Transcript of 502. The Roman Conquest of Britain: To the Ends of the Earth (Part 4)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com. We, the most distant of peoples who dwell upon this Earth, the last of the three have been shielded until today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. But now, the most northerly reaches of Britain lie open to our foe, and what men know nothing about is invariably a cause of fascination. There are no peoples who dwell beyond us, nothing but waves and rocks, and the Romans who are more terrible still, for there is no escaping their exactions by submitting to them and bowing their neck. Men who have stripped the entire world bare, they have exhausted the dry land by plundering all it has to offer, so now they are ransacked the sea. A wealthy enemy excites their rapacity, a poor one, their hunger for power. The East and West alike have failed to satisfy their appetites. Alone among men, they lust equally after the rich and the poor.

What they speciously call empire is merely robbery, slaughter, and looting. They create a wilderness, and they call it peace. That Tom was Mel Gibson in AD 83. It was in fact Calgacus, a British warlord who, like Mel Gibson, celebrated both for his breeding and for his valor. And he delivered that speech, didn't he, Calgacus, if he did deliver it, as we will discover, on a mountain called Gropius in the highlands of Scotland, or what was then called to the Romans Caledonia. So we had Boudica last time, and we were talking about how she was the first real great rich character in British history. And here we have the first person in all Scottish history, don't we?

To have a name? Yeah.

Yeah.

It was very Mel Gibson because the situation is quite braveheart. So the Caledonians are on the slopes of this mountain called Groupius. And as on so many occasions in subsequent Scottish history, they're resisting a vast invasion from the south. And it's been 40 years since the Romans landed in Kent, and they have now reached the Highlands. And the process of conquest, as we were discussing last time in the end of our episode on Boudica, have been devastating. So we said that in that great battle, perhaps 40,000 were slaughtered in the battle that ends her revolt. We've had genocidal campaigning in Wales, hundreds of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands enslaved. So you can see where Calgagos is coming from. And the line with which he ends that speech, 'They create a wilderness and they call it peace' is probably one of the most famous denunciations of imperialism of all time. I mean, it's often, often quoted, often repeated. And it seems to offer a counterpoint to the glory that was Rome. It seems to give us the view from the barbarian side, except that, of course, it's not actually verbatim. It's essentially invented by Tacitus, the great Roman historian, who is, and this is absolutely on trend with what Roman historians do.

There's nothing, no one would see it as being poor form. It's absolutely expected. But he is putting words into this Caledonian leader's mouth. And it appears in the biography of Agrichela, who is the governor of Britain, who is leading the legions, so the Roman side at the Battle of Mount Groupius. When Tacitus gives these words to Calgacus, it's not total fantasy. He is very well-informed on British affairs. Agrichela was his father-in-law, he may well have served in Britain himself. To quote Anthony Burley, who's very distinguished expert on Northern Britain in the Roman period. He says, Why not suppose that Tacitus served in Britain in one of the four legions in the army of his father-in-law? He could well have stayed there for 2-3 years. And he points out that in the account of Agrichela's governorship that Tacitus writes, the first three years are done in great detail, and then it becomes slightly more sketchy, implying that perhaps Tacitus was actually present in Britain. So he would have had a good idea of what the Roman conquest meant for the Britons. But having said that, I think that Calgacus' speech actually tells us less about British attitudes to Roman imperialism than about Tacitus his own.

And it's obvious, I mean, no man who is capable of composing that speech that you read out can possibly be reckoned to view empire and conquest as an unambiguous good. So the question then is, What does this mean basically he's woke? Is he a woke historian, Roman historian, part of the woke mind virus? So we will see, we will see, over the course of this episode, where Tacitus is coming from.

Isn't that interesting? The idea that the germ of the criticism of Roman imperialism, and indeed of imperialism more generally, is right there at the beginning within Roman culture itself.

The question is, are the reasons that Tacitus is criticizing imperialism the reasons that we today might criticize imperialism? And that's something that we can explore over the course of this episode.

So let's get into the British context. So what is it? A generation has gone by since the arrival of the Romans in Southern Britain. So that speech is AD 83. We've had Boudica's Revolt. And after that, the sheer punitiveness, the bloodthirstiness of the Roman response to that, the destruction of the great mass of people, the horde, that followed Boudica. That sends a very clear signal that the Romans are here for good. They're not going to withdraw. There was that thing that you pointed out last time that the guy who pushed the repression was later recalled and people felt he'd gone too far. So how did the Romans view Britain?

I mean, Tastus is not alone, I think, in feeling that the early decades of the Roman occupation have been pretty badly mismanaged and that Boudica's revolt is an expression of that. And the aftermath of Boudica's revolt is Firstly, it's now impossible for the Romans even to contemplate withdrawal. Too much blood has been lost, too much gold has been invested. It would be too greater humiliation. So they're in for the long haul. But at the same time, I think there is a recognition that they need to up their game. The repression has gone too far. There's a guilt, that there's an acknowledgement that Boudica was mistreated. And there's an anxiety that Paulinus, in his reprisals, in the wake of the suppression of Boudica's rebellion, I mean, he is creating a desert and call it a wilderness and calling it peace. And the man who applies this perspective in the wake of Boudica's revolt is the new procurator, so the guy who's in charge of the finances of the province. This is a man called Gaius Julius, Alpinus, Classicanus. The Alpinus points to the fact that he's from Southern Gaul in the region of the Alps. Maybe that Gallic background suggests why he might feel more sympathetic towards the Britons.

