in size, only 3 camps are larger than 20 ha. This suggests that the armies operating in Wales are substantially smaller than those used later by the Romans in Scotland. However, despite the fact that these camps can be divided by size into four separate groups there are only a few that appear to form a chain, as you would expect, if they were built by an army progressing at the end of each marching day of 10–15 miles. The standard marching speed of the Roman army on training is 20 miles/day, but as Davies and Jones point out, this is unlikely to be achievable in the inhospitable terrain of Wales. In addition, there are large parts of Wales where marching camps should be present because of the historical evidence (such as Anglesey and the north coast of Wales) and/or because of strategic considerations (such as Herefordshire and Gloucestershire), but have not yet been found.
Early studies of camps sometimes assumed that a Roman army on campaign is likely to produce camps of a uniform size, which can be followed and mapped; but more recent studies have pointed out that there are likely to be substantial fluctuations as the army progresses through its campaigning season. Army sizes are based as a compromise between four main factors: how many troops are available, how many enemies are likely to be encountered, how many men can be kept supplied and how many men can be effectively deployed. The first two require little explanation, but an army that cannot be kept supplied is unlikely to remain in good fighting form for any length of time, while there is also a limit to the amount of men that can be brought to any given site of battle before they start obstructing each other’s movement. Thus bringing four complete legions and auxiliaries to deploy on battle sites where there is only room for 3,000 men at most is a waste of supplies and energy. These men could be better deployed elsewhere, either as a separate line of attack during the same campaign or as a reserve force, waiting for their turn in a rotation pattern (for which admittedly we have little evidence in the Roman army away from battle and siege situations). The smaller camps may thus reflect protracted fighting by comparatively small forces in numerous campaigns.
The habit of dividing fighting forces discussed earlier would have meant that camp sizes may have decreased suddenly, before increasing again substantially, when all parts of the army reunite in one particularly large camp, something sometimes called ‘gathering grounds’ (Maxwell, 1991). As a result, it is not easily possible to identify the course of any one campaign in the archaeological record. However, the surviving camp evidence in combination with the natural routes of traffic through the Welsh mountains can lead to the identification of ‘invasion corridors’. Thus the Severn, Teme and Wye valleys appear to have been considered as major invasion routes with large clusters of camps of every size appearing in the Walton Basin, along the Arrow Valley and in the vicinity of Wroxeter on the Severn.
It is also increasingly becoming apparent that there is a difference in marching camps; on the one hand those that may have existed for only one night, and on the other, camps such as Brampton and Kintore in Scotland which to judge from the multiple firings of their ovens, remained in use for several weeks. The latter camps may have been used as a central base of operations during protracted raids and campaigns against ‘economic assets’ in the area.
But during the course of trying to resolve the question of the campaign routes in Wales, it needs to be mentioned that (while infuriatingly little) there is at least historical data for the conquest by the Romans of this area. In many areas of Britain, we are considerably less well informed. According to the Claudian victory monument, eleven (or more) kings surrendered to Claudius. We can be reasonably certain that this included the Iceni, who are described as coming voluntarily under Roman rule, and the part of the Dobunni/Bodunni that had been under Catuvellaunian rule according to Cassius Dio, and one assumes it also includes the Atrebates and the Brigantes (for whom we have evidence for client kings). The others appear to have no names or known associations.
When the province developed a permanent civilian administration, we hear of other tribes that gave their name to Roman administrative districts or civitates: the Parisi, north of the Humber, the Cornovii and the Corieltauvi in the northern Midlands, the Durotriges, ‘free’ Dobunni and Dumnonii in the South and Southwest as well as the Cantiaci in Kent. The only reference pertaining to their conquest experience is the line from Suetonius on Vespasian’s exploits concerning two tribes and multiple towns and oppida. This suggests that our understanding of the Roman takeover in parts of southern England very much depends on the archaeological evidence.
Most of the areas listed have produced little evidence of marching camps, except for a cluster in Nottinghamshire; but the North Midlands have produced substantial evidence for pre-Flavian forts, some of which appear to be very early, while the area of the Dobunni should probably be seen as part of, or at least involved in the Welsh campaigns discussed above. The exploitation of the ore deposits in the Mendips and the deployment of the army at Charterhouse and at other sites such as the coastal site of Sea Mills, suggests a certain level of disruption, while the fort at Cirencester appears to have become, very early on, the focus of development.
