Old English Chronicles Part 60

7. Didius Verannius, who succeeded, died within a year.

8. Suetonius Paulinus continued prosperous for two years. The tribes being reduced and garrisons established, he attacked the isle of Mona, because it gave succour to the rebellious and afforded opportunities for invasion. For the absence of the governor removing all fear, the Britons began to recover courage, and rose in arms under the conduct of Bonduica, a woman of royal descent. Having reduced the troops scattered in the garrisons, they attacked the colony[684] itself, as the seat of slavery, and in the height of rage and victory, exercised every species of savage barbarity. Had not Paulinus, on receiving the intelligence, luckily hastened to crush the revolt, Britain must have been lost. But the fortune of one battle restored it to its former submission. Many of the natives, from the consciousness of their defection, and fear of the governor, continued under arms.

9. Suetonius, in other respects an ill.u.s.trious man, but arrogant to the vanquished and prompt to avenge his own injuries, being likely to exercise severity, he was replaced by Petronius Turpilia.n.u.s, who was more merciful, a stranger to the offences of the enemy, and therefore more likely to be softened by their repentance. Having settled the disturbances, he gave up the province to Trebellius Maximus.

10. Trebellius, being of a slothful disposition and unused to war, retained the province by gentleness. The barbarous Britons ceasing to be ignorant of luxury, and the termination of civil wars, gave him an excuse for inactivity. But discord called forth his exertions; for the soldiery, when released from military labours, grew wanton from too much rest. Trebellius, having evaded the rage of the army by flight, was shortly allowed to resume the command, the licentiousness of the soldiery becoming as it were a composition for the safety of the general. This sedition ended without bloodshed.

11. Nor did Vectius Bola.n.u.s, although the civil wars still continued, hara.s.s Britain by restoring discipline. There was the same inactivity towards the enemy, and the same insubordination in the garrisons; but Bola.n.u.s, being a good man and not disliked, acquired affection instead of authority.

12. But when, with the rest of the world, Vespasian had recovered Britain, we see distinguished generals, famous armies, and the enemy dispirited: Petilius Cerealis immediately excited terror by attacking the state of the Brigantes, which was esteemed the most populous of the province. Many battles were fought, some of which were b.l.o.o.d.y, and a great part of the Brigantian territory was either conquered or invaded.

13. But although Cerealis had diminished the care and fame of his successor, the burden was sustained by Julius Frontinus, a man of high courage. Overcoming at once the spirit of the enemy and the difficulties of the country, he subjugated the warlike and powerful nation of the Silures.

14. To him succeeded Agricola, who not only maintained the peace of the province; but for seven years carried on war against the Caledonians and their warlike king Galgacus. He thus added to the Roman empire nations. .h.i.therto unknown.

15. But Domitian, envying the superior glory of Agricola, recalled him, and sent his lieutenant Lucullus into Britain, because he had suffered lances of a new form to be named _Luculleas_ after him.

16. His successor was Trebellius, under whom the two provinces, namely, Vespasiana and Maeata, were wrested from the Roman government; for the Romans gave themselves up to luxury.

17. About this time the emperor Hadrian visiting this island, erected a wall justly wonderful, and left Julius Severus his deputy in Britain.

18. From this time nothing worthy of attention is related, until Antoninus Pius carried on so many wars by his generals. He conquered the Britons by means of Lollius Urbicus, the propraetor, and Saturninus, prefect of the fleet, and, the barbarians being driven back, another wall was built. He recovered the province afterwards called Valentia.

19. Pius dying, Aurelius Antoninus gained many victories over the Britons and Germans.

20. On the death of Antoninus, when the Romans deemed their acquisitions insufficient, they suffered a great defeat under Marcellus.

21. To him succeeded Pertinax, who conducted himself as an able general.

22. The next was Clodius Albinus, who contended with Severus for the sceptre and purple.

23. After these, the first who enjoyed the t.i.tle of lieutenant was Virius Lupus: he did not perform many splendid actions; for his glory was intercepted by the unconquerable Severus, who, having rapidly put the enemy to flight, repaired the wall of Hadrian, now become ruinous, and restored it to its former perfection. Had he lived, he intended to extirpate the very name of the barbarians; but he died by the visitation of G.o.d, among the Brigantes, in the city of Eborac.u.m.

24. Alexander succeeded, who gained some victories in the East, and died at Edessa.

25. His successors were the lieutenants Lucilia.n.u.s, M. Furius, N.

Philippus *********, who, if we except the preservation of the boundaries, performed hardly any thing worthy of notice.

26. Afterwards *****

_The rest is wanting._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 684: Camalodunum.]

APPENDIX.--No. I.

COMMENTARY ON THE ITINERARY.

