The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen
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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