Further to the south there is a cluster of forts in Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire north of the Roman legionary base at Exeter (occupied from c. 55 onwards), and recent discoveries have added further forts in Cornwall to the only one known so far at Nanstallon (Hartgroves & Smith, 2008). The evidence from Dorset takes mainly the form of a number of hill forts that were occupied by the Romans. These sites, however, offer the clearest evidence that the Roman takeover in the area was far from uncontested with ‘the massacre horizon’ in the south-west gate at Cadbury Castle (Barrett et al. 2000, 115f.), Hod Hill and possibly further violent deaths at Maiden Castle. Alternative scenarios such as a possible practice siege site at Hod Hill or a different location of the battle at Maiden Castle have been put forward (Sharples 1991). The exact date of these events cannot be established either; the usual date bracket suggested is ‘the middle of the first century AD’ (which would cover the period from 43 to c. 60/61 inclusive). It has been argued that the exact date of these events does not matter, just the certainty that the indigenous population at some point stood up to attackers carrying Roman weapons and apparently died in the defence (Woodward in Barrett et al., 2000, 116). However, in the context of the conquest it is surely of interest whether these sites represent resistance to an initial invasion or are a result of a later uprising. The outcome, however, cannot be in question: the hill forts on Britain’s south coast saw the establishment of a series of usually very small Roman military installations; some took the form of formal forts, such as Hod Hill, but more appear to have been in the form of possible barracks set within the defences of the Iron Age hill forts, such as Cadbury or Hembury (Todd 2007, 113–117).
At the other end of the Fosse Way, in the area of the Corieltauvi and around the legionary fortress of Lincoln, a similar cluster of early forts has been identified, many associated with finds pointing to the early Neronian period and it has been suggested that they are not designed as an occupation force of the Corieltauvi, but as a ‘springboard’ similar to the forts around Wroxeter, this time monitoring the situation in the Brigantian territory.
All these sites suggest that the Roman conquest of Britain could be a very different experience for the Roman and indigenous population alike, depending on which part of Britain you were living in at the time. The range appears to have been from little change for the tribe, except in the form of a new ‘set of advisors’ for the ruling families, to extreme violence in the case of the Silures and in parts of the English south coast.
The literary sources mention that Nero originally considered abandoning Britain and withdrawing his troops: it is not clear at which point in Nero’s reign this was considered – two scenarios present themselves; either at the beginning of Nero’s reign (as favoured amongst others by Birley (2005, 35) and Jarrett (1964), or after Boudicca’s uprising. We do not know what caused these ideas, but given that Nero decided to stay, Rome must have considered the conquest a success and Britain an asset. In 60 things became a lot more complicated.
Dover lighthouse. Birgitta Hoffmann
Wroxeter fortress baths. Birgitta Hoffmann
Interior of the Lunt, one of the many pre-Flavian forts in the Midlands, in the background the reconstructed granaries. Birgitta Hoffmann
Reconstructed fort defences at the Lunt. Birgitta Hoffmann
Silchester defences. David John Woolliscroft
Caerleon Prysg Field, corner of the fortress. Birgitta Hoffmann
Stanwick defences. Birgitta Hoffmann
Chester, corner tower of Roman fortress. Birgitta Hoffmann
Dere Street, in a typically straight stretch in County Durham. David John Woolliscroft
Caerleon Prysg Field, legionary barracks. Birgitta Hoffmann
Inchtuthil fortress. David John Woolliscroft
Cawthorne Camps, Yorkshire. Birgitta Hoffmann
Hadrian’s Wall on the Whin Sill Crags of the central sector. Birgitta Hoffmann
Risingham Roman fort. Birgitta Hoffmann
Roman road at Roundlaw, Perthshire. David John Woolliscroft
Aerial photograph of Chester fort. David John Woollicroft
Aerial photograph of Housesteads. David John Woolliscroft
Milecastle 39 on Hadrian’s Wall. David John Woolliscroft
Milecastle 49 to Birdoswald. David John Woolliscroft
The gate at High Rochester fort. Birgitta Hoffmann
Aerial photograph of Bewcastle fort. David John Woolliscroft
Antonine Wall base in Bearsden cemetery. Birgitta Hoffmann
Roman road cutting at Innerpeffray, Perthshire. David John Woolliscroft
York, Multangular tower. Birgitta Hoffmann
Aerial view of Vindolanda; the praetorium of the Severan fort is on the right hand (western) end of the Vicus. David John Woolliscroft
Vindolanda, praetorium of Fort II and Severan roundhouses. Birgitta Hoffmann
Carpow aerial photograph. David John Woolliscroft
London city wall, one example of the increasing use of defences around towns from the late third century onwards. Birgitta Hoffmann
Caerwent late Roman defences. Birgitta Hoffmann
Richborough: in the foreground the ditches of the third century fortlet around the Claudian monument, in the background the defences of the Saxon Shore fort. David John Woolliscroft
Scarborough Yorkshire Coast tower. Birgitta Hoffmann
Cardiff Castle, South Wall, with Roman, Medieval and modern walling. Birgitta Hoffmann
Burgh Castle. David John Woolliscroft
Hen Waliau, Caernarvon, late Roman harbour fort. Birgitta Hoffmann
Caer Gybi late Roman fort overlooking Holyhead harbour. Birgitta Hoffmann