(Translation J. Manley)
Vespasian has added to the Empire by force of arms Britannia, although till then it had been a hidden land, and hence he provided for Nero’s father, Claudius, a triumph that cost him no personal sweat.
Claudius quarto imperii sui anno, cupiens utilem reipublicae ostentare se principem, bellum ubique et uictoriam undecumque quaesiuit. itaque expeditionem in Britanniam mouit, quae excitata in tumultum propter non redhibitos transfugas uidebatur: transuectus in insulam est, quam neque ante Iulium Caesarem neque post eum quisquam adire ausus fuerat, 10 ibique – ut uerbis Suetoni Tranquilli loquar – sine ullo proelio ac sanguine intra paucissimos dies plurimam insulae partem in deditionem recepit. Orcadas etiam insulas ultra Britanniam in Oceano positas Romano adiecit imperio ac sexto quam profectus erat mense Romam rediit.
(Orosius, Historiae adversos paganos, ed. C. Zangemeister 1889) (Translation B. Hoffmann)
In the fourth year of the reign Claudius had the intention to prove himself to the state as a useful Emperor… Therefore he invaded Britain, which was apparently in unrest, because the refugees had not been returned. There was a crossing onto the island, which nobody either before or after Julius Caesar had dared to approach. There – in the words of Suetonius Tranquillinus – without a battle and bloodshed, he accepted in the shortest span of days the surrender of the larger part of the island. He even added the islands of the Orkneys which lie beyond Britain in the Ocean to the Roman rule and returned to Rome in the sixth month after his departure.
Eutropius 7, 13, 3–4
(Translation J.S. Watson)
He made war upon Britain, which no Roman since Julius Caesar had visited; and, having reduced it through the agency of Cn. Sentius and A. Plautius, illustrious and noble men (a.k.a. senators), he celebrated a magnificient triumph. Certain islands also, called the Orcades, situated in the Ocean, beyond Britain, he added to the Roman Empire, and gave his son the name of Britannicus.