Rome Against Caratacus

The Roman Campaigns in Britain AD 48-58

Graham Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317709695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Roman Conquest of Britain in AD 43 was one of the most important turning points in the history of the British Isles. It left a legacy still discernible today in the form of archaeological remain, road networks, land divisions and even language.
In his much-acclaimed trilogy, now up-dated and revised, Dr Webster builds up a fascinating and lively picture of Britain in the first century AD and discussed in detail the various types of evidence and the theories based upon it.
Caratacus' last stand against the Romans has a central place in the folklore of the Welsh Marches, where many a hill is claimed to be the site of the famous battle. But, as Graham Webster shows, this epic encounter was not only real history but also part of an intricate ten-year series of campaigns conducted after the initial conquest of Britain.
By interpreting the ancient historical accounts and piecing together the masses of archaeological evidence, Dr Webster has brilliantly reconstructed this central period of the Claudian Conquest of Britain and its immediate aftermath.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The invasion of Britain by the Roman army had taken place late in the summer of AD 43. It had been in response to the sudden rise to power by the anti-Roman faction of the royal house of the Trinovantes, following the death of its King, Cunobelinus. The task of the first governor, Aulus Plautius, had been to land his forces without serious opposition and defeat the Britons. The latter he had achieved with remarkable success at the decisive battle of the Medway; thereafter he was able to spread out and occupy the rest of the new province with little difficulty, except for fierce resistance in the south-west, which was overcome by the future emperor Vespasian, then in command of Legio II Augusta.

The area selected by Rome for the creation of the province of Britannia embraced the lowlands which contained most of the rich agricultural land and the mineral wealth then known. The latter comprised the silver ores of the Mendips, the iron of Kent, and the limestone belt crossing modern Oxfordshire, Northants and Lincolnshire. The major factor in limiting the conquest may have been that the tribes occupying these lands were those most likely to yield to the policy of urbanisation, which was such a necessary part of Roman life. Certainly most of these tribes had migrated from the Continent in the centuries preceding the invasion, and some of those in the Thames Estuary had only arrived recently, as a direct consequence of Caesar’s advent into Gaul. The frontier of the province stretched from the Humber along the Trent Valley to the lower Severn and the Bristol Channel, and then cut across country to the Estuary of the Exe. Significantly, only the tribes to the south and east of this line had their own coinage. A glance at the map of Roman Britain shows clearly the density of sites and close network of roads in contact with the areas beyond.

Rome’s interest in these outer barbarian lands was confined at this time to the safety of their new province. The practice, continued from an earlier period, had been to seek protection of frontiers through friendly states. A special arrangement under the Roman method of patronage visualised the creation or recognition of kingdoms, the rulers of which had a client relationship with the Senate and people of Rome and, after Augustus, with the Emperors. It was the primary duty of the client rulers to prevent peoples beyond the frontier from invading Roman territory. This was a highly convenient system since security could be maintained along the difficult frontiers at minimal cost.

Having secured the province, Plautius had the immediate task of looking for protection of this nature. But his one and only success, although a considerable one, was to place Queen Cartimandua on the throne of Brigantia, so bringing together a large number of small tribes living in the river valleys of what are now the vast counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, straddling the Pennines. (We are not sure of Cartimandua’s northern boundary, since additional security was achieved by a dynastic marriage with Venutius, thought to have been a ruler of a tribe to the north of Brigantia.) Thus, Rome secured the most difficult and vulnerable frontier. Doubtless similar arrangements were sought to the west to protect the province from raids by the wild mountain peoples of the country now known as Wales. Here Plautius failed, and he must soon have realised that the sole reason for this failure was the presence there of Caratacus. But so long as this warrior remained quiet, Plautius may not have been over-concerned, since he had first to ensure that the area of the province was pacified and that the British rulers who had surrendered were totally subservient to the Roman Government. His term of office came to an end in the winter of 47/48 and he returned to Rome to receive his well-deserved ovatio.

The new governor, Publius Ostorius Scapula, arrived to find the province in turmoil. Caratacus had timed his strike well. Having quietly built up his strength on the west bank of the lower Severn, he had waited for the brief, but significant interval between the departure of the out-going governor and the arrival of the replacement (since there could have been difficulties in protocol had two governors been in a province at the same time). Before, however, we consider the fierce struggle that Scapula was to face, the two protagonists must be introduced and their characters assessed.

Caratacus

The British prince was a son of Cunobelinus who reigned over the two kingdoms of the Trinovantes and Catuvellauni, both tribes having migrated from Gaul sometime in the first century BC. Their large territories stretched from the Colne peninsula to the Chilterns, in the south bounding the River Thames and in the north the Kingdom of the Iceni (Norfolk). Cunobeline, a great statesman, had maintained throughout his long reign (c. AD 10–40) a skilful balance between the two bitterly opposing factions, those for, and those against, Rome. The eldest son Togodumnus inherited the throne and took his place at the side of Caratacus against Rome, but a third brother, Adminius, had been given the north-east tip of Kent, which included the only land-locked harbour along the south-east coast and the Wansum Channel into the Thames Estuary. It appears to have been Roman policy to ensure that the main landing points would remain in friendly hands; it was the enfeeblement, or death, of Cunobeline (c.40) which changed this and caused the new British rulers to adopt a policy of hostility towards Rome.

