PENGUIN BOOKS
HADRIAN’S WALL
Brian Dobson was born in 1931 at Hartlepool, educated at Stockton Grammar School and Durham University. He stayed firmly at Durham (as Staff Tutor, later Reader, in Archaeology in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education) apart from National Service and two years at Birmingham University, concentrating on the Roman army and on Hadrian’s Wall. He has now retired.
David Breeze, born in 1944, was educated at Blackpool Grammar School and at University College, Durham, and is now Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Scotland. He has excavated extensively in North Britain and written books and articles on Roman archaeology and the Roman army. He is married with two sons and lives in Edinburgh.
Fourth Edition
PENGUIN BOOKS
To Pamela and Anne
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Allen Lane 1976
Second edition published in Pelican Books 1978
Third edition 1987
Fourth edition 2000
14
Copyright © David J. Breeze and Brian Dobson, 1976, 1978, 1987, 2000
All rights reserved
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-194155-4
LIST OF PLATES
LIST OF TEXT FIGURES AND MAPS
LIST OF TABLES
NOTE ON MEASUREMENTS
PREFACE
1 THE CONCEPT OF A FRONTIER
2 THE BUILDING OF HADRIAN’S WALL
3 THE ANTONINE WALL
4 THE TWO WALLS
5 THE ARMY OF THE WALL
6 LIFE ON THE WALL
7 THE THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES
8 CONCLUSION
APPENDIX 1 ROMAN EMPERORS AND GOVERNORS OF BRITAIN
APPENDIX 2 THE REGIMENTS OF HADRIAN’S WALL
APPENDIX 3 THE GODS WORSHIPPED ON THE WALL
APPENDIX 4 THE ROMAN NAMES OF THE FORTS ON HADRIAN’S WALL
APPENDIX 5 THE EVIDENCE ON THE GROUND
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
1 The Wall at Cuddy’s Crags
2 Milecastle 42 (Cawfields)
3 Model of a milecastle
4 Turret 48a (Willowford East)
5 Reconstructed turret at Vindolanda
6 The Rudge Cup
7 Turret 36b (Housesteads)
8 Housesteads fort from the air
9 Hadrian’s Wall from the air
10 Benwell Vallum crossing
11 The curtain at Planetrees
12 A diploma
13 A centurial stone
14 The curtain at Willowford
15 The Antonine Wall at Watling Lodge
16 Rough Castle fort from the air
17 Turret 33b (Coesike)
18 South Shields fort from the air
19 Trajan’s Column: the legions build
20 Trajan’s Column: the auxiliaries fight
21 Chesters fort from the air
22 Model of Benwell fort
23 The headquarters building at Chesters
24 The tribunal at Vindolanda
25 A rear room in the headquarters building at Vindolanda
26 The east granary at Corbridge
27 Barrack-blocks at Chesters
28 The latrines at Housesteads
29 An oven at Chesters
30 The bath-house at Chesters
31 The temple of Antenociticus at Benwell
32 Head of Antenociticus
33 Carrawburgh Mithraeum
34 Vindolanda from the air
35 Model of the native farm at Riding Wood
36 Chesters bridge
37 The east gate at Birdoswald
38 Fourth-century barrack-blocks at Housesteads
The authors and publishers would like to thank the following for supplying photographs for use in this volume:
Committee for Aerial Photography, Cambridge University, Plates 8, 34;
Mr P. Connolly, Plates 19, 20;
English Heritage, Plates 4, 10, 11, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33;
Historic Scotland, Plates 15, 16;
Dr V. A. Maxfield, Plates 17, 24, 25;
Newcastle upon Tyne Museum of Antiquities, Plates 3, 6, 12, 21, 22, 32, 35;
Turners Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne, Plate 9;
Tyne and Wear Museums Service, Plate 18.
1 North Britain in the mid 80s
2 Tyne–Solway isthmus in the early second century
3 Haltwhistle Burn
4 Towers
5 Hadrian’s Wall as planned
6 Quarries
7 Milecastles
8 Turrets
9 Hadrian’s Wall as completed
10 Hadrian’s Wall forts
11 North England about 130
12 Milecastles
13 Milecastle gates
14 Stone Wall turrets
15 Curtain
16 Turf Wall turrets
17 North Britain in the Antonine period
18 North England about 150
19 Sections across the two Walls
20 The original plan for the Antonine Wall
21 The Antonine Wall as completed
22 Antonine Wall forts
23 North England about 170
24 North Britain in the third and fourth centuries
25 The development of the mural frontier
26 Housesteads
27 Granaries
28 Barracks, workshop and ‘storehouse’
29 Chesters bath-house
30 Civilian houses
31 Milking Gap native settlement
32 North England about 280
33 Housesteads barrack-blocks
34 North England about 370
35 Gods of the Wall
36 Temples on the Wall
Figures 2, 5, 9, 20 and 21 have been drawn by Mr T. Borthwick. All other line drawings have been prepared by D. J. Breeze. They have been produced at uniform scales for comparative purposes. North usually lies at, or towards, the top of the page. As far as possible stone has been produced as a solid line, while turf is hatched. Thanks are also due to Mr D. B. Gallagher for assistance in revising Figures 10, 25 and 29.
