Early Britain-Roman Britain Part 6

D. 11.--But even without their King the stubborn clan still stood desperately at bay. Their pertinacious resistance in every pa.s.s and on every hill-top of their country at length fairly wore Ostorius out.

The incessant fatigues of the campaign broke down his health, and he died [A.D. 54] on the march; to the ferocious joy of the Silurians, who boasted that their valour had made an end of the brave enemy who had vowed to "extinguish their very name,"[168] no less than if they had slain him upon the field of battle.

D. 12.--Before he died, however, he had curbed them both to north and south by the establishment of strong Roman towns at Uriconium on the Severn (named after the neighbouring Wrekin), and Isca Silurum at the mouth of the Usk. The British name of the latter place, Caerleon [Castra Legionum], still reminds us that it was one of the great legionary stations of the island, while the abundant inscriptions unearthed upon the site, tell us that here the Second Legion had its head-quarters till the last days of the Roman occupation.[169]

D. 13.--The unremitting pressure of these two garrisons crushed out at last the Silurian resistance. The fighting men of the clan must indeed have been almost wholly killed off during these four years of murderous warfare. Thus Avitus Didius Gallus, the successor of Ostorius, though himself too old to take the field, was able to announce to Claudius that he had completed the subjugation of Britain.

The Silurians after one last effort, in which they signally defeated an entire Legion, lay in the quietude of utter exhaustion; and though Cartismandua caused some little trouble by putting away her husband Venusius and raising a favourite to the throne, the matter was compromised by Roman intervention; and Claudius lived to hear that the island was, at last, peacefully submissive to his sway. Then Agrippina showed herself once more the Cartismandua of Rome, and her son Nero sat upon the throne of her poisoned husband [A.D. 55].

SECTION E.

Neronian misgovernment--Seneca--Prasutagus--Boadicea's revolt--Sack of Camelodune--Suetonius in Mona--"Druidesses"--Sack of London and Verulam--Boadicea crushed at Battle Bridge--Peace of Petronius.

E. 1.--Under Nero the unhappy Britons first realized what it was to be Roman provincials. Though Julius Caesar and Augustus had checked the grossest abuses of the Republican proconsulates, yet enough of the evil tradition remained to make those abuses flourish with renewed vigour under such a ruler as Nero. The state of things which ensued can only be paralleled with that so vividly described by Macaulay in his lurid picture of the oppression of Bengal under Warren Hastings.

The one object of every provincial governor was to exploit his province in his own pecuniary interest and that of his friends at Rome. Requisitions and taxes were heaped on the miserable inhabitants utterly beyond their means, with the express object of forcing them into the clutches of the Roman money-lenders, whose frightful terms were, in turn, enforced by military licence.

E. 2.--The most virtuous and enlightened citizens were not ashamed thus to wring exorbitant interest from their victims. Cicero tells us[170] how no less austere a patriot than Brutus thus exacted from the town of Salamis in Cyprus, 48 per cent. compound interest, and, after starving five members of the munic.i.p.ality to death in default of payment, was mortally offended because he, Cicero, as proconsul, would not exercise further military pressure for his ends.

E. 3.--The part thus played in Cyprus by Brutus was played in Britain by Seneca, another of the choice examples of the highest Roman virtue.

By a series of blood-sucking transactions[171] he drove the Britons to absolute despair, his special victim being Prasutagus, now Chief of the Iceni, presumably set up by the Romans on the suppression of the revolt under Vericus. As a last chance of saving any of his wealth for his children, Prasutagus, by will, made the Emperor his co-heir.

This, however, only hastened the ruin of his family. His property was pounced upon by the harpies of Seneca and Nero, with the Procurator[172] of the Province, Catus Decimus, at their head, his kin sold into slavery, his daughters outraged, and his wife Boadicea, or, more correctly, _Boudicca_, brutally scourged. This was in A.D. 61.

E. 4.--A convulsive outburst of popular rage and despair followed.

The wrongs of Boadicea kindled the Britons to madness, and she found herself at once at the head of a rising comprising all the clans of the east and the Midlands. Half-armed as they were, their desperate onset carried all before it. The first attack was made upon the hated Colony at Camelodune, where the great Temple of "the G.o.d" Claudius, rising high above the town, bore an ever-visible testimony to Rome's enslavement of Britain,[173] and whence the lately-established veterans were wont, by the connivance of the Procurator, to treat the neighbourhood with utterly illegal military licence, sacking houses, ravaging fields, and abusing their British fellow-subjects as "caitiff slaves."[174]

E. 5.--These marauders were, however, as great cowards as bullies, and were now trembling before the approach of vengeance. How completely they were cowed is shown by the gloomy auguries which pa.s.sed from lip to lip as foreshadowing the coming woe. The statue of Victory had fallen on its face, women frantic with fear rushed about wildly shrieking "Ruin!", strange moans and wailings were heard in Courthouse and Theatre, on the Thames estuary the ruddy glow of sunset looked like blood and flame, the sand-ripples and sea-wrack left by the ebb suggested corpses; everything ministered to their craven fear.

