The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor MommsenЧитать онлайн книгу.
in the several cantons, which had no outward bond of conjunction and were at perpetual feud with one another. The men were doubtless possessed of bodily strength, endurance, and bravery—despising death; and were in particular expert horsemen. But the Homeric war–chariot, which was still a reality here, and on which the princes of the land themselves wielded the reins, as little held its ground against the compact squadrons of Roman cavalry as the foot soldier without coat of mail and helmet, defended only by the small shield, was with his short javelin and his broad sword a match in close combat for the short Roman knife, or even for the heavy pilum of the legionary, and sling–bullet and arrow of the light Roman troops. To the army of about 40,000 well–trained soldiers the natives could oppose no corresponding defensive force. The disembarkation did not even encounter resistance; the Britons had accounts as to the reluctant temper of the troops and no longer expected the landing. King Cunobelinus had died shortly before; the opposition was led by his two sons Caratacus and Togodumnus. The invading army had its march at once directed to Camalodunum,104 and in a rapid course of victory it reached as far as the Thames; here a halt was made, chiefly perhaps to give the emperor the opportunity of plucking the easy laurels in person. So soon as he arrived, the river was crossed; the British levy was beaten, on which occasion Togodumnus met his death; Camalodunum itself was taken. His brother Caratacus, it is true, obstinately continued the resistance, and gained for himself, in victory or defeat, a proud name with friend and foe; nevertheless, the progress of the Romans was not to be checked. One prince after another was beaten and deposed—the triumphal arch of Claudius names eleven British kings as conquered by him; and what did not succumb to the Roman arms yielded to the Roman largesses. Numerous men of rank accepted the possessions which the emperor conferred on them at the expense of their countrymen; various kings also submitted to the modest position of vassals, as indeed Cogidumnus the king of the Regni (Chichester) and Prasutagus the king of the Iceni (Norfolk) bore rule for a series of years as dependent princes. But in most districts of the island, which had hitherto been monarchically governed throughout, the conquerors introduced their communal constitution, and gave what was still left to be administered into the hands of the local men of rank—a course which brought in its train wretched factions and internal quarrels. Even under the first governor the whole level country as far as the Humber seems to have come into Roman power; the Iceni, for example, had already submitted to him. But it was not merely with the sword that the Romans made way for themselves. Veterans were settled at Camalodunum immediately after its capture; thus the first town of Roman organisation and Roman burgess–rights, the “Claudian colony of victory,” was founded in Britain, destined to be the capital of the country. Immediately afterwards began also the profitable working of the British mines, particularly of the productive lead–mines; there are British leaden bars from the sixth year after the invasion. Evidently with like rapidity the stream of Roman merchants and artisans poured itself over the field newly opened up; if Camalodunum received Roman colonists, Roman townships, which soon obtained legally urban organisation, were formed elsewhere in the south of the island as a mere result of freedom of traffic and of immigration, particularly at the hot springs of Sulis (Bath), in Verulamium (St. Albans to the north–west of London), and above all in the natural emporium of trading on a great scale—Londinium at the mouth of the Thames.
The advance of the foreign rule asserted itself everywhere, not merely in new taxes and levies, but perhaps still more in commerce and trade. When Plautius after four years of administration was recalled, he entered Rome in triumph, the last citizen who attained such honour, and honours and orders were lavished on the officers and soldiers of the victorious legions; triumphal arches were erected to the emperor in Rome, and thereafter in other towns, on account of victory achieved “without any losses whatever;” the crown–prince born shortly before the invasion received, instead of his grandfather’s name, that of Britannicus. We may discern in these matters the unmilitary age disused to victories with loss, and the extravagance in keeping with political dotage; but, if the invasion of Britain has not much significance from a military standpoint, testimony must withal be borne to the leading men that they set about the work in an energetic and persistent fashion, and that the painful and dangerous time of transition from independent to foreign rule in Britain was an unusually short one.
After the first rapid success, it is true, there were developed difficulties and even dangers, which the occupation of the island brought not merely to the conquered but also to the conquerors.
Resistance in West Britain.
Mona.
They were masters of the level country, but not of the mountains or of the sea. The west above all gave trouble to the Romans. No doubt in the extreme south–west, in what is now Cornwall, the old nationality maintained itself, probably more because the conquerors concerned themselves but little about this remote corner than because it directly rebelled against them. But the Silures in the south of the modern Wales, and their northern neighbours the Ordovici, perseveringly defied the Roman arms; the island Mona (Anglesey), adjacent to the latter, was the true focus of national and religious resistance. It was not the character of the ground alone that hindered the advance of the Romans; what Britain had been for Gaul, that the large island Ivernia was now for Britain, and especially for this west coast; the freedom on the one side of the channel did not allow the foreign rule to take firm root in the other. We clearly recognise in the laying out of the legionary camps that the invasion was here arrested. Under the successor of Plautius the camp for the 14th legion was laid out at the confluence of the Tern with the Severn near Viroconium (Wroxeter, not far from Shrewsbury);105 presumably about the same time, to the south of it, that of Isca (Caerleon = Castra legionis) for the 2d; to the north that of Deva (Chester = Castra) for the 20th; these three camps shut off the region of Wales towards the south, north, and west, and protected thus the pacified land against the mountains that remained free. Into this region the last prince of Camalodunum, Caratacus, threw himself, after his home had become Roman. He was defeated by the successor of Plautius, Publius Ostorius Scapula, in the territory of the Ordovici, and soon afterwards delivered up by the terrified Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge, to the Romans (51), and conducted with all his adherents to Italy. In surprise he asked, when he saw the proud city, how the masters of such palaces could covet the poor huts of his native country. But with this the west was by no means subdued; the Silures above all persevered in obstinate resistance, and the fact that the Roman general announced his purpose of extirpating them to the last man did not contribute to make them more submissive.
Paullinus.
The enterprising governor, Gaius Suetonius Paullinus, attempted some years later (61) to bring into Roman power the chief seat of resistance, the island of Mona, and in spite of the furious opposition with which he was met, and in which the priests and the women took the lead, the sacred trees, beneath which many a Roman captive had bled, fell under the axes of the legionaries. But out of the occupation of this last asylum of the Celtic priesthood there was developed a dangerous crisis in the subject territory itself; and the governor was not destined to complete the conquest of Mona.
Boudicca.
In Britain, too, the alien rule had to stand the test of national insurrection. What was undertaken by Mithradates in Asia Minor, by Vercingetorix among the Celts of the continent, by Civilis among the subject Germans, was attempted among the insular Celts by a woman, the wife of one of those vassal–princes confirmed by Rome, the Queen of the Iceni, Boudicca. Her deceased husband had, to secure the future of his wife and his daughters, bequeathed his sovereignty to the emperor Nero, and divided his property between the latter and his own relatives. The emperor took the legacy and, in addition, what was not meant for him; the princely cousins were put in chains, the widow was scourged, the daughters maltreated in more shameful fashion. Then came other wrongs at the hands of the later Neronian government. The veterans settled in Camalodunum chased the earlier possessors from house and homestead as it pleased them, without the authorities interfering to check them. The presents conferred by the emperor Claudius were confiscated as revocable gifts. Roman ministers, who at the same time trafficked in money, drove in this way the Britannic communities, one after the other, to bankruptcy. The moment was favourable. The governor Paullinus, more brave than cautious, was just then, as we have said, with the flower of the Roman army in the remote island of Mona, and this attack on the most sacred seat of the national religion exasperated men’s minds as much as