N.B. ‘Small forts’ in the figures and text mean forts too small to hold a complete unit; ‘fortlets’ denote forts too small to hold more than a century. This can only be a rough classification.
1 The distances between forts on the Stanegate
2 The spacing of primary forts on Hadrian’s Wall
3 The suggested units in the Wall forts under Hadrian
4 The evidence for the allocation of work on Hadrian’s Wall
5 The building of the stone and turf walls
6 The building of Hadrian’s Wall
7 A draft chronology for the building of Hadrian’s Wall
8 The spacing of the ‘primary’ forts on the Antonine Wall
9 The units suggested for the Antonine Wall forts
10 Events of the second century
11 The units on Hadrian’s Wall in the third century
12 Paper strength of Roman army units
13 Soldiers’ pay rates in the second century
14 Ranks, pay-grades and posts below the centurionate
All measurements are given in modern miles and feet, with metric equivalents, except where Roman measurements are specified. The Roman foot was half an inch shorter than the modern foot:
1 Roman foot = 11½ modern inches (292 mm)
1 Roman mile = 1686 modern yards (1.54 km)
The number of books on Hadrian’s Wall has multiplied disconcertingly of late. Nevertheless there still seems a place for a book concerned above all with the history of the Wall. This book therefore is not a guide to the Wall nor is it a description in detail of the actual physical remains. It is an attempt to review the evidence for the best-known and best-preserved of all Rome’s artificial frontiers in order to explain why it was built at a particular time on a particular line across Britain, and to follow its history till the end of Roman control in Britain.
The book starts therefore with a condensed history of Roman Britain and the Empire up to the decision to build Hadrian’s Wall, concentrating on Roman thought about frontiers in general and Rome’s aims and objectives in Britain in particular. Next the building of the Wall is examined in detail, using a variety of evidence which allows some reconstruction of the planning and timetabling of the project. The following chapter deals with the abandonment of Hadrian’s Wall, still in process of modification, for a new Wall in Scotland. This, the Antonine Wall, is examined in depth to see the differences and similarities between the two Walls. In the next chapter the later history of these Walls till the final abandonment of the Antonine Wall and the return to Hadrian’s Wall is discussed and the new arrangements for controlling the northern frontier considered.
There is a natural pause at this point in the story. In the third century the northern frontier saw an era of peace broken by the first appearance of the Picts (under that name at least) and the Scots at the end of the century. These new dangers of the fourth century lead to a completely different situation from that of the first and second centuries. The fourth century also sees a complete reorganization, civil and military, of the administration of the Empire, and a complete change in the organization of the army. The tranquil interlude of the third century and the turbulent fourth century are therefore discussed after two general chapters on the organization of the army and life in the forts, which apply to the first, second and third centuries A.D., and to some extent to the fourth.
These two chapters are divided rather arbitrarily, but the first, ‘The Army of the Wall’, is intended to give the basic organization of the units in the Roman army and the layout of the Roman fort. It also acts as a glossary for some of the discussion in the historical chapters which involves unit organization and the internal buildings in forts, such as the suggested garrisons for the Wall forts. The second of these chapters, ‘Life on the Wall’, is an attempt to show what life on Hadrian’s Wall was like, concentrating on the soldiers but not ignoring their dependants who created the vici, the villages outside the forts where soldiers’ families and traders lived. Some notes on the later developments in the army are appended here.
There follows a chapter on the third and fourth centuries, and a conclusion. Some matters have been relegated to appendices. A list of emperors and governors is given, for reference purposes, which supplements chronological tables in the text. The units which at one time or another were stationed in the forts of the Wall, its outposts and its Cumbrian coast flank, are listed by names of unit and by fort. There is a rather longer treatment of the gods worshipped on the Wall than would be possible in the main text without over-extending the chapter on ‘Life on the Wall’. Finally the places on the Wall are singled out where some of the features referred to in the text, details of construction or types of buildings in forts, may be most clearly seen.