He writes back to Rome. He to Nero, and he says, Look, this is all going too far. It's counterproductive. You need to replace Suttone's Paulinus, even though he's the great general. Nero sends a Friedmann, a man called Polyclitus, on a fact-finding mission. Tastus is very withering about the scale of the size of the mission that is sent. But it obviously does a very, very good job because it reports back and says, yes, we need a new broom here. And so some ships are lost. And so they use this as an excuse to withdraw him and bring him back to Rome. And the new governor is the nephew of Aulus Plautius, who was the original invader, the general, the head of the invasion force, the first governor of Britain. And his nephew is a man called Petronius Tupillianus. And he and Classicanus work very hard, essentially at healing the wounds, at trying to repair the damage. And they don't engage in fresh conquests. So no further wars under Tepillianus's term of governorship. And Classicanus himself, already London has become the financial center. London had been obliterated by Boudica. Classicanus clearly devotes himself to rebuilding it because he can recognize that it's essentially the natural place from which to administer the finances of Britain.

And when he dies in due course in '65, he's given this sumptuous funerary monument in the East End. So beyond the Eastern flank of the city as the road leads out. And we know that because it was subsequently used as part of the medieval wall and found in excavations. And the original is in the British Museum, and there's a replica of it by Tower Hill tube station. So you can go and see that if you're passing Tower Hill tube station. Porta Pilianus comes to a much stickier end. So he goes back to Rome in '63 and is greeted with great honor by Nero. He's generally felt to have done a good job. And so in '68, when rebellion breaks out across the empire against Nero, Nero turns to Tupilianus and puts him in charge of the defense of Italy. And Nero then commit suicide, and AD69 sees a whole host of emperors, four in total, succeeding one another. Porta Pillianus gets put to death by the first of these emperors, a man called Galba. But Galba doesn't last very long. His success And then you have Otho, who doesn't last very long. Then you have Phytelius, and then you have Vespasian coming to power.

Vespasian, people may remember, was in command of the Second Legion in the original invasion back in AD 43. And he does know Britain, and he pacifies is the empire and puts it back on its feet. But this year, AD69, the year of the Four Emperors, has been turbulent for Britain. There are mutinies. There are different legionary commanders backing different emperors. You get one of the legions is completely withdrawn. And so what had been a garrison of four legions now consists of only three. And this in turn encourages an uprising against Rome in the Kingdom of the Brigantes, which, again, we talked about before, it's essentially what's now Northern England, ruled by this extraordinary Queen, Catermandoer, who had been consistently pro-Roman. She was the person who had handed Karatecus over, the great original freedom fighter in Britain, to the Romans. And she has this extraordinary stronghold in North Yorkshire, the place called Stanwick. Very formidable. Great ramparts, four miles long in length, lots of high-quality Roman goods. Catermandoer is clearly absolutely living her best life there, having a fabulous time. It's all great. But she does have problems with her erstwhile husband, who's a man called Vinutius.

And 10 years previously, Vinutius in Cartamandua had had a massive bust up. Cartimandua had kicked him out after he'd gone to war with her. The Romans had come to her rescue, but Vinutius is still lurking there on the margins, keen to make a comeback, and is all the more aggravated because Cartimandua has massively sassed Vinutius by having an affair with his armor bearer, a man called Velikartus. Vinutius is really furious, and he takes full advantage of the turmoil in AD69 to have another crack at Khartamandua to finish off his ex-wife. Khartamandua again appeals for help, and She's rescued in the nick of time by the new governor who's been sent out by Viteleus, the third of the emperors in the year of the Four Emperors. And this is a man called Veteus Balanus, who is actually very, very effective. And he's so effective that even though Viteleus is the Emperor who gets overth by Vespasian, Vespasian is happy to keep Balanus in post. And I guess the reason for that is that he rates Balanus highly, and it doesn't matter that Balanus was appointed by Viteleus, because what really matters to Vespasian is that Britain is properly sorted out.

So it's under Balanus that the north is pacified, and he's meant to have done him really well, isn't he? I read the poet Stateus says he reaches Caledonian fields. So is Balanus the first Roman to travel to Scotland? That's the question.

Probably not. So this is probably poetic exaggeration. But probably what he is doing is sending diplomatic missions up to Caledonia, so beyond what is now Northern England into the lowlands. The aim is clearly to try and set up friendly relations with the peoples who live up there. And he clearly does a good job because when he goes back in '71, Vespasian gives him Patricia rank, which is a very high honor indeed. So he's obviously done well for himself. And I think that the fact that Balanes is putting out feelers north beyond even Brigantia, into what would now be Scotland, reflects the fact that Vespasian wants to see the whole of Britain conquered. And he feels he had served there, his son, who in due course will become Emperor himself, he'd served there as well. The Flavian dynasty, they're called. The Flavians, I think, see it as the mission they've been given by the gods to conquer Britain. There is one further person who is part of the Flavian family, dynastic set up, who has been engaged in Britain. This is our old friend, Kériales, who was the commander of the Ninth Legion, that had been mauled by the Icaini and the Trinovantes when he was marching to try and relieve Camelodona And he is the son-in-law of Vespasian.