The first result was the flight of Adminius to Gaius (Caligula) to seek his aid in restoring the status quo ante. The schemes of that wayward emperor are obscured by his apparently wanton acts, but it is evident that an invasion was under consideration, but was deferred. Meantime, in Britain, Togodumnus took over the kingdom of his father and Caratacus began to invade the lands south of the Thames. Within a year another British ruler was a suppliant at the Imperial Court. This time it was Verica of the Atrebates beseeching Claudius, who had only just been thrust into power. This time the plea was taken more seriously, since Claudius needed a diversion from Rome where his relationship with the Senate was charged with suspicion and hostility. There were other reasons why the time was ripe for a full-scale invasion, and these have been considered in detail in the first volume of this trilogy (The Roman Invasion of Britain, 84–5).

Caratacus had by now acquired a kingdom and was issuing coins, but unfortunately not enough have been found for them to offer a satisfactory distribution pattern which might show the extent of his power. It does, however, give some indication of his forceful personality, leadership and organising ability, that he was able in such a short time to reduce and dominate a powerful neighbouring tribe. He may have exercised control by means of allies over the whole of his lands south of the Thames from the Solent to the east coast of Kent. The Kings of Kent had never been a powerful force and had no coins of their own; possibly as a result of their crushing defeat suffered under Caesar or their own internal divisions. They were dominated throughout this period and between the invasions by rulers from without, and this, together with their anti-Roman feelings, would have made it easy for Caratacus to gain their sympathy and later control over them. Further to the west were the Durotriges, a tribe which, for unknown reasons, had become bitterly hostile to Rome. Their hill-forts were to be stormed by Vespasian’s legionaries, but as yet they were far from pacified. As will be seen later, they probably had assistance from their neighbours to the north, the southern section of the Dobunni. Thus, Caratacus had solid support from the west, and had he been left alone might have started to move towards the tribes in the midlands and north-west and on to those distant parts of Britain where the Druids, as priests and mediators, would have spread his fame to all the tribes.

Publius Ostorius Scapula¹

Very little is known about the man appointed by Claudius as the second governor of Britain; almost the whole account of his period of office in Britain comes from the Annals of Tacitus. Yet to be given such a difficult and important command of a province so recently conquered, with the large force of four legions, demanded strong leadership and diplomacy. This shows that he was highly regarded in Rome, not only for the abilities needed for such a position, but also for his known loyalty to the Imperial house. His father, or more probably his grandfather, was Q. Ostorius Scapula, who had reached the top of the equestrian tree as Prefect of Egypt, after being appointed by Augustus as one of the first pair of Praetorian Prefects in 2 BC. Ronald Syme has conjectured that the mother, or wife, of Scapula was Sallustia Calvina.² If so, then there was a family connection with Lucius Vitellius, whose daughter-in-law Junia Calvina was the brother of the ill-fated Silanus, one of the two young men who brought the despatch of Claudius to the Senate after his victories in Britain (Dio, lxii. 22). He had been a suffect consul³ with P. Suillius Rufus, the son of Vistilia (whose fecundity was a matter of comment by Pliny the Elder).⁴ She was also the mother of Domitius Corbulo. The year of Scapula’s consulship is not known, but Ronald Syme has suggested AD 45 as the most likely.⁵ This prompts him to hazard the guess that Scapula may have distinguished himself in the invasion of Britain as one of the comites and thus brought himself to the notice of Claudius. An experience of Britain would certainly have been an advantage, but, following Syme’s tenuous line of argument, had he been connected with L. Vitellius, this great weight of influence would have been all that was necessary, since he was the power behind Claudius at this time (Suet., Vitellius 2). It would, nevertheless, have been extraordinary if Scapula had not had any military experience before this command, and it is reasonable to suppose that he must have been at least a legionary commander in the earlier part of his career.⁶

The character of Scapula emerges from his actions against Caratacus, some of which were hasty and ill-considered even by the standards of military expediency. His growing frustration and anger, which led to his death, prompts the view that he was a sick man on entering office. But clearly his ailment cannot have been either too obvious or too serious at the time of his appointment.

The Lands and Peoples of the West

The geology of Britain varies enormously as one travels from the south-east to the north-west. The reason for this is that the rock stratum is tilted; but apart from the river valleys erosion has more or less levelled the earth’s surface. As a result, narrow bands of different rocks are found at the surface in the form of strips stretching across the country in diagonal lines from the south-west to the north-east, thus creating a most varied sequence of landscape for the traveller. This general pattern is, however, abruptly broken by the older and harder rocks in the west, into which have penetrated even harder volcanic intrusions.