It has already been said that this book is not a guide nor a gazetteer, nor can it be an exhaustive account of every aspect of the Wall. The purpose is to show how the Wall came to be, what it was and how it developed, how it influenced and was influenced by its alternative, the Antonine Wall, and what happened during its later history. Life on the Wall for the soldiers garrisoned there, and, as far as the evidence allows, for their dependants, is described in the light of evidence from the Wall and elsewhere. The bias is military, for the Wall was built and garrisoned by soldiers, though paradoxically its own purpose was bureaucratic rather than military, the establishment of a tidy method of controlling movement into and out of the Empire. The full effects of the Wall on the native peoples north and south of it, the full story of the civil settlements under its shadow, still remain to be discovered and recorded. Till these are known the story must be incomplete.
The views here presented are of course personal ones, and there can be no pretence that they represent the final solution or even the ‘official’ agreed one. For convenience the writing of this book has been divided between us, David Breeze taking the chapters on ‘The Building of Hadrian’s Wall’, ‘The Antonine Wall’, ‘The Two Walls’, and the ‘The Third and Fourth Centuries’, Brian Dobson the Preface, Conclusion and those on ‘The Concept of a Frontier’, ‘The Army of the Wall’ and ‘Life on the Wall’. The appendices are mostly Brian Dobson’s work, apart from that on ‘The Evidence on the Ground’. But the separation is purely one of convenience; the book is in every way a joint product.
The citation of evidence has presented a problem. This has been met by giving references rather than full texts for the evidence, citing where possible J. C. Mann’s valuable collection of relevant literary, epigraphic and numismatic evidence in addition to standard works. A running bibliography has been preferred to footnotes. There is no attempt to provide a bibliography for the Wall. Attention is drawn simply to the major books or articles bearing on the points under discussion.
Our views are personal ones, but many of them have been formed in active discussion with other scholars, from whom we have learnt much. We should like to mention with special gratitude Eric Birley, who introduced us both to Wall studies, and who has done so much to make Hadrian’s Wall more intelligible, and John Gillam, whose deep knowledge of Hadrian’s Wall has been a continual source of stimulation. We are grateful also to the many others whose names appear in the following pages. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to Dr John Mann and Dr Valerie Maxfield, who were kind enough to read through our typescript and make constructive comments and criticism, and to Mr H. Russell Robinson, who looked through the section on armour and equipment. We have learnt much from all of these, but the responsibility for the views here put forward remains our own.
Finally we should like to thank our wives, who have perhaps suffered most throughout this partnership, in this volume and in others, for their long patience and forbearance with us over our Wall fever. We dedicate this book to them.
Edinburgh and Durham
August 1974
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
We have been able to take account of some of the newly published work since the original manuscript left our hands. As a result of this, a number of minor changes have been made in the text and the most important publications on Hadrian’s Wall have been added to the bibliography. We are grateful to several colleagues for their help in correcting inaccuracies in the text and in particular Professor Eric Birley for his detailed scrutiny of the text and constructive criticism and Mr C. M. Daniels for making plans of Wallsend available to us in advance of publication.
Edinburgh and Durham
May 1977
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
The last twelve years have seen a considerable amount of work on Hadrian’s Wall, both in the field and in the study. We are grateful to Penguin Books, through Mrs Eleo Gordon, for agreeing to publish a third edition so that we can take account of this new work. We are also grateful to Messrs P. Austen, P. Bidwell and J. Crow for providing information on their excavations in advance of publication.
Two points merit particular comment. We have accepted that on present evidence the earlier dates for Agricola’s governorship, 77–83, seem more likely than 78–84. We have also decided to commit ourselves to reversing the normal attribution of milecastle and turret types to legions VI and XX. Further, our doubts on the Stanegate ‘system’ grow, while we have accepted recent suggestions regarding the building of the Antonine Wall and the location of units on Hadrian’s Wall according to the Notitia Dignitatum.
Edinburgh and Durham
1987
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION
We welcome the opportunity to take account of over a decade of work on the two Walls. Our thinking has changed to some extent as a result. In Chapter 1 we have tried to allow for the possibility that Domitian was already shifting the emphasis to the Tyne–Solway isthmus before Trajan. In Chapter 2 we have accepted the argument that the inscriptions from milecastles do not necessarily indicate the original legionary builders, and so we have become even more cautious over attributing the different work on Hadrian’s Wall to specific legions. On the Antonine Wall the great change is the disappearance of the second period, following N. Hodgson’s discussion in his article in Britannia 26 (1995), which suggests the possibility of shifting the beginning of its abandonment firmly into the later 150s. This has affected Chapter 4, as has the ability to attribute all references to Ulpius Marcellus to one governor of that name. Difficulties remain, but the new evidence allows for rather different conclusions. Chapters 5 and 6, on the army of the Wall and life on the Wall, have some important modifications in detail on the basis of new work. Here we may highlight the importance of further writing tablets from Vindolanda, now supplemented by those from Carlisle. The broad similarity between so many of these writing tablets and military documents from the eastern provinces validates the use of the eastern material to illuminate life in the northern provinces. Finally Chapter 7, on the third and fourth centuries, has had to be largely rewritten in the light of recent work, in particular at South Shields, Vindolanda and Birdoswald.