No people are so barbarous as to be totally dest.i.tute of the means of internal communication; and in proportion as they become more civilized and have more intercourse with other nations, these means are augmented and facilitated. By the early accounts of the Britons it appears that they maintained a considerable foreign commerce, that they had formed towns or large communities, and used chariots for warlike, and undoubtedly for civil purposes. Hence it is evident that their internal communications must have been free and numerous. We need not therefore be surprised, if, after the lapse of so many centuries, marks of such British roads appear even at present to a careful observer, differing in many respects from the roads subsequently made by the Romans, and traversing the island in every direction.

These ancient ways may be distinguished from those made by the Romans by unequivocal marks.

I. They are not raised nor paved, nor always straight; but often wind along the tops or sides of the chains of hills which lie in their course.

II. They do not lead to Roman towns, or notice such towns, except when placed on the sites of British fortresses.

III. They are attended by tumuli like those of the Romans; but usually throw out branches, which, after running parallel for some miles, are reunited to the original stem.

When the Romans obtained a footing in this island, they directed all their operations, according to their practice, by military principles.

They civilized indeed as they conquered, but conquest was their princ.i.p.al object. Hence, as each tribe was successively subdued, they fortified such primary posts as were best adapted to support their future operations, established secondary posts to secure their communications, and connected the whole by military ways. From local circ.u.mstances, and the principles of war, their primary posts were either at or near the sites of the British towns, or on the princ.i.p.al rivers. If therefore the British towns and trackways were suited to their purposes, they adopted them; if not, they constructed others. But both their towns and roads differed materially from those of the original inhabitants. The Romans in their towns or fortresses followed the system of their own castrametation, in like manner as in modern warfare the construction of permanent and temporary works is guided by the same general principles. These towns are of a regular figure, bounded by lines as straight as the shape of the ground will permit, generally square or oblong, and consisting commonly in a single wall and ditch, unless in positions peculiarly dangerous, or where local circ.u.mstances rendered additional defences necessary. On the contrary the British towns, which were occupied by the Romans, although irregularly shaped, still partake of their original figure.

Specimens of the first kind, or perfect Roman towns, may be seen in Colchester, Winchester, Caerleon, Caerwent, Castor near Norwich, and all the military stations bordering on the wall of Severus. Of the latter, in Bath, Silchester, Kentchester, Canterbury, and other places.

Similar marks of difference between the original British trackways and the Roman roads appear in the Foss, and the Iknield Street;--the latter, during the greater part of its course, keeping along the chain of hills which lay in its way, not leading decidedly to Roman towns, throwing out parallel branches, attended always with tumuli, still bearing its British name, and appearing from its direction to have been made for commercial purposes.

On the other hand the adopted roads, but more especially those made by the Romans themselves, are distinguished by peculiar marks. Posts or towns are placed on them at nearly regular distances, seldom exceeding twenty miles, the length of a single march, and also at the point where two roads intersect each other, or where several roads diverge. These roads are elevated with surprising labour to the height of ten feet, and sometimes even more, instances of which may be seen on the heath near Woodyates Inn in Dorsetshire, near Old Sarum on the side of Ford, in Chute Park, Wilts, between Ancaster and Lincoln, and still more remarkably on Bramham Moor, near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. They were formed of materials often brought from a considerable distance, such as chalk, pebbles, or gravel; and the most considerable are paved with stones, which are visible to this day. Tumuli also, which seem to have been the direction-posts of antiquity, attended their course, and occur in almost every instance where a road descends a hill, approaches a station, or throws off a branch. Another peculiarity of the Roman ways is their straight direction, from which they seldom deviate, except to avoid a rapid ascent or descent, to throw off another road, or to approach a station, which, from the circ.u.mstances before mentioned, had been fixed out of the general line. Of this there is a curious instance where the Foss, in approaching Cirencester from the north, meets the Akeman Street, bearing to the same point from the north-east, and evidently bends out of its course to join and enter the station with it.

Of many of the Roman roads, not only in England, but in the greater part of the Roman empire, an account has been preserved under the name of the Itinerary of Antoninus, which specifies the towns or stations on each road, and shows the distances between them. This record was long supposed to be a public directory or guide for the march of soldiers; but if this were the case, it is extremely confused and imperfect. It often omits in one _Iter_ or journey towns which are directly in its course, and yet specifies them in another, as may be seen in the first, second, sixth, and eighth Iters. It traces the same road more than once, and pa.s.ses unnoticed some of the most remarkable roads in the island, namely a great part of the Foss, and the whole of the _Via Devana_ (a road from Colchester to Chester.) Hence this Itinerary has been more justly considered as the heads of a journal formed by some traveller or officer, who visited the different parts of the empire from business or duty; and, as Mr. Reynolds conjectures with great appearance of probability, in the suite of the emperor Adrian. In this light it may be considered as copious, and the advantages which it has afforded to the antiquary will be gratefully and universally acknowledged. Still, however, from the incoherence which appears in that part relating to our island, and from the mutilated copies which have been found, there is reason to imagine that the whole of this interesting record has not escaped the ravages of time.