E. 6.--So hopeless was the demoralization that the very commonest precautions were neglected. The town was unfortified, yet these old soldiers made no attempt at entrenchment; even the women and children were not sent away while the roads were yet open. And when the storm burst on the town the hapless non-combatants were simply abandoned to ma.s.sacre, while the veterans, along with some two hundred badly-armed recruits (the only help furnished by their precious Procurator, who himself fled incontinently to Gaul), shut themselves up in the Temple, in hopes of thus saving their own skins till the Ninth Legion, which was hastening to their aid, should arrive.

E. 7.--It is a satisfaction to read that in this they were disappointed. Next day their refuge was stormed, and every soul within put to the sword. The Temple itself, and all else at Camelodune, was burnt to the ground, and the wicked Colony blotted off the face of the earth. The approaching Legion scarcely fared better. The victorious Britons swept down upon it on the march, cut to pieces the entire infantry, and sent the cavalry in headlong flight to London, where Suetonius Paulinus, the Governor of Britain, was now mustering such force as he could make to meet the overwhelming onslaught.

E. 8.--When the outbreak took place he had been far away, putting down the last relics of the now illicit Druidism in the island of Mona or Anglesey. The enterprise was one which demanded a considerable display of force, for the defenders of the island fought with fanatical frenzy, the priests and priestesses alike taking part in the fray, and perishing at last in their own sacrificial fires, when the pa.s.sage over the Menai Straits was made good.

E. 9--It is noticeable that in Mona alone do we meet with "Druidesses." Female ministers of religion, whether priestesses or prophetesses, are always exceptional, and usually mark a survival from some very primitive cult. The Pythoness at Delphi, and the Vestals at Rome, obviously do so. And amongst the races of Gaul and Britain the same fact is testified to by such female ministrations being invariably confined to far western islands. Pytheas, as he pa.s.sed Cape Finisterre (in Spain) by night, heard a choir of women worshipping "Mother Earth and her Daughter"[175] with shrill yells and music.

A little further he tells of the barbarous rites observed by the _Samnitae_ or _Amnitae_[176] in an island near the mouth of the Loire, on which no male person might ever set foot; and of another island at the extreme point of Gaul, already known as Uxisana (Ushant), where nine virgin sorceresses kept alight the undying fire on their sacred hearth and gave oracular responses. These cults clearly represented a much older worship than Druidism, though the latter may very probably have taken them under its shadow (as in India so many aboriginal rites are recognized and adopted by modern Brahmanism). And the priestesses in Mona were, in like manner, not "Druidesses" at all, but representatives of some more primitive cult, already driven from the mainland of Britain and finding a last foothold in this remote island.

E. 10.--The stamping out of the desperate fanaticism of Mona was barely accomplished, when tidings were brought to Suetonius of Boadicea's revolt. By forced marches he reached London before her, only to find himself too weak, after the loss of the Ninth Legion, to hold it. London, though no Colony, was already the largest and most thriving of the Roman settlements in Britain, and piteous was the dismay of the citizens when Suetonius bade the city be evacuated.

But neither tears nor prayers could postpone his march, and such non-combatants as from age or infirmity could not retire with his column, were ma.s.sacred by the furious Britons even as those at Camelodune. Next came the turn of Verulam, the Roman town on the site of Tasciovan's stronghold,[177] where like atrocities marked the British triumph. Every other consideration was lost in the mad l.u.s.t of slaughter. No prisoners were taken, no spoil was made, no ransom was accepted; all was fire, sword, and hideous torturing. Tacitus declares that, to his own knowledge,[178] no fewer than seventy thousand Romans and pro-Romans thus perished in this fearful day of vengeance; the spirit of which has been caught by Tennyson, with such true poetic genius, in his 'Boadicea.'

E. 11.--Suetonius, however, now felt strong enough to risk a battle.

The odds were enormous, for the British forces were estimated at two hundred and thirty thousand, while his own were barely ten thousand--only one legion (the Fourteenth) with the cavalry of the Twentieth. (Where its infantry was does not appear: it may have been left behind in the west.) The Ninth had ceased to exist, and the Second did not arrive from far-off Caerleon till too late for the fight. The strength of legionary sentiment is shown by the fact that its commander actually slew himself for vexation that the Fourteenth had won without his men.