We are grateful to Lindsay Allason-Jones, Paul Bidwell, Peter Connolly, Peter Hill and Margaret Roxan for assistance on specific points.
We mourn the passing of three great Wall scholars, to whom we owe so much, Eric Birley, Charles Daniels and John Gillam.
Edinburgh and Durham 1999
THE CONCEPT OF A FRONTIER
(Hadrianus) murumque per octoginta milia passuum primus duxit, qui barbaros Romanosque divideret.
(Hadrian) was the first to build a wall, eighty miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians.
(Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Vita Hadriani, II 2)
Such is the sole surviving Roman comment on the reason for the building of Hadrian’s Wall. Why, almost eighty years after the invasion of Britain under the emperor Claudius in A.D. 43, should his tenth successor as emperor, Hadrian, decide in A.D. 122 that the Empire should be given artificial boundaries where no natural ones existed; and that in Britain the boundary should take the form of a wall, effectively to divide the inhabitants, willing or unwilling, of the Empire, from the barbarians outside? To understand why, the history of the province must be examined in the wider context of the Roman Empire.
THE EARLY EMPIRE
Rome in A.D. 43 already had eight centuries of history behind her. The literary tradition points to the middle of the eighth century B.C. for the foundation of the city, though archaeological evidence suggests the beginnings of a settled community by the tenth century B.C. During that time defeat in war had been virtually unknown to her since the sack of the city by the Gauls in 390 B.C. She had not even lost the war against Hannibal of Carthage, the second Punic War, and since her victory in that war at Zama in 202 B.C. no power had been capable of challenging her. This run of success, unparalleled in world history, was founded on an army which was unbeatable on its chosen battle ground, the open field. This single fact meant that even when Rome was reluctant to assume the role of supreme power after the victory over Hannibal the role was hers. As J. C. Mann has said, ‘Roman history is essentially the virtually unique story of a nation trying to catch up with the situations produced by the incredible success of its army.’ The idea of a more or less permanent boundary between Roman and barbarian was unthinkable, for it would set a limit to Rome’s ability to conquer.
Rome saw her ability in terms of government and war. The remaining arts could be left to others:
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Hae tibi erúnt artes) pacisque imponere morem Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos
‘Do you, O Roman, be mindful to rule the nations at your command (these will be your skills) and impose the law of peace; show mercy to those who have submitted and crush the proud in war’
(Aeneid VI 851–3)
So wrote Vergil, court poet to Augustus, the first emperor. Peace was to be achieved by force. Those who submitted would certainly receive merciful terms, that was true, but the superbi, those who resisted, must be crushed; then would the pax Romana be world-wide.
World conquest did not seem so remote a possibility. The world was not a big place to the Roman of the first century A.D.; according to the best theories, it was perhaps 10,000 miles east–west by 4000 miles north–south. Augustus already claimed its conquest in his account of his achievements, the great monument known as the Res Gestae divi Augusti; that it was not quite complete was a matter of detail. His trusted lieutenant, Agrippa, kept a map of the world in his portico; he presumably thought on similar lines.
Such concepts could not embrace the idea of frontiers as permanent boundaries, still less armies strung out along frontier lines in forts and fortresses. The Roman army operated in groups of legions, under the command of the emperor, his lieutenants, or the governors of provinces. Their essential task was to seek out the enemy forces and destroy them in battle, to inflict so crushing a defeat that the enemy would sue for peace. Occupation of ground was unimportant, so that Roman wars often take on the aspect of wrestling bouts, to be settled by falls or submissions, with a number of rounds separated by regular retirement to winter quarters in friendly territory – rather than a succession of lines on a map, representing territory gained in each year’s campaign.
The dispositions of the legions were related to these aims. In the first century A.D. great army groups lay around Cologne and Mainz, ready to strike into Germany, or if need be intervene in already-conquered Gaul. In the East three or four legions were concentrated at Antioch, astride the main east–west route from Parthia. Elsewhere internal problems bulked larger than the enemy beyond the limit of Roman territory; in Spain, Dalmatia, Judaea, Egypt, the threat to security arose from within the province. Even the great river ‘frontiers’, the Rhine and Danube, on closer inspection prove to have been convenient stopping-places before another leap forward (which in the event never came in quite the form expected) and useful clear boundaries for the control of unauthorized movement; militarily they had limited value. In fact rivers are rarely if ever cultural boundaries dividing one people from another; they are routes along which people, goods and ideas flow, affecting both banks. They only become important as frontiers because they provide clearly visible lines for bureaucracies wishing to invent frontiers and control movement across them.