So he's married Vespasian's daughter. And when Balanes is called back, Vespasian sends Kérialis as the new governor. And you might think this is quite a weird choice, considering that he'd notoriously been defeated by the Britons. But I think Vespasian values him not just because he's obviously very loyal, because he's part of his family, but also because he's very energetic, he's very bold. He's not a man to faust around in his legionary base. He wants to get out there and crack on. And so Kéreales has proved his worth as a military man by suppressing a rebellion by the Batavians, who are those Germans who serve the Romans as auxiliaries and can swim across rivers and lakes in their armor. And they had perhaps rebelled. It's unclear exactly the degree to which they rebelled or they'd been imbroiled in the Civil War. But anyway, Kéreales had pacified Batavia, and he's now come to Britain. It's an indication of how determined Vespasian is to see Britain conquered, that when Kéreales comes to Britain, he does so with a legion so that the strength of the island's garrison is restored from three to four. So it's all go.

So his plan is to go up he goes by the '71, so that year that he arrives. He goes up past the Midlands, he goes up north of the Humbert, he goes to the River Oos, and he's heading towards the place that we would now call York.

Exactly. Previously, the most north of the base was Lincoln. He now wants to push further forwards. And on the site York or Eborachum, as the Romans call it, the place of Yew trees, apparently it means in Britonic, is strategically a very good one because it's on the obvious route for marching northwards, the great northern road, as it will come to be called. But it can also be supplies by sea up the Humber. And so this becomes the new base for the Ninth Legion. So it moves up from Lincoln to York. And it's obviously a launch pad for further expansion northwards. So over the term of Kérialis' governorship, there are clearly repeated battles on both sides of the Pennines, the great spine of uplands that runs up Northern England. And by '72, you have a fort being established in what will become Carlyle. So almost on the doorstep of what today is Scotland. And in '74, Kérialis is replaced by a very, very impressive man called Frontinas, who wrote a number of works that have survived. He was clearly a very proficient engineer, so he wrote an excellent book on aqueducts, which our main source for how aqueducts functioned.

A huge inspiration to Robert Harris, Dominic, who you talked to on a bonus, didn't you? He wrote a book about Pompei, and for Tinnus's book on aqueducts was a massive source for Robert Harris when he was writing that. Very concerned with how you repair leaks, which is one of the themes that runs throughout that novel. He's also very much a military man, so he wrote a book on military stratagems through the ages. And in doing that, he could boast a very formidable track record because he is setting out to absolutely pacify two upland areas that are on the doorsteps of the lowlands, which is Brigantia and Wales. So Brigantia pretty much has been pacified by '77, except perhaps in the Lake district, Helvelen and all that, very difficult to sort out. So people who've been to the Lake district may have visited the Roman Fort at Hardnott. That's built several decades later. It's a sign that that is the one region of Northern that remains difficult for the Romans to pin down. Of course, Wales has been a constant source of stress for a succession of governors and frontiners. He's doing his bit. He found two massive new legionary fortresses, one at Kaleon and one at Chester.

The Roman remains in those two sites are still very impressive to this day. More forts across Wales. The reason why I think he, frontinas, is particularly interested in seeing Wales pacified is because as an engineer, he's interested in all the mineral wealth that Wales has to offer, all the gold, the silver, the lead, and so on. And so he's absolutely determined to secure them.

So on this, people like Frontinas, my sense had always been that Britain was a complete backwater in the Roman Empire, and that basically a posting there. It was a demotion, being sent to run one of Goalhanger's other podcasts, Tom. But no, Britain is the rest of history of the Roman stable. Is Because actually, some of the people who are being sent to run Britain are absolutely tip top people. Is that right?

Well, of course, there are recalcitrant and turbulent elements in the rest of history who need a whip hand to rein them in. So maybe to that extent, I think there's a sense that Britain is the most challenging province to administer. And so it's not Syria or Egypt, which really are the the plum postings, because you can get rich there, basically. And it's not going to be too stressful. But Britain is where you send your most competent people, the guys you can trust to do a good job. And that reflects the fact that in Britain, a governor needs to be a very proficient general. There's a lot of fighting to do. But you also need to be very good as a civil administrator. That's where Suotoneus Paulinus fell down. He was a brilliant general, but he was absolutely hopeless at pacifying territories that have been conquered and introducing them to civilisation, as the Romans define it. By the '70s, you have the war zone in the north. This is targeted for conquest. But by this period, the lowlands in the south are starting to recover from the depridations of the Conquest and Boudica's Rebellion. This matters because you can't essentially fund the campaigns that have to be launched without extracting a bit of wealth from the lowland provinces.

You need that. So that's why I I think in '77, when Frontinas is recalled by Vespasian, he sends, as the new governor, a man who really couldn't be better qualified for the job. So this is a man called Nias Julius Agrichola. We've mentioned him at various points throughout this series so far. But just to give a bit more background on him, he comes from a long line of Roman citizens in Southern Gaul. He'd been a student in Massilia, present day Marseille, so that was the home of Pythias. Perhaps it fostered an early interest in the northern reaches of the ocean. Very experienced in British affairs. We've already said he served under Paulinus during the Boudican Revolt and with him in Wales. He'd commanded a legion under both Balanus and Kéreales. He'd then been given experience as a governor by Vespasian in Aquitaine in Gaul. Essentially, he has every attribute and level of experience that Vespasian would want in a man charged with the ultimate conquest of the whole of the island. It's a curricular who is now in a position to solve all kinds of mysteries that Pythias had hinted at, that subsequent geographors had hinted at.