E. 12.--Where the armies met is quite uncertain, though tradition fixes on a not unlikely spot near London, whose name of "Battle Bridge" has but lately been overlaid by the modern designation of "King's Cross."[179] We only know that Suetonius drew up his line across a glade in the forest, which thus protected his flanks, and awaited the foe as they came pouring back from Verulam. In front of the British line Boadicea, arrayed in the Icenian tartan, her plaid fastened by a golden brooch, and a spear in her hand, was seen pa.s.sing along "loftily-charioted" from clan to clan, as she exhorted each in turn to conquer or die. Suetonius is said to have given the like exhortation to the Romans; but every man in their ranks must already have been well aware that defeat would spell death for him. The one chance was in steadiness and disciplined valour; and the legionaries stood firm under a storm of missiles, withholding their own fire till the foe came within close range. Then, and not till then, they delivered a simultaneous discharge of their terrible _pila_[180] on the British centre. The front gave with the volley, and the Romans, at once wheeling into wedge-shape formation, charged sword in hand into the gap, and cut the British line clean in two. Behind it was a laager of wagons, containing their families and spoil, and there the Britons made a last attempt to rally. But the furious Romans entered the enclosure with them, and the fight became a simple ma.s.sacre. No fewer than eighty thousand fell, and the very horses and oxen were slaughtered by the maddened soldiery to swell the heaps of slain.

Boadicea, broken-hearted, died by poison; and (being reinforced by troops from Germany) Suetonius proceeded "to make a desert and call it Peace."[181]

E. 13.--The punishment he dealt out to the revolted districts was so remorseless that the new Procurator, Julius Cla.s.sicia.n.u.s, sent a formal complaint to Rome on the suicidal impolicy of his superior's measures. Nero, however, did not mend matters by sending (like Claudius) a freed-man favourite as Royal Commissioner to supersede Suetonius. Polycletus was received with derision both by Roman and Briton, and Suetonius remained acting Governor till the wreck of some warships afforded an excuse for a peremptory order to "hand over the command" to Petronius Turpilia.n.u.s. Fighting now ceased by mutual consent; and this disgraceful slackness was called by the new Governor "Peace with Honour" [_honestum pacis nomen segni otio imposuit_].

SECTION F.

Civil war--Otho and Vitellius--Army of Britain--Priscus--Agricola--Vespasian Emperor--Cerealis--Brigantes put down--Frontinus--Silurians put down--Agricola Pro-praetor--Ordovices put down--Pacification of South Britain--Roman civilization introduced--Caledonian campaign--Galgacus--Agricola's rampart--Domitian--Resignation and death of Agricola.

F. 1.--Disgraceful as the policy of Petronius seemed to Tacitus (under the inspiration probably of his father-in-law Agricola), it did actually secure for Britain several years of much-needed peace. Not till the months of confusion which followed the death of Nero [June 10, A.D. 68] did any native rising take place, and then only in Wales and the north. The Roman Army of Britain was thus free to take sides in the contest for the throne between Otho and Vitellius, of which all that could be predicted was that the victor would be the worse of the two [_deteriorem fore quisquis vicisset_]. They were, however, so much ahead of their date that, before accepting this alternative, they actually thought of setting up an Emperor of their own, after the fashion so freely followed in later centuries. Fortunately the popular subaltern [[Greek: hupostrategos]] on whom their choice fell, one Priscus, had the sense to see that the time was not yet come for such action, and sarcastically refused the crown. "I am no more fit," he said, "to be an Emperor [[Greek: autokrator]]than you to be soldiers."

The army now proceeded to "sit on the fence"; some legions, notably the famous Fourteenth, slightly inclined to Otho, others to Vitellius, till their hesitation was ended by their own special hero, Vespasian, fresh from his Judaean victories,[182] coming forward as Pretender.

Agricola, now in command of the Twentieth, at once declared for him, and the other legions followed suit--the Fourteenth being gratified by the t.i.tle "_Victores Britannici_," officially conferred upon them by the Emperor's new Pro-praetor, Petilius Cerealis.