The military dispositions of the first period with which we have to deal, up to the late 80s A.D., consisted then of legions in bases chosen with an eye to swift assembly of mobile striking forces. The auxiliary forces, infantry and cavalry support troops gradually acquiring stature and importance, were often grouped around the legions. When they were not, their forts were for the most part winter quarters, placed with an eye to their convenience when assembling the summer task force, and for ease of winter provisioning. They could well be situated also with an eye to controlling and protecting newly conquered tribes, so in some areas the Roman dispositions might take the form of a network of forts, linked by strategic all-weather roads. In such a network there would be an outer strand of Roman troops posted nearest to the border of Roman territory, but there would be no special emphasis on it. More important still, only a small minority of forts would be garrisoned when the army was on campaign. The verdict was sought on the field of battle, with only the minimum number of troops on the lines of communication.
What attention was paid to the frontier, then, and what reality had it? Rome had found early that after an enemy had been defeated in war occupation of at least some of his territory became necessary. So the overseas empire had been reluctantly born after the first war against Carthage. Rome took over the boundaries of the state that had submitted to her, voluntarily or after defeat, and the responsibility for the defence of that state’s territory. But she saw no military advantage in stringing her forces along those boundaries, nor any advantage in emphasizing their position by erecting barriers. Boundaries would set limits to her own expansion, without warding off encroachment or infiltration from without.
This situation obtained from the accession to sole power of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, in 31 B.C. to the 80s A.D. It was inherited from the late Republic, but there was one important difference. Under the Republic expansion was largely the work of individual generals and governors, who sought in conquest military glory in the form of triumphs or ovations, and the booty to recoup the money spent on past elections to magistracies and to fill their purses for the next ones, with little restraint from the Senate. Under the Empire, even though the emperor inherited the destiny of Rome to conquer the world, and could take on necessary but unattractive tasks like the subduing of the Alpine tribes and the extension of Dalmatia, even the full conquest of Spain, he could not and would not authorize a general advance. If the emperor was to control he had to limit the scope of his governors. Only the most trusted general could be allowed military success. Thus only the most secure of emperors with good and trustworthy lieutenants would conduct advances on more than one front at a time; worse still, the caution or weariness of an emperor might bring all expansion to a premature halt. Thus the shock the aged Augustus received from the loss of three legions in Germany in A.D. 9 seems to have inspired his advice to his successor Tiberius to keep the Empire within its limits – advice which he had never followed himself till the reverses of the revolt in Illyricum, beginning in A.D. 6, were followed by the disaster of A.D. 9. His successor, Tiberius, was already old, tired and disillusioned, and the advice was found acceptable and acted upon. For nearly thirty years there was no expansion.
JULIUS CAESAR IN BRITAIN
The invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. is typical of the way Rome expanded under the late Republic. From his base in Gallia Narbonensis (Provence) Caesar had already conquered the rest of Gaul (France and Belgium) with the necessary protestations that he was safeguarding his province and the interests of Rome. The reality of the dangers he claimed to be eliminating need not be discussed here, but it is abundantly clear that Caesar would have sought glory and booty whatever the situation, as part of the normal career of an ambitious nobleman in the late Republic. His initial success was so great that he was in danger, so it seemed, of running out of tribes to conquer, and so risking recall. The invasion of Britain justified the retention of his command for a further five years; he needed this justification so much that in 55 he took tremendous risks, invading too late in the campaigning season to make more than a reconnaissance in force, and nearly met with complete disaster. The glamour of crossing the ocean to an island that till then Romans had hardly believed to exist was sufficient to gain him a record number of days of public thanksgiving in Rome, exceeding what he had been given for the conquest of Gaul.
Caesar returned in 54 B.C., and won the formal submission of the British tribes opposed to him, but he did not winter there, although that seems to have been his original intention. Uncertainty about the security of the so recently conquered Gaul and about the political situation in Rome may have persuaded him not to risk being isolated beyond the Channel. Seneca asserts that he heard while still in Britain of the death of Julia, his daughter and Pompey’s wife; if this was so it would be sufficient to bring Caesar back to Gaul to see its effects on his alliance with Pompey. Events in Gaul, which proved not to have been finally subdued, kept him from returning to Britain before the outbreak of civil war; significantly when he was sole master of the Roman world and seeking new worlds to conquer he did not think of Britain. For the governor of Gaul it had been the best place to conquer, a far easier one than Germany. For the master of Rome it was of peripheral interest; the East was the place to win military glory, now that his choice was unrestricted. The point is worth making, as it has a great influence on the history of Roman Britain, and of the Wall: Britain was never a number one priority. Also, whatever Caesar had written in his commentaries in order to justify the invasion, Gaul could be held down without conquering Britain.