Is Britain an island? If it is, what lies beyond Britain? Can the whole of the land be brought under Roman rule? What about Ireland, this other great island, just across the sea? And it's a agricola's mission, clearly, to provide answers to all these questions. And it's a measure of how challenging this mission is, but also how effective a agricola is. He will end up serving a term as governor for seven years, which is completely unprecedented, and it witnesses seismic changes in the course of the Roman Conquest of Britain.

Nias Julius, a gricular, arrives in Britain in the year '77, and come back after the break to find out what happens next. Welcome back to the REST is History. The Britons readily submit to military service the payment of tribute and the other obligations imposed by our Imperial Administration, provided that there is no abuse. This they bitterly resent, for they are broken into obedience, but not as yet to slavery. So that was Tacitus, the great Roman historian, in his biography of Agrichela, the man we introduced at the end of the first half. And Tacitus wrote in about '98, in AD '98. It's a great eulogy to his father-in-law and a portrait of Agrichela as the ideal Roman governor. So brilliant at the arts of war, but also at the arts of peace and civil administration. And and so on. But Tom, I see in your notes, you say it's darker and more subtle than that, a portrayal of empire itself as a poison. So what do you mean by that?

The passage that we opened this episode with, the description of empire as a spatial frecious form of robbery and plunder and rape, and that the Romans create a wilderness and call it peace. This is in the Agricula. Tacitus is writing it. And well, we'll see what he means by it, what his perspective on the empire is. But It is clear as well that he hugely admires his father-in-law, and as well he should. There is inevitably some revisionism about a gricola's record. There's surprisingly few inscriptions that bolster what Tacitus claims for But the evidence is clear he's a very, very formidable figure because we do know that he does end up going very, very far north indeed. But before he launches his campaign into Caledonia, he first has to finish off the running soar that has been Wales. And because he had served with Suetonius Paulinus there, both in the highlands of Northern Wales and in the attack on Anglesey, he has a good sense of what it would take to finish this campaign off. So according to Tacitus, he He attacks the Ordoviciens, who are the tribal grouping in the north of Wales, directly up in their mountain fastnesses, leading his men from the front.

Tacitus writes, he cut to pieces almost the whole fighting force of the tribe. Having done that, he then attacks Anglesey Anglican Anglican, finishing off the job that Paulinus had been distracted from doing by the news of the Boudican Revolt, doesn't have boats on this occasion, but does have the Batavians who strap on their armor, jump into the sea, wade across, and it's curtains for all resistance on Anglican. It's the measure of the the renown and the mystique that this ancient stronghold of the Druids has in Rome, that this is greeted with great enthusiasm back in the capital. There's a coin is minted showing a trousered figure from Anglesey, kneeling down in the ground and accepting defeat. And this is the last mention that we get in classical texts of campaigning in Wales. So from this point, we can basically assume that Wales has been pacified. And the way that it's done is, again, it's a bit like the way that Edward I, a thousand years and more, will pacify Wales. He does it by building forts, strongholds, places that essentially can act like fetters thrown across the landscape. So the gap between forts in Wales are rarely more than about 15 miles.

The main corridors of movement between them are all very, very tightly controlled. To quote David Mattingly in his book, it's the book in the New Penguin history of Britain: An Imperial Possession. Brilliant book. The Roman deployment was designed in part to control the spaces between the major British peoples rather than simply occupying their heartlands by segregating people and supervising contact between them Rome applied the principle of divide and rule, and those forts remain occupied up until about the 160s. So essentially, a gricola finishes off the job, and that means that he's all set for the north. But We said how it's important that a governor be effective as a campaigner, but he also has to heal the wounds. In the lowlands, he has to fatten the sheep up, ready to be fleeced. I think that because he had lived through the Boudican Revolt, he is alert to the feelings of injustice that the rebels had felt. Again, if we can rely on Tacitus, and I see no reason not to, he makes a point of ironing out palpable injustices. So Tacitus says that he never showed favoritism in his appointments. The best, he was sure, would best justify his trust.

So he's keen to have people who are honest, people who can be trusted not to go around whipping and raping leading British figures.

The only question, though, here, Tom, is how much can we trust a book written by his son-in-law that's a deliberate hagiography of him?

I think because there are no further rebellions and because Tacitus describes the curricula Fostering the Arts of Civilisation, by which he means essentially, I guess, Romanisation in the Southern lowlands, and the archeological evidence backs this up. So Tacitus tells us that the curricula encourages the elites to learn Latin, to wear the toga, to enjoy fine dining. This is the classic approach that the British in India will adopt, encouraging leading figures in India to speak English, to play cricket, to buy Rolls-Royce's, whatever. It's not coincidence because, of course, all the British administrators have read the curricula. There is a, possibly, a direct influence there. Also what he's doing is he is encouraging the process of urbanization because the Romans need cities if they're going to make the province pay. London is the classic example of a boom town. And with Classic Harnes' sponsorship, it's already already started to recover. So in AD 65, we have the earliest known mention of its name. It appears on one of the Bloomberg tablet documents that we mentioned found in the Walbrook. But even before a curricula arrives, the Forum and an amphitheater has been constructed. And by the time that Agrichola is there.

