Britain: AD 1

A re-examination of what we really know about Britain at the time of the Roman invasions, by David Braund.

At the beginning of the first millennium AD there was very much a north-south divide in Britain. The southern lowlands had recently experienced major change, driven both by local processes and by new relationships across the Channel.

We depend particularly upon the results of archaeology for any understanding of local processes in ancient Britain, for at this stage the inhabitants of Britain did not produce written accounts of themselves, whatever oral traditions may have been current among them. Archaeology shows that by the middle of the first century BC a major shift in forms of settlement had occurred in lowland Britain. Hitherto communities had been centred upon defended 'hill-forts', such as Maiden Castle in Dorset. Yet the term may mislead. Hill-forts were more than defensive acropoleis: they included dwellings and may best be seen as representing a stage in the process of developing urbanisation. However, in the early decades of the first century BC, settlement in lowland Britain steadily shifted to sites suited not so much for defence as for farming, communication and trade.

These new settlements still tended to take advantage of such natural defences as might be available, such as rivers and marshes. Their inhabitants might even devote substantial labour to the construction of earthworks and dykes. However, while the change requires nuanced interpretation, we may safely infer that, as the first millennium AD approached, a measure of peace had come to the British lowlands. There was a new stability there which made the change of settlement viable. That in turn seems best explained by the development of larger political entities across southern Britain. These not only provided a peaceful atmosphere necessary for the move from hill-forts, but perhaps also made new demands upon agrarian and other types of production in the form of taxes, overwhelmingly, no doubt, in kind, such as grains and hides.

The archaeoloical evidence can be supplemented by Caesar's account of his brief incursions into the south-east corner of Britain in 55 and 54 BC. He landed in Kent and went as far as the Hertfordshire and Essex borders. However, Caesar's account is fraught with difficulties, despite (and perhaps because of) its simplicity of language and content. While Caesar may seem to offer an impartial account of what he discovered in Britain, he was of course profoundly implicated in his own narrative. As far as we can judge, his account was designedly polemical. It was constructed to demonstrate the propriety of his British adventures, not to mention his activities in Gaul. For Caesar, though located far from Rome, remained at the very heart of the political furore there, which soon culminated in civil war, with Caesar himself as the key protagonist. While Caesar's enemies at Rome freely criticised each step of his campaigns, he wrote his own account to answer and undermine these criticisms. His agenda is indicated by his decision to write about himself in the third person, as if he were not the author as well as the subject. In all probability he sent a portion of that account back to Rome each year, for circulation and perhaps public recitation there, together with his formal reports to the Senate. The point is central to any attempt to understand Britain at this stage, for when Caesar offers information on Britain we should expect it in some way to contribute to his own defence or aggrandisement. That does not mean that Caesar's evidence is to be ignored, but it does mean that we must subject it to much closer scrutiny than it might seem at first to require.

Yet Caesar's self-serving account does offer a partial snapshot of south-eastern Britain. And his account tends to confirm inferences from the archaeological record of changes in settlement. For Caesar claimed to have found this portion of the lowland organised as a rudimentary empire, at least in order to deal with his invasion. He described a King Cassivellaunus at the head of that empire, a high-king commanding lesser rulers, four of whom, for example, ruled sections which formed an area broadly identifiable as Kent. Of course, his depiction of Cassivellaunus served to give him a worthy adversary, whose conquest could be counted as a significant achievement. However, the key point remains that this presentation appears to confirm the archaeological indications of a tendency to the formation of larger agglomerations in lowland Britain.

Caesar's invasions are important also as indications of the permeability of the barrier formed by the Channel. While, especially in the modern world, one may perceive the sea as an obstacle, it offered in antiquity also a swift means of travel and transport. Accordingly, the proto-history of southern Britain was very much bound up with the Continent. Caesar was by no means the first to cross the Channel. Indeed, it has long been fashionable to explain the changes in the material culture of lowland Britain before Caesar's arrival as the consequence of earlier invasion or migration from the Continent by a tribal grouping called the Belgae. However, the extent of any such invasion remains unclear. While cross-Channel influences are not to be denied and movement is to be expected, local social, economic and political developments have probably been underestimated. The rulers of lowland Britain had begun to mint their own coins through the earlier first century BC in the context of increasing importation of coinage from Gaul. Here at least we may be confident about the impact of contacts across the Channel and possibly from further afield, from the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.