For nearly a hundred years after Caesar no Roman military action was initiated against Britain. Although Britain in one sense was embarrassingly unfinished business (it should have been created a province after its submission to Caesar) and there are odd references to Augustus’ intention to do something about it, he found much more important things to do; Tiberius’ acceptance of Augustus’ advice meant the shelving of the British venture for another quarter of a century. As was the way of Rome, diplomatic relations with the rising British kingdoms continued, and the successor to Tiberius, the young Caligula, had thoughts of invading Britain, with the usual fugitive princeling at hand to supply a pretext, just as he had thoughts of invading Germany. It was a natural return to expansion after the unnatural check imposed by the aged Augustus and Tiberius. Both enterprises were abandoned, probably because of the uncertain loyalty of Caligula’s commanders on the Rhine, and his insecurity in Rome.
THE INVASION OF BRITAIN
Caligula’s successor, Claudius, dragged from behind a curtain after the murder of his nephew to be made emperor because of the troops’ loyalty to his dynasty, was also insecure. Created emperor in A.D. 41, he faced a serious rebellion in A.D. 42, only thwarted by the continuing loyalty of the troops. His situation was precarious; he lacked the glory of military success, the imperial virtue. A triumph must be obtained; the easiest place to win one, Britain. It was not so much the glory of defeating the dominant tribal kingdom in southern England, ruled by Togodumnus and Caratacus, the sons of the great Cunobelinus, lately dead, that mattered. It was once more the glory of crossing Ocean, the feat that had so impressed Caesar’s contemporaries. This done, and the neighbouring tribes to the Catuvellauni defeated or made allies of Rome, Claudius could leave Britain after his stage-managed victory, telling his governor Plautius to conquer ‘the rest’. Britain still retained the interest of Claudius while Caratacus was at liberty; his capture was an appropriate occasion to bore everybody with reminders of Claudius’ one great success. The capture also marked a change of tempo in Britain – as the emperor loses interest the pace of conquest slows. Claudius ordered one of the leading generals of the day, Domitius Corbulo, to withdraw across the Rhine when he had crossed it on a punitive expedition. Corbulo wryly commented on the greater good fortune of those who had been generals under the Republic. Now only the emperor could initiate expansion.
A new youthful emperor, Nero, marked a change of tempo once more. Rid of his advisers, who had controlled policy during his early years, he launched out at both ends of the Empire. Ostorius Scapula, the captor of Caratacus, had died in office and been replaced as governor of Britain by Didius Gallus, who had kept things quiet. His successors were two specialists in mountain warfare, Veranius and Suetonius Paullinus. Their activities were directed towards the conquest of the tribes of the Welsh hills, the north being temporarily tranquillized under a client (dependent) queen supported by Roman arms. It was again characteristic of Roman priorities that the governor Paullinus was away campaigning when another client kingdom, that of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni of East Anglia, was being absorbed into the Roman province. The rebellion led by the widow of Prasutagus, Boudica, showed how casual the approach to pacification had been. Plans for advance were shelved, and three successive governors concentrated on keeping things quiet. One of the four legions in Britain was withdrawn in A.D. 67, indicating that no advance was expected in the near future, and in A.D. 69 civil war broke out. Vettius Bolanus, the last of the three, appointed as governor during the civil war, could not keep the client kingdom of Brigantia, covering the greater part of northern England, under Roman domination. Queen Cartimandua, who had strengthened her claim on Roman support by delivering Caratacus to them, quarrelled with her consort Venutius. Venutius won, although the queen was rescued by Roman troops, and with a civil war raging no more could be done. Clearly, however, Brigantia could not be left in the hands of the fiercely anti-Roman Venutius.
When the civil war was over the new emperor, Vespasian, was one of the relatively few senators who knew Britain, where he had served during the invasion and first campaigns. The governors he sent in succession were faithful adherents and competent soldiers – two of whom, Petillius Cerialis and Iulius Agricola, also had previous experience in Britain. Cerialis, the first, conquered or fought over a great part of Brigantia. His successor, Iulius Frontinus, conquered the Silures of south Wales. Both may have done rather more than this, as Agricola, the third of Vespasian’s governors, in his first season put down the Ordovices of north Wales, but described them as rebels, men presumably then already conquered by Frontinus, or even by Paullinus. In his second he forced tribes to submit who had been independent, and may have been already fighting Rome. Tacitus does not say where these tribes lived, but they were presumably beyond and north of the Brigantes. So far he may only have been dealing with tribes that Cerialis had previously encountered, but in his third season he met hitherto unknown tribes and penetrated to the Tay, though without fighting a battle. The conquest of the Welsh peninsula, northern England and southern Scotland in a decade (A.D. 71–80) suggests strongly that the real hindrance to earlier conquest had been the lack of personal involvement on the part of the emperor; Nero’s enthusiasm had been quenched by the Boudican rebellion.