It's already become the largest city in Britain. It's well on its way to becoming the Imperial capital, although Camelodonum holds that position till the early second century. Its wealth is tribute to the economic economic benefits that Britain's integration into the empire brings, because the combination of a unitary state at peace in Southern Britain, combined with access to markets on the continent, means that London is almost inevitably going to boom. It's the obvious nodal point within Britain, and its docks mean that ships from Gaul and so on can come there. So its growth is unsurprising. There's one other urban center that seems to grow organically naturally in this period under agriculture, and this is Aquisoulis, which is Bath. And the reason for that is that it has the springs, the hot springs. And so it's a perfect place for Baths. And so that grows as well. But the thing about other urban settlements in Britain is that they're pretty all artificial. They're artificial in the way that McDonald's in an American camp in Afghanistan is artificial. It's the place that if the Romans weren't there, it wouldn't last. That's one of the reasons why, looking way ahead, when Roman rule collapses in Britain, those towns go to rack and ruin very, very quickly.

In other words, their foundations are very shallow from the very beginning, because you said looking ahead. I mean, you're looking three centuries ahead or whatever. In all that time, they don't really put down enough deep enough route to survive once the colonial power has gone.

No. That's why, again, Tacitus is digging up agricola, but I'm sure it's not just agricola. All the governors are doing it. But Tacitus says of agricola, he gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares, and good houses, because it wouldn't happen without Roman encouragement.

We've not talked at all about how many Romans actually are in Britain. People don't move to Britain voluntarily, presumably in great numbers.

I think they do if they're merchants, if they're suppliers. Of course, the military. We saw lots of the veterans settling at Camlidonum. That didn't work out well. But veterans continue to do that.

But people aren't generally sitting there in Spain or Southern France or somewhere and saying, I'd like to move to Britain.

No, they're not.

Because what's there for you?

Britain remains despised by the Romans, certainly the Roman ruling classes, right up to the end. So even in the late fourth century, you have poets in Gaul who just find it hilarious. The idea that you might have a poet in Britain, like Cicero had been. I mean, nothing has really changed. And I think the sense of Britain as a frontier state, it endures. Yeah, so there's a guy called Stuart Laycock who wrote a book called Britannia, Failed State, and then another book on Roman Britain, in which he essentially argues that the tribal groupings persist in a much stronger way than people have thought, and that the foundations of Roman rule are incredibly shallow. But equally, Britain will always be heavily garrisoned. And so that means that as long as there are successful armies there, there are opportunities for a similicrum of classical Mediterranean civilization to be planted there. And that matters because, just to reiterate, you need these urban centers if you are going to have a proper taxation system. And taxation system is crucial to the successful functioning of the province. And you can't have a taxation system, in the Roman opinion, without a census.

So we know that from the New Testament. It's why the story of the Holy Family going to Bethlehem is faintly credible. And wherever the Romans go, they hold a census. Agricula, we're told by Tacitus, does this. Records are compiled, stored in London, which has already become the financial capital. And by the standards of a pre-modern system, this is amazing. I mean, it's a very, very sophisticated framework for distorting money out of Concord peoples and provides a template for subsequent imperial systems. And it establishes a template as well for a curricular's terms of office. So in the winter, he operates on building baths or holding censuses and sorting out tax. And the summer, he goes off to war.

So this is the great project for which he's best known. The mission the Vespasian has given him, which is the conquest of Caledonia. As you said, the Flavian dynasty see this as their mission from the gods. Of course, for Spasian dies in 79, he's succeeded by his son Titus. And Titus is a little bit like, I guess, any new Emperor, a bit like Claudius. Right at the beginning of this story, he needs the boost of conquest to give him legitimacy. And so that presumably lies behind a curricular's enterprise.

It does. And by '80, so that's the second year of Titus's rule, when he inaugurates the Colosseum back in Rome, one of the the beast that is featured in the inaugural games is a bear from Caledonia. There's a criminal who's crucified, and the bear is encouraged to devour his intestines. And this is seen as all very exciting. And the fact that you have bear from Caledonia imprisoned within the arena, symbolically is an illustration to the Roman people that not just the beings, but the land and the peoples that live on the land have now been subordinated. And this is seen as an amazing feat Because to Roman geographers, Caledonia is the epitome of barbarism. They describe it as being one continual forest, which, of course, it isn't. But by casting it as a forest, they're essentially saying it is absolutely the pits. They completely take for granted that its inhabitants are beyond savage. These are barbarians who are even larger boned than the Britons in the South, their orange haired. Pomponius Mailer, who's a geographer writing back in the time of Claudius, he describes the inhabitants of Caledonia as being uncouth, more ignorant of what makes for civilisation than people anywhere in the world, almost wholly lacking in respect for the gods.

And the literal meaning of Caledonia seems to be hard men Hardland.

Yeah. Made in Scotland from gurders, that image. And the orange hair, they pick up on the orange hair so early on. They do.

So by '81, which is four years into his term of office, Agricula has secured a frontier that is spanning the Clyde and the Forth. So that's basically between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Now, it's where the Antonine Wall will run in due course. And from here, he's in a position to scope out Caledonia to the the Highlands, but also Ireland, which isn't far within, you can see it from the Southern tip of Scotland. Ireland in a curricular's time is to Britain, what Britain was to Gaul back in Julius Caesar's time. So as in Caesars time, merchants going to Britain can report back to the Imperial authorities in Gaul. So you have merchants, Roman merchants, going to Ireland and reporting back to agricultor. And has established treaties of friendship with various Irish leaders. You have an Irish king who's been thrown out, who takes refuge with a curricula, asks him to intervene. So this is very, very familiar from both the time of Julius Caesar and Claudius. These are all the opportunities that the Romans need to launch an invasion. And in fact, according to Tastus, a curricula was very tempted. So Tastus writes, I've often heard a curricula say that Ireland could be reduced and held by a single legion with a fair-sized force of auxiliaries, and that it would be easier to hold Britain if it were completely surrounded by Roman armies so that liberty was banished from its sight.