Until Caesar invaded, Britain had enjoyed a reputation for wealth and prosperity. Indeed, it seems to have been imagined as a mysterious El Dorado by the Romans. No doubt the reputation had been fostered by the export from Britain of goods for the Continent and the developing British interest in continental luxuries. However, Caesar and his army were very disappointed by the reality of south-east Britain. Marcus Cicero's brother Quintus was an officer on Caesar's staff, though he had remained with the forces in Gaul. In their correspondence Marcus and Quintus bantered about the news from the British front, despite their serious engagement with Caesar and political upheavals in Rome. Quintus reported that Britain had nothing worth taking, except curmudgeonly slaves, and nothing worth noting, except the curious British chariots, which reminded the brothers of Homer. Yet Caesar had seen very little of Britain and certainly not the areas where precious metals might be found. Caesar's invasions were trivial affairs, hardly more than raids in military terms. But even so, they had an enormous ideological importance in Rome, where Britain remained thereafter a key diplomatic and military concern. Caesar himself seems to have been inordinately proud of his British campaigns: the wily Marcus Cicero composed an epic poem on the subject to curry favour with the great man. Perhaps fortunately, it has not survived.

In the decades after Caesar the British elite demanded ever more luxury goods from the Continent. The emergence of Augustus as the first Roman emperor (r.31 BC-AD 14) and the heir of Caesar ensured that imperial diplomacy would continue to probe into Britain. At about the turn in the millennium, a British chieftain was buried at Lexden near Colchester with a medallion which bore the unmistakable image of Augustus himself. He may have been one of the British rulers who visited Rome in these years and were accorded the particular honour (with all its overtones of compliance) of sacrificing to Jupiter on the Capitol itself.

Small wonder that at Rome there was strong ideological pressure to invade Britain again, both upon Augustus and upon his successor Tiberius (r.AD 14-37). Yet the invasion did not come, for conditions in Britain meant that, from a Roman perspective, it was not needed. The geographer Strabo explained that invasion would be superfluous, for the rulers of Britain (in the south and east, at least) furnished Rome with the required stability and income. The local rulers accepted the need for duties on cross-Channel trade, while they also presided over settled regimes which offered no threat, even through brigandage or piracy, to Roman Gaul and associated interests. The Channel was not only secure but profitable. In that context, urges Strabo, any attempt to conquer Britain would be pointless and expensive, for a substantial force would be needed. The contemporary British coinage confirms the soundness of Strabo's assessment, which also suited the inclinations of his tired and distracted emperor, Tiberius. For on their coins the rulers of Britain displayed their tastes and allegiances, which were such as to encourage Roman inaction. These 'royal' British coins often mimicked Roman coinage and could accommodate not only their own heads (sometimes looking very Roman), but also those of the ruling emperors. They might even boast the Roman title rex, 'king'. They derived the title not only from the reality of their own kingship, however petty that might seem, but also from the formal recognition of their position and status by their Roman imperial masters, invariably couched in the warm language of friendship and alliance.

The Roman decision finally to invade of itself indicates the breakdown of these cosy arrangements. Now there was a need felt at Rome, pressed by elite British refugees and no doubt also by reports from the island and from neighbouring Gaul. In the 30s AD Roman diplomacy could not contain the disorder which followed the death of a king who had presided over a mini-empire centred upon Colchester, namely King Cunobelinus. In the struggle for power that ensued, Rome was by far the most powerful source of support. Rome invaded, driven not only by the desire to restore order, profit and imperial prestige, but also by the need of its emperors (fleetingly Caligula and soon Claudius in AD 43) for the military reputations that their predecessors had gained elsewhere. Military prowess was still the foundation of imperial authority, while, for all his crafty intelligence, the hapless Claudius cut a poor figure as a general. He needed a great victory, especially if it gave him also a bond with Julius Caesar, with whom his dynastic link was fragile at best. In AD 43 Claudius got his victory in Britain, albeit through the agency of his generals, and harped upon it throughout his reign (AD 41-54). For example, the capture of Colchester was re-enacted at Rome in a pageant on the Field of Mars.

Direct Roman rule actively encouraged urbanisation in Britain, not least through the settlement of veteran legionaries who had reached the end of their military service and had built lives for themselves in Britain. Meanwhile, settled concentrations of troops required supplies and support and could thus grow into towns and cities. Rome favoured urbanisation for its own administrative and broadly cultural purposes: from a Roman perspective towns meant order and taxes. The British elite, with a long-standing taste for Continental goods, came to seek preference through assimilation to a Roman rule which was firmly committed to support those of high status and to offer them subsidies. Accordingly, lowland Britain was swift to accept the new situation after Claudius' invasion, while Roman imperialism pressed on into Wales and by the end of the first century AD towards the north of Scotland, to complete the conquest and to search for elusive local wealth.