Such an itinerary, but varying in many respects from that of Antonine, is one of the most important parts of the work now presented to the reader.

In fixing the sites of the towns specified in these Itineraries, our antiquaries have a.s.sumed the most unjustifiable lat.i.tude. The mere resemblance of a name was considered as a reason sufficient to outweigh all others; even the great Camden suffered himself to be misled by this resemblance, in fixing Ariconium at Kentchester, Camalodunum at Maldon, Bennavenna at Bensford, Pons aelii at Pont Eland, and Ad-Pontem at Paunton. The explanation of the names to suit the supposed situation has been another fruitful source of error; not only British and Latin, but Saxon, Greek, and even Hebrew, have been exhausted to discover significant appellations; and where one language was not sufficient, half a word has been borrowed from one language and half from another to support a favourite hypothesis.[685] The commentary now presented to the reader is founded on the following principles.

I. The vestiges of roads actually existing are taken as much as possible for guides; and the extremes or direction of each Iter, ascertained from two or more undoubted stations, or other unequivocal proofs.

II. In general, no place is regarded as the site of a Roman station, unless fixed Roman remains, such as buildings, baths, &c. are found at or near it; and unless it is situated on or near the line of a Roman road.

III. An exception has, however, been sometimes unavoidably made to this rule. After the Romans had established their power, and completed their system of internal communication, they undoubtedly lessened the number of their garrisons, to avoid either too great a division of their force, or to reduce that part of it which was necessarily stationary. Hence we have sometimes considered the direction of the road, and the general distance, as sufficient data for determining a station or stations, either when they were situated between two considerable fortified points, or when covered by others on every side; because it is probable such posts were merely temporary, and were dilapidated or demolished, even before the decline of the Roman power.

IV. In a.s.signing a specific Roman name to a place, it has not been deemed sufficient that fixed antiquities or other equivalent evidence prove a town to have existed on the spot, unless the order of the names, and the distances marked in the Itinerary, justify the appellation.

V. Where the line of the Roman road is tolerably perfect, no station is sought far from it, except where the excess of the Itinerary over the real distance, or accurate measurement, affords sufficient authority for the deviation.

VI. The numbers which determine the distances being written in Roman numerals, which gave great lat.i.tude for error[686] and subst.i.tutions, recourse has been had to this rule.

Where the road still exists, the whole intermediate s.p.a.ce between two stations already determined, has been examined to discover what places, from their relative distance, from their site, or the antiquities found in them, have the fairest claim to be considered as Roman posts; and to such places the names have been affixed according to the evidence afforded in the Itinerary.

After this development of the principles on which we have proceeded in our examination, it is necessary to add a few observations on the Roman mile, the standard of measurement used in compiling the Itineraries; because many difficulties in determining the stations arise from our uncertainty respecting its real length. It may indeed appear easy to ascertain this point, by a careful measurement of the s.p.a.ce between two military columns, still existing on any known Roman road. But in Britain such an experiment has been hitherto impracticable; for the columns in our island have been so universally defaced or removed, that, far from two existing on the same road, only one has been found[687] whose original station is known with any degree of certainty. In France and Italy many of these columns still exist, and Danville has adduced three instances in Languedoc, in which the distances between them accurately measured amounted in one to 756, in another to 753, and in a third to 752 toises and two feet. The average 754 toises and two feet, seems to determine the length of the Roman mile with sufficient precision; and the result is confirmed by a comparison with the Roman foot, still preserved in the capitol; for the exact length of the miles between the military columns on the Appian way, in the neighbourhood of Rome, as measured by Bianchini, was 5010 of these Roman feet, which reduced to toises is 756 toises four feet and a half. From these results Danville estimates the Roman mile at 755 toises, or 1593 yards[688] English measure.

Unfortunately this mensuration does not lessen the difficulties of the English antiquary; for the distance between any two of our known stations, if measured by this standard, disagrees in almost every instance with the numbers of the Itineraries. Different conjectures have been advanced to solve this difficulty. One, supported by the respectable authority of Horsley, is, that the Romans measured only the horizontal distance, without regarding the inequalities of the surface; or that the s.p.a.ce between station and station was ascertained from maps accurately constructed. This idea receives some support from a fact acknowledged by every British antiquary, namely, that the Itinerary miles bear a regular proportion to the English miles on plains, but fall short of them in hilly grounds. Another opinion is, that the Itinerary miles were not measured by an invariable standard, but in the distant provinces were derived from the common measures of the country. In support of this conjecture a supposed coincidence between the computed and measured miles, noticed by Horsley and others, has been adduced; but if this were the case, there would not be so exact a conformity between the miles of France and Italy as appears in the instance before mentioned.