Fortunately for the Irish, Agrichela decides he doesn't have time because his focus is Caledonia. That's what Titus, back in Rome, wants him to do. And so Ireland is left alone. And in '81, when Titus dies and is succeeded by his brother Domitian, and Domitian, unlike Titus, has not served in Britain, in fact, hasn't served in a military context anywhere, he has even more reason to want great military glory that he can Trump it. And so this means that essentially a curricula has been told, get on with it. I want all of Britain conquered. And so this is what a curricula sets out to do. And he pursues a two-pronged strategy by land and by sea. So by land, advancing along the the lowland strip on the Eastern flank of Scotland. So leaving the Highlands, the mountainous regions, well alone. He doesn't even attempt to go into them. And he reaches almost all the way up to the Murray Forth, up to Kaluddon, of course.

What does he find? As in, obviously, There's so much we can't know because there aren't really many written sources other than Tacitus. But is that sense that what he finds in what's now Scotland is pretty similar to what he finds in Wales or Northern England, ie, the village settled settlements, people painted blue, all that stuff, or is it very different?

Let me read you what Ronald Hutton in his book, Pagan Britain, has to say on this. This is his description of Britain in the late Iron Age, just before the Roman invasion. He says it's the south-east itself, very Romanised, imported Roman or Roman-style goods, then north and west of this area, so Midlands, Yorkshire, so on, a zone that had smaller settlements and farmsteads, numerous enclosures, and a greater emphasis on pastoral farming. The rest of the island, so that would include Wales, and it would certainly include Caledonia, exhibited much more continuity with the earlier Iron Age, lacking coins, lacking continental manufacturers, and indeed large central places of assembly.

So political units, when a gricol gets into Caledonia, are there tribal strongholds? Are there warlords?

No, it's homesteads, fortified enclosures on a much, much smaller scale. So therefore, on one level, easier to conquer, I suppose, but on another, impossible. Because you can't pin them down. There's no central authority.

No capital, no king, nothing that you can capture to end the war.

Yes. And you can be lulled by this, I suppose, into thinking that the Caledonians are like midges. They're annoying, but they can't ultimately do you that much damage. Except, of course, there is always the risk that if you go crashing up there with your legions, it will encourage people who previously had been isolated and disparate to gather together to try and form a guerrilla army that can then attack the invaders. And this is actually what happens in '82. So this is the sixth year of a curricula's term of office as governor, that the Caledonians launch a night attack against the hapless Ninth Legion, who are always regularly being mauled. And the Ninth Legion is taken by surprise. Their camp might almost have been overrun, except that Agrichela is able to come and reinforce them. And Agricular turns it to his own ends by saying, 'Oh look, you've been given a bloody nose. We've got to get on and get revenge for that. ' And the Ninth and all the other legions go cheer and say, 'Yeah, let's go there. Let's get to the ends of the world. ' And according to Tacitus, this is how Agrichela gets his men to share in the dream of conquering the whole of Britain.

So it's a challenge. There's no question about it. But a agri-killer has his instructions. And so the building of infrastructure, roads, forts, it's worked in Wales. There's no obvious reason why it wouldn't work in Scotland. And there's also an additional factor, which is that a agri-killer has got a fleet. And this is central to his whole plan, because it means that his army can be supplied by sea and also the fleet can be used to ferry small groups of soldiers up and down to wherever they're needed. So if there's a stronghold on an isolated promontory or something like that, the soldiers can be taken there. Of course, for the Romans who are essentially used to much calmer seas, the North Sea off the Scottish Coast can be very, very frightening. And Tacitus describes how soldiers and the sailors, when they meet up, they can compete by saying, which is more dangerous, the Caledonians or the breakers and the rocks of the sea. And Tacitus also reports that the Britons themselves, so the people in Caledonia, are much more intimidated by the fleet than they are by the army. So he writes, the Britons, for their part, we learned from prisoners, were dismayed by the appearance of the fleet.

Now that the places of their sea were opened up, they felt that their last refuge in defeat was closed against them. So by '88, agricultor is ready for what he hopes will be the final push by both land and sea. So shall I read you what I wrote?

I think everybody would really love that.

I think they would. So repeatedly confronted by Roman steel, the Caledonians had melted away into bogs and woods as insubstantial, so it seemed the frustrated invaders as the cloud that veiled the highland peaks. But now at last, they were brought to battle. This Dominic is Mount Groupius. Don't know where it is exactly, but probably in the vicinity of Aberdeen, perhaps. And this is where Calgarcus supposedly gives his great talk.

Did he even exist?