F. 2.--We now enter upon the last stage of the fifty years' struggle made by British patriots before they finally bowed to the Roman yoke. The glory of ending the long conflict is due to Agricola, whose praises are chronicled by his son-in-law Tacitus, and who does actually seem to have been a very choice example of Roman virtue and ability. The Army of Britain had been his training school in military life, and successive commanders had recognized his merits by promotion. Now his superiors gave him an almost independent command, in which he showed himself as modest as he was able. Thanks to him, Cerealis was able in A.D. 70 to end a Brigantian war (of which the inevitable Cartismandua was the "_teterrima causa_" now no less than twenty years earlier), and the next Pro-praetor, Frontinus, to put down, in 75, the very last effort of the indomitable Silurians. Yet another year, and he himself was made Military Governor of the island, and set about the task of permanently consolidating it as a Roman Province, with an insight all his own.

F. 3.--The only Britons yet in arms south of the Tyne were the Ordovices of North Wales, who had lately cut to pieces a troop of Roman cavalry. Agricola marched against them, and, by swimming his hors.e.m.e.n across the Menai Straits, surprised their stronghold, Anglesey, thus bringing about the same instant submission of the whole clan which through the same tactics he had seen won, seventeen years earlier, by Suetonius.

F. 4.--But Agricola was not, like Suetonius, a mere military conqueror. He saw that Britons would never unfeignedly submit so long as they were treated as slaves; and he set himself to remedy the grievances under which the provincials so long had suffered. Military licence, therefore, and civil corruption alike, he put down with a resolute hand, never acting through intermediaries, but himself investigating every complaint, rewarding merit, and punishing offences. The vexatious monopolies which previous governors had granted, he did away with; and, while he firmly dealt with every symptom of disloyalty, his aim was "not penalty but penitence" [_nom paena sed saepius paenitentia_]--penitence shown in a frank acceptance of Roman civilization. Under his influence Roman temples, Roman forums, Roman dwelling-houses, Roman baths and porticoes, rose all over the land, and, above all, Roman schools, where the youth of the upper cla.s.ses learnt with pride to adopt the tongue[183] and dress of their conquerors. It is appropriate that the only inscription relating to him as yet found in Britain should be on two of the lead water-pipes (discovered in 1899 and 1902) which supplied his new Roman city (_Deva_) at Chester.[184]

F. 5.--This proved a far more effectual method of conquest than any yet adopted, and Southern Britain became so quiet and contented that Agricola could meditate an extension of the Roman sway over the wilder regions to the north, and even over Ireland.[185] He did not, indeed, actually accomplish either design, but he extended the Roman frontier to the Forth, and carried the Roman arms beyond the Tay. The game, however, proved not worth the candle. The regions penetrated were wild and barren, the inhabitants ferocious savages, who defended themselves with such fury that it was not worth while to subdue them.

F. 6.--The final battle [A.D. 84], somewhere near Inverness, is described in minute and picturesque detail by Tacitus, who was present. He shows us the slopes of the Grampians alive with the Highland host, some on foot, some in chariots, armed with claymore, dirk, and targe as in later ages. He puts into the mouth of the leader, Galgacus, an eloquent summary of the motives which did really actuate them, and he reports the exhortation to close the fifty years of British warfare with a glorious victory which Agricola, no doubt, actually addressed to his soldiers. He paints for us the wild charge of the clans, the varying fortunes of the conflict (which at one point was so doubtful that Agricola dismounted to fight on foot with his men), and the final hopeless rout of the Caledonian army, with the slaughter of ten thousand men; the Roman loss being under four hundred--including one unlucky colonel [_praefectus cohortis_] whose horse ran away with him into the enemy's ranks.

F. 7.--Agricola had now the prudence to draw his stakes while the game was still in his favour. He sent his fleet north-about (thus, for the first time, _proving_ Britain to be an island),[186] and marched his army across to meet it on the Clyde, whence he had already drawn his famous rampart to the Forth, henceforward to be the extreme limit of Roman Britain.[187] His work was now done, and well done. He resigned his Province, and returned to Rome, in time to avoid dismissal by Domitian, to whom preeminent merit in any subject was matter for jealous hatred,[188] and who now made Agricola report himself by night, and received him without one word of commendation. Had his life been prolonged he would undoubtedly have perished, like so many of the best of the Roman aristocracy, by the despot's hands; but just before the unrestrained outbreak of tyranny, he suddenly died--"_felix opportunitate mortis_"--to be immortalized by the love and genius of his daughter's husband. And he left Britain, as it had never been before, truly within the comity of the Roman Empire.

CHAPTER IV

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION, A.D. 85-211

SECTION A.

Pacification of Britain--Roman roads--London their centre--Authority for names--Watling Street--Ermine Street--Icknield Way.

