The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (9 page)

enclosed by extensive networks of earthen dikes, were the most common form of settlement in southeastern England.

While Iron Age Britons shared a similar material culture, they

were politically fragmented. Powerful chieftains probably built hill

forts between the fi fth and second centuries b.c. to claim productive

territories. The origins and function of the
oppida
, which fi rst emerged

in continental Gaul during the second century b.c., are less certain.

Continental
oppida
were built for defense, but their British counterparts were less fortifi ed. Archaeologists theorize that they were

centers of political, social, and perhaps religious power that controlled

productive river valleys and important trade routes. The
oppidum
at

Camulodunum (near modern Colchester) covered twelve square miles

and also may have served as a cattle enclosure. Excavations of British
oppida
yield both evidence of coin minting and wealthy warrior

gravesites containing high-value imported goods including arms and

armor, pottery, glass and metal work, Mediterranean wine amphorae,

and Roman bronzes.

Deposits of Roman goods suggest that lowland Britons had commercial and political contacts with continental Europe and Rome well

before the Caesarian invasion. They may have traded directly with

42 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Romans or acquired Roman goods from the Gauls. Either way, southeastern England had the most developed continental trading links in

preconquest Britain, which suggests a connection between commerce

and the building of
oppida
.

Both classical and modern historians speak of Britons as living

in tribes under the rule of chieftains or petty kings. Certainly Britain did not have states on the Greco-Roman model, but the British

tribe did not fi t the stereotype of a static kin-based polity locked in a

lower phase of development. It is likely that most of southern Britain

was undergoing signifi cant political and social change when Caesar

invaded, suggesting that the tribes he encountered were relatively new

creations. In fact, the Roman expansion into Gaul probably accelerated and intensifi ed these changes. Although Strabo depicted Britons

as aboriginal barbarians, he also admitted that they exported grain,

cattle, gold, silver, iron, hides, hunting dogs, and slaves.22 In return

they received silver bullion and high-quality material goods. Passing references in the classical sources also suggest that the Romans

backed cooperative British elites with subsidies and political patronage after the conquest of Gaul.

These foreign infl uences had a signifi cant impact on British society. Rome’s imperial shadow reordered local systems of agricultural

and craft production, thereby destabilizing the political entities

that drew authority from their ability to control and redistribute

these resources. Infl ows of wealth disrupted alliances, incited wars,

and ultimately produced political centralization as the victors consolidated their power. Tribes split, reformed, and united in confederations in response to these changing circumstances. The resulting

militarism and turmoil most likely contributed to the slave exports

that Strabo noted.

The
oppida
may have been the centers of this new tribal power,

and their extensive network of dikes and earthen berms suggests a

shift from communal to private land ownership. Furthermore, much

of the coinage minted at these sites carried tribal names and bore

portraits of British kings in local and Roman garb. Taken as a whole,

this evidence suggests an increasingly stratifi ed social order where a

warrior elite, with an appetite for Roman goods, exercised authority

over peasants, artisans, and slaves through patronage and the threat

of violence.

Roman

Britain 43

The Romans were only dimly aware of these realities when Caesar invaded Britain in 56 and 54 b.c. But the fairly extensive crosschannel trade probably brought the growing prosperity of southeast

England to his attention. British support for an anti-Roman revolt

in Brittany was Caesar’s
casus belli
, but it is unclear whether southern Britons sympathized with the Gauls or were simply continuing

long-established commercial and diplomatic ties. Moreover, Caesar

received delegations from several British leaders offering hostages

and submission to Rome, which suggests that the Romans were

already embroiled in the island’s domestic politics. Unrest in Germany and storms over the channel delayed the relatively small tenthousand-man expeditionary force, and British resistance forced the

Roman proconsul to withdraw in 55 b.c.23

Caesar tried again the following year with a much larger force of

fi ve legions and two thousand cavalrymen. The leader of the antiRoman resistance, Cassivellaunus, was a Catuvelluanian noble rather

than a tribal king in his own right. He seems to have been a competent general, but his war chariots were ineffective against the massed

formations of heavily armored Roman legionaries. Cassivellaunus

therefore came to terms with Caesar by turning over hostages, paying tribute, and acknowledging Caesar’s client Mandubracius as the

ruler of the Trinovantes. Distracted by the threat of a mass uprising

led by the Gallic leader Vercingetorix, Caesar declared victory and

withdrew. Strabo later claimed he did not need to garrison Britain

because the submission of Cassivellaunus and his allied chiefs made

“the whole of the island Roman property.”24

Caesar’s military adventures were a speculative attempt to add to

the Roman Empire on the cheap. Protracted British resistance, more

pressing continental concerns, and his political ambitions led him to

realize that it was easier and less expensive to exploit Britain through

informal means than to annex it directly. Augustus came to a similar

conclusion when he canceled another invasion of the island in favor of

continuing Caesar’s policy of using diplomacy, threats, subsidies, and

commerce to control the British. Cassivellaunus and the other rulers

who submitted to Rome may well have become client kings. It is by no

means certain that British tribes recognized kings before Caesar’s invasion, but after his retreat, powerful elites began to refer to themselves

as “rex” on their coins. They also appear to have acquired a taste for

44 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Italian wine, and their graves contain impressive inventories of silver

kitchenware, Mediterranean ceramics, and other high-value imports.

Frustratingly, almost none of the tribal groups and kings that Caesar mentioned appear in the historical accounts of the fi nal Roman

conquest in a.d. 43. Nevertheless, the main political developments in

southeastern England during this period are relatively clear. Backed by

the Romans, the Trinovantes monopolized much of the cross-channel

trade and became a dominant power north of the lower Thames River.