Don't know. I mean, there is a theory that the name is derived from the armor, the sword man, the armor keeper, Venutius, the Brigantean chief. So that's, I don't know, who knows? But what we do know is that at last, Agricula has managed to encourage the Caledonians to form a coherent army with chariots and everything. And he's done this essentially by raiding the length of the coastline so that the Caledonians feel they've got no choice but to try and see the invader off in pitch battle. And they assemble on the foothills of Mount Groupius. There's lots of yelling, chanting, cheering, shenanigans with chariots, zipping up and down. And then the next day, the battle is joined. And it's actually the Batavians, these German auxiliaries who've been a feature of the conquest right from the very beginning, who take the lead against the enemy. And then it's the cavalry that finish them off after the legions have essentially cut them to pieces. And the next day at dawn, a gricola sends horsemen out to reconnoit to the vicinity to see if there's any fighting that needs to be done. There So Tacitus writes in chilling terms, The silence of desolation reined on all sides.

The hills were abandoned. Distant homesteads put to the torch. Not a soul was to be seen by our scouts. And the estimate of casualty is about 10,000. I mean, a real massacre again. And so, Agrichler assumes this is it. This is the great battle he's been looking for. He takes hostages. He goes back south for the winter, but he leaves his men in situ, north of the Firth of Forth for the first time. They are commissioned to build more forts, to construct more roads, to absolutely nail down the occupation. And at the foot of a Glen beside the River Tay, a place that's now called Inch Tut Hill, they build the most northerly legionary base ever constructed, so large enough to host 5,000 men. There's nothing really there to see now except for ridges because it's all covered over in grass. But it is actually the best preserved legionary fortress anywhere to be seen in the Roman Empire. It's an amazing place to go and wander around. You really feel the the ghosts there. It's built to be the headquarters of a permanent occupation force. An amazing place. Meanwhile, by sea, the Roman fleet is heading northwards, and the aim is to demonstrate that Britain is indeed an island.

So there's this sense you've conquered the land, now you conquer the ocean, which has always been seen by the Romans as a dimension of the supernatural. But now, agriculture is all out. So if they head north of Scotland, they see Orkney, they land there, they subdue it. They even glimps Shetland, which Agricola said, Don't go and tack that. In his reports back, he says, We have glimpsed Thule, Ultima Thule. I mean, amazing. They then complete their circumnavigation of Caledonia, and they demonstrate that Britain is indeed an island. And back in Rome, this is space race stuff again. This is moon landing stuff. It's greeted with even more enthusiasm than the news of the victory at Monsgrapeius. And poets are all over it. The furthest limits of the world have surrendered, around which the ebbing flood tide roars. Great stuff.

Well, they're not wrong. I mean, these are people whose frontier is on the Euphrates or in the Sahara. To go as far as they've gone northwards is an extraordinary feat.

Yeah. So a garricula can now write to Domitian and say, Mission completed. The entire island is now peaceful, it's now secure, it's now concord. And so Domitian takes him at his word and calls him back. And garricula goes back to Rome, he's given a signal on us. He's given signal honors. He's given a statue in the Forum of Augustus where all the statues are of the greatest heroes from the city's history. So this is an amazing honor And in Britain itself, the completion of the conquest of the island is commemorated by the construction of an enormous four-sided triumphful arch at Richborough, which is where Aulus Palautius and his legions had originally landed and is still seen as the the gateway to Britain. So rather like the gateway of India in Bombay, again, the British are conscious of this as a precedent. And Virgil, who'd written Empire Without Limits, Imperium, sine fine. It's looked like this is true. It's happened. The Romans have done it. But I said that Inchitut Hill, this great legionary fortress, is the best preserved, and that's because it only lasts for three years. It's then abandoned, and it's then abandoned. It's like a ghost town.

The reason for this is that there is a massive crisis in the Balkans. People called the Dacians, who are a very menacing military presence beyond the Danube, have crossed into the Balkans. Domitian needs to staunch this gap in the frontier, so he summons one of the four legions from Britain. Caledonia is a great trophy, but it's not as important as preserving the Roman presence in the Balkans. That might be fatal to the entire fabric of the Empire. And so Caledonia, the whole of Caledonia, is abandoned. And if you go to the National Museum of Scotland, there's this incredible tangle of metal nails that the Romans buried to ensure that the locals wouldn't be able to get hold of it and melt it down and turn it into swords or spearheads or whatever. I mean, it's really amazing. Massive tribute to the scale of the occupation. And also, I'm sure, the sense of disappointment that everybody who'd been involved in the conquest of Caledonia must have felt. So Tacitus is absolutely merciless about this. He laments that Britain had no sooner been conquered than it had immediately been given up. He blames Domitian for this. He says that Domitian is jealous of a agri-killer.

He'd rather abandon Caledonia than allow agri-killer to enjoy his glory. This is incredibly unfair.

Just because strategically, what is in Caledonia that would make you want to commit? I mean, I don't want to offend our Scottish listeners, but what is there in the century AD that would mean you would want to commit so many military and financial resources when you have such pressing problems on the Danubian frontier or something which is much more important to you? I mean, Domitian took the only possible decision, didn't he?

Tacitus is a great hater. And of course, Dominic, as a historian yourself, that's not something that you would ever surrender to. I mean, you love everybody. But Tacitus really hates Domitian and always thinking the worst of him. And entirely interprets the withdrawal from Caledonia through the prism of Domitian's personal envy of a gricola. But he also interprets it in another way. And this comes to how Tacitus understands the Roman conquest of Britain and more generally, the whole project of Roman imperialism. Because as well as blaming Domitian for the abandonment of Caledonia, he also blames something profounder, which is his notion that the Romans themselves have been sapped by their very greatness, that they've become soft, that they've become flabby. This is why he gives this speech to Calgaricus. It's why he admires the Caledonians. It's actually for the same reason that most Romans despise them for their very lack of civilization, because this has prevented them from going soft. They remain hard men. That's what Caledonians are. This reminds Tacitus very clearly of the traditional Roman values that he is a huge admirer of and which he feels have been lost. When he describes how Tacitus sponsors the civilizing of the Britons down in the lowlands, he sees this as essentially being the same process of corruption that has affected the Romans in the capital and across the heartlands of of the empire.