A. 1.--The work of Agricola inaugurated in Britain that wonderful _Pax Romana_ which is so unique a phenomenon in the history of the world.

That Peace was not indeed in our island so long continued or so unbroken as in the Mediterranean lands, where, for centuries on end, no weapon was used in anger. But even here swords were beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks to an extent never known before or since in our annals. So profound was the quiet that for a whole generation Britain vanishes from history altogether. All through the Golden Age of Rome, the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, no writer even names her; and not till A.D. 120 do we find so much as a pa.s.sing mention of our country. But we may be sure that under such rulers the good work of Agricola was developing itself upon the lines he had laid down, and that Roman civilization was getting an ever firmer hold. The population was recovering from the frightful drain of the Conquest, the waste cities were rebuilt, and new towns sprang up all over the land, for the most part probably on old British sites, connected by a network of roads, no longer the mere trackways of the Britons, but "streets" elaborately constructed and metalled.

A. 2.--All are familiar with the Roman roads of Britain as they figure on our maps. Like our present lines of railway, the main routes radiate in all directions from London, and for a like reason; London having been, in Roman days as now, the great commercial centre of the country. The reason for this, that it was the lowest place where the Thames could be bridged, we have already referred to.[189] We see the _Watling Street_ roughly corresponding to the North-Western Railway on one side of the metropolis, and to the South-Eastern on the other; the _Ermine Street_ corresponding to the Great Northern Railway; while the Great Western, the South-Western, the Great Eastern, and the Portsmouth branch of the South Coast system are all represented in like manner. We notice, perhaps, that, except the Watling Street and the Ermine Street, all these routes are nameless; though we find four minor roads with names crossing England from north-east to south-west, and one from north-west to south-east. The former are the _Fosse Way_ (from Grimsby on the Humber to Seaton on the Axe), the _Ryknield Street_ (from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Caerleon-upon-Usk), the _Akeman Street_ (from Wells on the Wash to Aust on the Severn), and the _Icknield Way_ (from Norfolk to Dorset). The latter is the _Via Devana_ (from Chester to Colchester).

A. 3.--It comes as a surprise to most when we learn that all these names (except the Watling Street, the Fosse, and the Icknield Way only) are merely affixed to their respective roads by the conjectures of 17th-century antiquarianism, Gale being their special identifier.

The names themselves (except in the case of the Via Devana) are old, and three of them, the Ermine Street, the Icknield Street, and the Fosse Way, figure in the inquisition of 1070 as being, together with the Watling Street, those of the Four Royal Roads (_quatuor chimini_) of England, the King's Highways, exempt from local jurisdiction and under the special guard of the King's Peace. Two are said to cross the length of the land, two its breadth. But their identification (except in the case of the main course of Watling Street) has been matter of antiquarian dispute from the 12th century downwards.[190] The very first chronicler who mentions them, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes Ermine Street run from St. David's to Southampton, Icknield Street from St.

David's to Newcastle, and the Fosse Way from Totnes in Devon to far Caithness; and his error has misled many succeeding authorities. That it _is_ an error, at least with regard to the Icknield Way and the Fosse Way, is sufficiently proved by the various mediaeval charters which mention these roads in connection with localities along their course as a.s.signed by our received geography.

As to the main Watling Street there is no dispute. Running right across the island from the Irish Sea[191] to the Straits of Dover, it suggested to the minds of our English ancestors the shining track of the Milky Way from end to end of the heavens. Even so Chaucer, in his 'House of Fame,' sings:

"Lo there!" quod he, "cast up your eye, Se yonder, lo! the Galaxie, The whiche men clepe the Milky Way, For it is white, and some, parfay, Y-callen han it Watlinge-strete."

At Dover it still retains its name, and so it does in one part of its course through London (which it enters as the Edgware Road, and leaves as the Old Kent Road).[192]

A. 4.--This name, like that of the Ermine Street, is most probably derived from Teutonic mythology; the "Watlings" being the patrons of handicraft in the Anglo-Saxon Pantheon, and "Irmin" the War-G.o.d from whom "Germany" is called.[193] There is no reason to suppose that the roads of Britain had any Roman name, like those of Italy. The designations given them by our English forefathers show how deeply these mighty works impressed their imagination. The term "street"

which they adopted for them shows, as Professor Freeman has pointed out, that such engineering ability was something quite new to their experience.[194] It is the Latin "Via _strata_" Anglicized, and describes no mere track, but the elaborately constructed Roman causeway, along which the soft alluvium was first dug away, and its place taken by layers of graduated road metal, with the surface frequently an actual pavement.[195]