Throughout, Rome depended upon the support of friendly rulers, who were duly benefited. A notable example is Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, whose kingdom in the Hampshire region was established and enhanced by Rome and who was accorded the title rex magnus (great king), for all the minimality of his power. However, the death of Cunobelinus had indicated the limitations of empire through monarchy. The death of Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni of East Anglia, was the immediate cause of the uprising in AD 60 of his wife, Boudica (more familiar as Boadicea). Tacitus's account of the revolt illustrates the broader social dynamics involved. The Iceni soon seized the Roman settlement at Colchester; the Roman colony having been established at the erstwhile centre of Cunobelinus's kingdom. It had not been built for defence: Tacitus denounces the omission, but Prasutagus's regime nearby and the Roman presence had seemed to ensure sufficient stability. The centrepiece of the colony had been the temple of the deified emperor Claudius, whose priests were members of the British elite. They were expected to provide the finances required for the cult of their deceased conqueror. This brave new world had been facilitated by neighbouring Prasutagus, whose famous personal wealth seems to have been derived substantially from Roman support. The king himself had issued coins bearing his Romanised likeness and expressing his kingship in more Latin than that found on any other British coins. Like Cogidubnus and the other Rome-friendly kings, Prasutagus had received Roman citizenship (with the remarkable but probable consequence that his wife Boudica was also made a Roman citizen). Like a good Roman, Prasutagus left a will upon his death, which included the Roman emperor (Nero) among his heirs. It was the harsh interpretation of that will which caused the uprising. The Roman masters had decided to re-possess the wealth that had been bestowed upon the king.

It was symptomatic that the uprising directed its wrath especially at towns, not only Colchester, but also London and St Albans. For these towns were readily regarded as the centres of Roman power and perhaps as an alien imposition, with land expropriated in their creation. It was also symptomatic that, when the uprising had been put down, Rome re-asserted control with the encouragement of towns high on its list of priorities, a key part of the cultural and administrative programme of Roman government in Britain. The process was a slow one. It was to be some decades yet before the British elite chose to build residences in towns. Meanwhile, the growth of military bases, with soldiers spending their pay and consuming supplies, gave an ever greater impetus to the creation of towns. At the same time, the Roman construction of highways provided work (not least for the soldiery) and greatly enhanced the speed of movement and transport by land. The primary Roman interest in road-building was military: troops and military supplies needed maximum mobility. Yet others could only benefit from the improved communications, not least traders and civilian suppliers. In that way, the imperial interests of Rome coalesced with indigenous processes of development. The aspirations of the British elite combined with the organisation and free spending of the Roman military to make lowland Britain around AD 100 a very different place from its counterpart a century earlier, let alone two centuries. Now the landscape featured not only towns, but also grand villas, through which the British elite competed to display its wealth through imported styles and architectural splendours. In the largely static world of antiquity, all this change was breathtaking.

Through the later decades of the first century AD Roman diplomacy, subsidies and luxury goods were having their effect even in the more conservative regions further north. The process is well illustrated by the development of a substantial settlement at Stanwick, among the Brigantes. In the north, this time, as in the south a century before, hill-forts were steadily abandoned in favour of farmsteads, better suited to taking advantage of a new level of stability and supplying the Roman military.

Around AD 100 the road between the Roman military bases at Carlisle and Corbridge formed the spine of a kind of frontier between the Solway in the west and the Tyne in the east. This was to become Hadrian's Wall, built between 122 and c.126. The peoples to the north of that line were open to diplomacy, as is indicated by the luxury goods that form the treasure of Traprain Law among the Votadini, of south-east Scotland.The settlement at Traprain Law had been established long before Romans arrived in force in the area,probably by 500 BC though it is hard closely to assess the degree of Roman influence from afar before their military arrived in about AD 80. However, through the late first and second centuries AD the settlement boomed with increasing Roman contact. There was no real social or economic division along the Tyne-Solway line. Rather, the peoples of what is now the very north of England and of lowland Scotland were tractable enough, from a Roman perspective, to participate in the military economy and to constitute a buffer between the directly-administered province and the Highlands, where Roman coins and other goods are notable by their general absence. Indeed, lowland Scotland was so malleable that, in c.139--42 Rome could soon attempt a frontier-line across Scotland itself, the Antonine Wall. However, that line proved unsustainable without the lowland buffer enjoyed by the Tyne-Solway line and was in any case too easily circumvented on its west. Nevertheless, for all its failure, the very attempt to create the Antonine Wall shows that Roman government adjudged the area and population to the north of Hadrian's Wall to be more part of its world than of the barbarian world beyond.

The later history of Britain tends to confirm the impression left by archaeology that the Roman presence and influence in lowland Britain brought profound assimilation. By contrast, in northern England, Scotland and much of Wales, Roman impact was far more superficial. The explanation of that sustained north-south divide may well reside in the long process of acculturation and exchange between southern Britain and the Continent, something that had been well in train in the centuries before the arrival of Caesar and Claudius and that had made Roman culture not only very attractive, but perhaps even familiar, to the elite of lowland Britain by AD 1.

Further Reading: D. Braund, Ruling Roman Britain: kings, queens, governors and emperors from Caesar to Agricola (Routledge, 1996); D. J. Breeze and B. Dobson, Hadrian's Wall (Allen Lane, 1976); W. S. Hanson, Agricola and the conquest of the north (Batsford, 1987);R. F. J. Jones (ed.), Britain in the Roman period: recent trends (Collis Publications, Sheffield 1991); M. Millett, The Romanization of Britain: an essay in archaeological interpretation (Cambridge UP, 1990);P. Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford UP, 1981).

David Braund is Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter.

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