The western part of Britain was occupied by peoples who had arrived by different routes from those in the east. Some had been forced to move westwards by more recent migrants who landed and settled on the east and south coasts, either conquering or displacing the tribes already there. So a kind of shunting action had taken place which tended to push those on the edge of the lowland zone into the hill-lands beyond. But there were already folk who had come by water up the Bristol Channel and the Severn. The hill country beyond the Severn was not very suitable for arable farming since the valleys were as yet undrained marsh, subject to seasonal flooding. The uplands had already been farmed by pastoral folk with sheep and goats. By the third and fourth centuries BC any newcomers wou’d have been faced with serious opposition. The determination of the hill-folk to hold their territories is amply shown by the great concentration of their strongly defended forts stretching along the marcher country. Their resistance to penetration and conquest was strengthened by the knowledge that to the west were the mountains, even less friendly to settlement. Consequently the tribes of these areas were fiercely independent and very wary of the peoples of the lowlands.

So far the name of Wales has not been introduced. The Walas or Wealas was a name used by the Saxons for the Britons, and, as it means serfs or slaves, it must have been generally applied to the rural population. But it was also used in the sense of ‘foreigner’, i.e. someone who was not a Saxon or other people from the continent. To the Saxons the Welsh were the British and Wales was the country inhabited by them. Although it perpetrates an anachronism, the words Wales and the Welsh will be used in this volume to avoid confusion.

The Tribes

Our knowledge of the tribes of Britain comes from a variety of sources, road books like the Antonine Itinerary, the Ravenna Cosmography, the Geography of Ptolemy and the Roman historians. Added to these are a few epigraphic items and the survival of names into early medieval records. There must have been small tribes or parts of larger ones which lost their identity when Roman officials organised the main administrative units of the British civitates. Since these were designed for administration, taxation and justice, it was convenient to create larger tribal areas and for the most part it is only the names of these which have survived.

The two main border tribes east of the Severn were the Dobunni and the Cornovii. More is known of the former since the tribal area came within contact range of the Gallo–Belgic tribes of the south-east and so, directly or indirectly, with the Roman traders. A study of their coins indicates that the Dobunni were divided into two groups in a state of mutual hostility. The northern tribal centre was the large oppidum at Bagendon, near Cirencester, and this section of the tribe was said by Dio to have been subject to the Catuvellauni (lx. 20). He stated also that part of the Dobunni surrendered to Aulus Plautius soon after the landing in 43. The presumption is that this submission on behalf of the tribe was made by a group of levies due to join the forces of Caratacus at the Medway. The distribution of coins shows that the western boundary of this tribe at this time was most probably the Severn, although later in the Roman reorganisation of the civitas for judicial and administrative purposes, it may have extended westwards into what is now Herefordshire.⁷ The presence of an ally on this part of the frontier zone must have been a great advantage to Scapula in his preparation for a campaign into southern Wales.

Between the Dobunni and the Cornovii to the north, there appears to be a gap and it is possible that the identity of a small tribe has been lost in the Roman planning of the territories of the civitates. Unfortunately, very little can be said of the Cornovii since they had no coins, or any distinctive pottery or metalwork.⁸ The little which can be deduced from a study of the artefacts and details of the construction of the hill-forts, points to this tribe as a northern group of peoples with a similar ethnic origin to those which occupied the Severn valley, and the lands to the west. Nor is it possible to identify their centre from the several large hill-forts, and there may have been no dominant ruler, with the tribe divided into small groups or septs under their own rulers. All that can be said at present is that one of them at least, based on the Wrekin, offered resistance to the Roman army, and had to be stormed and destroyed.

The southern group, occupying what is now Herefordshire, has produced more evidence of artefacts. It has been claimed that its centre was Credenhill Camp,⁹ near the later Roman town at Kenchester. But again, the name of these people has not survived. In the lands of the Welsh the names of only four tribes are known with any certainty, the Silures, Demetae, Ordovices, Deceangli, but there are hints of others.¹⁰

The Silures occupied an area on the north shore of the Bristol Channel and it was this tribe which became the main enemy of Scapula. Their name appears several times in Tacitus, in the road itineraries¹¹ and on an inscription from Caerwent (RIB 311). There is a hint from Tacitus (Agricola 11) that these people may originally have migrated from Spain by the Atlantic route. Apart from the fact that Caerwent (Venta Silurum) became their capital, there are no indications of the boundaries of their territory. The obvious western and northern boundary is the River Wye, and to the west they faced their neighbours the Demetae of Pembroke and Cardiganshire. The name of the Demetae is given by Ptolemy and was also known to Gildas,¹² the Briton who wrote a kind of religious tract in the early ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of plates
• List of line illustrations
• Preface
• Preface to revised edition
• Historical Chart
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Last Stand of Caratacus
• 3 The Scapulan Frontier: The Legionary Fortresses and the Sea Routes
• 4 The Scapulan Frontier: The Land Routes
• 5 Aulus Didius Gallus and the Northern Advance
• 6 The Advance under Quintus Veranius
• APPENDICES
• Notes and References
• Index