Did this conquest of the north reflect a change of policy, forced on Rome by the collapse of the northern client kingdom? Many have thought so, and some have even suggested that lowland England, largely won in the first hectic years after 43, was the original limit of Rome’s objectives. Naturally there is no way of demonstrating whether this view is correct. There seems, however, no need to interpret the military dispositions in the early period as representing successive frontier lines. They suggest rather an overall distribution of troops in winter quarters, and perhaps the occupation of some key points to hold down the conquered, protect the provincials against raids, and pass the winter quietly before the summer campaign took the army into enemy territory. They contrast markedly with the forts strung out along linear earthworks and rivers of the Empire in the second and succeeding centuries. The Fosse Way, the great road that runs from Lincoln to Exeter, both legionary bases in the early years, is not a frontier line. Roads were not to be used in this way for another forty years. The other ‘evidence’ for a linear frontier in the years before A.D. 80, Ostorius Scapula’s intention to control everything ‘this side’ (south) of Trent and Severn (if that is really what Tacitus said originally), seems rather to indicate the area of the province which in Scapula’s view should be regarded as pacified. To make pacification effective disarmament was necessary (provincials were not allowed to carry arms except on journeys or for hunting); the first to object were the Iceni, a client kingdom well within the province. This consolidation before advance, characteristic of Scapula, as Tacitus remarks, does not justify any conclusion that he was establishing a permanent frontier. There is no convenient stopping-line, like the Rhine or Danube, in Britain south of the Forth–Clyde isthmus, and no evidence that the Romans thought that they had reached one. The frontier at any time would be the boundaries of the tribes allied to or subject to Rome, with perhaps a few forts pushed forward to hold important river-crossings or passes.
There is no way of demonstrating that the client kingdom of Brigantia was to be a permanent arrangement; the history of other client kingdoms makes this seem highly unlikely. The agreement reached with Cartimandua, like that with Prasutagus of the Iceni, could have been part of the diplomatic offensive at the time of the invasion in 43, with the immediate objective of isolating the Catuvellauni. Alternatively it may have been part of the arrangements made by Claudius or his governor to control the largest of the British tribes on the vulnerable northern flank of the new province. It would lapse at her death, unless Rome chose to renew it. If she had died when Prasutagus did, her kingdom would presumably also have been absorbed into the province. In the event the success of Venutius and the eviction of Rome’s nominee Cartimandua meant that Rome had a war on her hands.
MONS GRAUPIUS – THE INCOMPLETE VICTORY
By A.D. 79 then, not yet forty years from the invasion, the Roman governor Agricola had carried Roman arms to the Tay. How far his predecessor Petillius Cerialis had come in his operations against the Brigantes and consequently how far Agricola’s advance was into new territory does not matter for our purposes. What does is that at this point his son-in-law and biographer, the great Roman historian Tacitus, puts in an interesting thought: ‘If the courage of our army and the glory of the name of Rome would have allowed it, a halting-place could have been found inside Britain, for Forth and Clyde… are separated only by a narrow neck of land’, i.e. an alternative was conceivable to the straightforward advance till the northernmost coast was reached. The year, as determined by the dating of Agricola’s governorship accepted here, would, significantly, be 80; Vespasian had died on 23 June 79, as Agricola’s army was moving up towards the Tay. Agricola now halted his advance, presumably to await the orders of the new emperor, Titus. Agricola was in his fourth season and had already served a term as long as the average for a governor; he might well be replaced. A year passed, and Agricola was still in Britain. He drew up his troops on the coast facing Ireland, and he told Tacitus in later years that a conquest of Ireland would have been perfectly feasible. We do not know if he suggested this to the emperor, and he could hardly have invaded Ireland without permission. It would have given him the possibility of more conquest if further advance in Britain was deemed unnecessary. The Forth–Clyde isthmus is in fact the most sensible terminus (stopping-point) within Britain, as it offers the shortest line and the country beyond is so difficult. Perhaps it was at this time that the forts on the road up to the Tay were built, screening Fife.