So the dissipating effects of luxury, Tom.

Yeah. And so, again, there's a very famous passage where he describes this, the process of wearing togas and having central heating and all that. So he writes, So the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets, the unsuspecting Britons spoke of such a novelties as civilisation, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement. And this essentially is the wilderness of which Calgarcus is talking. It's not just the idea of a battlefield covered in bodies, cut to pieces by Roman swords. It's also this idea that everything that makes the Britons hardy and tough is being corroded and destroyed by what the Romans are bringing in to the island. This is why Tacitus is suspicious of empire. It's not for reasons, I think, that we would recognize today. If people are opposed to imperialism, it's not because empires have brought the good life to distant reaches of the world. It's because empire is seen as being murderous in and of itself. But Tacitus is not lamenting that. He's not condemning the Roman Empire for the reasons that we might. So the 40,000 killed in Boudica's last battle, the 10,000 killed at Mons Graupius, there may be 250,000.

This is the upper limit of David Mattingly's estimate of how many are killed over the 40 years that we've been covering in this series, probably an equal number enslaved. If you think that probably the population of Britain in this period has been estimated at about 2 million, that's a quarter of people either killed or enslaved in this period. I mean, that is, to us, a terrifying record of conquest. And yet no Roman, including Tastus, ever express his regret for that. I mean, quite the opposite. They celebrate it. They're building massive triumphful arches about it.

You said that Tastus' reasons for criticizing recognizing the Empire are not ones we would recognize, but they are ones that people would have recognized in the 18th or 19th century, during the time of the British Empire, that empire brings wealth, corruption, that you actually lose the very virtues that made you great by achieving greatness, that you become Warren Hastings, or you become so rich, you're no longer like a big game hunter on the belt or something, all of that. That's very familiar, isn't it? That's in all empires. The fear that empire brings a moral corruption because you're too rich and successful.

I think that there is a definite Tassitian influence on this. Every British Imperial administrator would have been familiar with the agricular. But there's an even more sinister manifestation of this, which is that But Tacitus also writes a book about the Germans who, of course, do not get conquered. They have held the Romans off, unlike the Britons. In this book, Tacitus pursues the same theme, that the Germans are heroic, noble. They have resisted the sapping effects of civilization. It's this that in the long run will enable them to overcome the Romans. This is hugely influential on the way that the Nazis understand the patterns of history and the sapping effects of empire. The thing that's fascinating, I think, about Roman history, I mean, there's so much that's fascinating about Roman history. One of the sources of fascination is that it is so influential on how subsequent generations in more recent European history come to see the past and therefore the future.

So much to think about here. Actually, I think let's do a bonus episode, maybe next week, for our Restus History Club members, exploring these issues about Roman imperialism and how it has affected the way that subsequent empires have thought about their own project. Because you've got loads to say about it.

That's a great idea, Dominic.

Wonderful. Well, it's actually your idea.

That's a great idea.

I'm not going to take any credit for it. But Tom, just to finish up for our regular listeners. So this brings to an end our little series about the making of Roman Britain. So just to throw ahead, with the end of Agricula's mission and the withdrawal to what becomes the Line of Hadrian's Wall, would it be fair to say, I know this is a ridiculous, oversimplicit generalization, that to some extent, the story is now over for the next 300 years. Of course, things happen in Britain. There are mutinies or there are uprisings or whatever. But by and large, the story is now settled until what? The beginning of the fifth century. Would that be fair?

Well, we're very lucky that we have as many sources as we do for this period. It's evident from throwaway lines or from archeological evidence that there are actually great convulsions continue to happen. The Ninth Legion, for instance, which has been repeatedly mauled throughout this story, it vanishes, and that inspires the famous story, Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemarie Suckliff. And there's much debate as to what actually happened to the Ninth Legion. But the fact that we don't really know what happened to it is evidence of how many gaps in the record there are. And over the course of the centuries that follow, right the way up to the end of Roman Britain, Britain, politically, is very significant. It has about a 10th of the entire armed forces in the Empire as a garrison. And in the long run, this means that it becomes what Saint Jerome describes it in the fourth century as the womb of tyrants, by which he means it's a place that fosters would be Caesars who were endlessly launching attempts to establish themselves as empires throughout the third and fourth centuries. Actually, I don't think it brings the history of Roman Britain to an end.

Maybe a story to pursue in some later episode. Definitely. Certainly, we should look at Hadrian's Wall.

Definitely. Of course, Britain plays a part in the rise of Constantine the Great, doesn't it?

He does, yes. Helena, of course, comes from St. Helena. His mother, of course, comes from Essex, as everyone knows.

And Essex girl. Of course, the end of Roman Britain is a great story. Brilliant. We'll be back in Roman Britain for our club members with a discussion about Roman imperialism and its effect on later empires. But for now, Tom, a tour de force as always. Thank you very much, and we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.

Au revoir, à quai Vale.

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