Caesar’s intervention drove the Catuvellauni further inland, where

they established themselves as a major force northwest of modern

London. A new power emerged south of the Thames when Caesar’s

onetime ally Commius became king of the Atrebates. Having provoked the Romans by backing Vercingetorix’s rebellion, Commius

fl ed to Britain, where Gallic support probably helped consolidate his

power among the Atrebates. Excavations at his
oppidum
at Calleva

reveal quantities of imported Roman goods and coins referring to

him as rex.25

Although these new tribal groupings grew increasingly infl uential by the early fi rst century a.d., they remained under Roman

sway. Many southern British leaders continued to pay tribute to the

empire and dedicated religious offerings in the city of Rome. Moreover, the steady volume of slave exports to the continent suggests

that the Roman appetite for captive labor may have infl amed tensions

in southern Britain by inspiring the petty kings to buy their imports

with captives.

Rome also continued to beckon the losers of dynastic and intertribal struggles. Refugee British princelings inspired both Augustus

and Caligula to consider annexing Britain, and an appeal for help

from a displaced Atrebatian king named Verica, whom the resurgent

Catuvellauni had overthrown, provided Claudius with the pretext for

a decisive cross-channel invasion. Under Cunobelinus, who may have

been Cassivellaunus’s grandson or great-grandson, and his sons Caratacus and Togodumnus, the Catuvellauni were suffi ciently powerful

to displace Rome’s key clients and threaten the empire’s interests in

southern Britain.

Thus Claudius had strategic as well as personal reasons for launching his invasion. Consisting of four legions and supporting auxiliary

units, Claudius’s army outnumbered Caesar’s fi rst expeditionary force

Roman

Britain 45

by four to one. Some British tribes submitted immediately after the

Roman landing, but the Catuvellauni harried the Claudian forces with

hit-and-run raids until their fi nal stand on the banks of the Medway.

Although the British warrior elite rode into battle on chariots, poorly

trained farmers probably constituted most of their forces. Claudius’s

forces were far superior, and General Aulus Plautius broke the Catuvellaunian hold over the Thames River valley with relative ease by

killing Togodumnus and driving Caratacus into exile in Wales.

The Dumnonii and Durotriges of southwestern England were

more diffi cult to conquer. Vespasian, the commander of the Second

Legion and a future emperor, had to subdue the region hill fort by

hill fort. Suetonius recorded that the Roman general defeated two

tribes/
civitates
, captured twenty
oppida
, and fought thirty battles.26

The tenacity of the southwesterners underscored a central reality

of empire building: stateless “tribal” peoples were much harder to

defeat than kingdoms because they resisted individually rather than

collectively. It took only a single major battle to defeat the more centralized Catuvellauni, and the Romans then easily subdued the rest

of lowland England by playing various tribal factions off against each

other. The conquering power rewarded cooperation and most likely

kept the eleven unnamed British rulers who surrendered in power

as client kings of
civitates
. By comparison, the less centralized but

more defi ant peoples of southwestern Britain probably faced punishing military campaigns, the loss of their lands, and enslavement.

Plautius delayed the formal end of the initial campaign to give

Claudius time to arrive and take credit for the victory. With an

entourage of ranking senators, Praetorian guardsmen, and elephants,

the emperor annexed Britain as a province of the Roman Empire at

Camulodunum, perhaps the most urbanized site in the British Isles.

Before leaving for his triumph in Rome, Claudius established a veterans’ colony at the site, which eventually developed into a major center of Roman infl uence with a theater, a triumphal arch, and a temple

dedicated to the Claudian imperial cult.

It may be that Claudius and his generals intended to claim only

the most agriculturally productive parts of southern England, but

continued opposition by highland peoples forced them to conquer

the rest of England and Wales. The surviving Catuvellaunian prince

Caratacus organized stiff resistance among the Welsh Silures

46 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

and Ordovices, and it took extensive military operations lasting from

a.d. 47 to 84 for the Romans to subjugate all of Wales. Even then, the

continued threat of unrest in the region forced them to maintain a

network of Welsh forts well into the second century a.d.

Ongoing tensions on the expanding imperial frontier also drew

the Romans northward. During the fi ghting in Wales, the Roman

armies counted on Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes, a confederation of related clans or tribes in north-central England, to protect

their fl anks. Cartimandua may have been one of the eleven rulers

who submitted to Claudius, and it is likely that Roman support

underpinned her authority over her disparate and fractious people.

She repaid her sponsors by refusing to shelter Caratacus after his

fl ight from Wales. Cartimandua’s decision to turn Caratacus over to

Rome split the Brigantes and forced the Romans to intervene directly

to keep her in power. Interestingly, her own husband, Venutius, led

the anti-Roman faction. The royal couple reconciled for a time, but

Venutius forced Cartimandua from power in a.d. 69 on the grounds

that she was an adulteress.

The resulting civil war destabilized northern England and compelled the Romans to take direct control of this marginally productive

region. They annexed the Brigantes in a.d. 79, and under the command of Governor Julius Agricola, the historian Tacitus’s father-inlaw, Roman forces pushed the frontier of the empire into southern

Scotland. As in England and Wales, the Roman expansion led indigenous communities to concentrate into tribes and tribal alliances for

self-defense. Under the leadership of the chieftain Calgacus, the Caledonian confederacy mounted the last signifi cant military resistance at