Advance was resumed in A.D. 82, again on the dates accepted here, and it is tempting to link it with the death of Titus on 1 September 81. It was probably the new emperor Domitian, frustrated of military glory so far, who gave the word ‘Forward’. Tacitus says merely that ‘the courage of our army and the glory of the name of Rome’ would not allow a permanent halt on the Forth–Clyde isthmus, but it was the emperor who determined what was allowed. Tacitus approved of the forward policy, but disliked Domitian. If the credit for the advance had been Agricola’s, he would have said so. Agricola crossed the Forth in his sixth season, had a frustrating year marked by a near-disaster to the legion IX Hispana, and in his seventh season (A.D. 83) brought the enemy to battle in the classic Roman style at Mons Graupius.
This victory seemed decisive, to Agricola at least, but it was not pursued. Agricola himself was recalled but he had already served twice the average term of a governor. Forts were built at the mouths of the glens; a legionary fortress was begun at Inchtuthil. Whether these forts represented an earnest attempt to contain the Highlanders rather than to conquer them must remain uncertain; they could have been merely a pause for breath. In the 140s Lollius Urbicus did not reoccupy these advanced positions though he
did reoccupy sites to their rear, on the road running up Strathmore, which suggests that the glen forts were more than purely defensive in intent. The legionary fortress at Inchtuthil also seems a springboard for further advance, in the tradition of Gloucester, York, Caerleon and Chester, rather than a legionary base in the front line of a purely defensive system, for which there would be no good precedent.
Decisive in the abandonment of further conquest seems to have been the withdrawal of one of the four legions of Britain, II Adiutrix, in order to meet a crisis on the Danube. The legion intended for Inchtuthil, presumably XX Valeria Victrix, had to go to the new fortress at Chester to replace II Adiutrix. Auxiliaries may also have gone with II Adiutrix to the Danube; in any event it was not thought practicable to maintain auxiliary garrisons north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus. It must be remembered that in the previous fifteen years all of Wales, northern England and southern Scotland had been brought into the province. Virtually every auxiliary unit in Britain had moved into a newly constructed fort in a network which controlled this area, with new legionary fortresses at York, Caerleon and Chester. Holding more without a fourth legion would have courted disaster, and the fourth legion was needed urgently on the Danube. Nevertheless its withdrawal marked the end of total conquest as a possible way of making Britain secure until Severus attempted to revive it over a century later.
The evacuation of all on and to the north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus seems to have been within a few years of 86 – the coins suggest by 88 at the latest. How long the Romans remained in southern Scotland is uncertain, but it would appear that by somewhere about the turn of the first and second centuries A.D. they had withdrawn to the Tyne–Solway line.
The years from the recall of Agricola in 83 or 84 to the completion of the withdrawal from Scotland by the beginning of the second century, and from then up to the beginning of the building of the Wall in A.D. 122, are amongst the most obscure in the history of Roman Britain. Tacitus in his biography of his father-in-law Agricola had summarized the achievements of all the previous governors, and given a more detailed account of Agricola’s campaigns; this information is supplemented by other literary sources, for Caratacus and Boudica by Tacitus’ own accounts in the Annals.
The pattern is reasonably clear. An attack on Britain, lying on the edge of the Roman world and across Ocean, had a certain glamour that had commended itself at critical stages to Caesar, Caligula and Claudius. The initial impetus from Claudius died away after the capture of Caratacus; the renewed efforts of the young Nero foundered on the Boudica rebellion. Vespasian, with his personal interest, initiated the renewed drive that almost conquered the whole island, a policy continued by his two sons.
The rule of his younger son, Domitian, was a turning-point in the history not only of Roman Britain, but of the Empire as a whole. He began with advance in Britain, in Germany, and on the Danube. But defeat on the Danube stopped the advance in Britain, and rebellion on the Rhine compromised recovery on the Danube. In Germany the advance simply came to an end, but it was not immediately obvious that the arrangements then made were to have permanence. In Britain there was clearly a retreat, but the details are obscure. Tacitus, in the Agricola writing in 98, does not mention an abandonment of the idea of conquest. Of course his interest was in Agricola back in Rome, no longer in Britain, and there is no evidence that the recall of Agricola in itself vitally affected Roman policy in Britain. As events were to turn out, the halt was fatal, as Tacitus saw when he was writing the Histories about 105, when he used the phrase ‘Britain was totally conquered, and then immediately let go’. If the reconstruction of events above is correct, all on and to the north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus was given up shortly after 86, as a result of the transfer of II Adiutrix to the Danube. The more difficult question remains whether the final withdrawal to the Tyne–Solway isthmus was the work of Domitian, murdered in 96, his successor Nerva, who died in 98, or the great warrior-emperor Trajan, who ruled from 98 to 117.