The Roman Invasion of Britain

Graham Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781138139121
• eBook ISBN: 9781134601547
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

First Published in 2004. The span of time, when most of Britain was under Roman influence, stretched from 55 BC to c. AD 500, when control had passed into the hands of Germanic peoples, many of whom had been living here already for over a century as troops or allies of the Roman army. Five and a half centuries is a considerable portion of our national history. If one counts back from today, it brings one to about 1440, at the end of the Middle Ages, a period totally remote from our present world. This revised edition takes into account aerial archaeology and major rescue excavations.

1 The Sources of Evidence

The ancient historians

The main task of the historian and the archaeologist is the collection and examination of evidence, the careful weighing and sifting of every scrap, to be quite sure it is accurate, or as near to the truth as possible. If not, then the precise degree of validity must be gauged. Some of the scraps have to be rejected, for although they may be genuine, they are irrelevant to the particular problem under study. Sometimes one has only a few tiny pieces, and it is difficult to establish their relationship or relevance to the problem under consideration, but at other times, there is a confused mass of material which has to be sorted, graded and fitted into a coherent pattern. This is perhaps the most difficult task of all, and it imposes a serious mental discipline. It is all too easy to select or distort the evidence to make it fit one’s current ideas, and to pass over all the inconvenient details which could undermine them. This constant struggle to preserve a freshness of outlook which accepts the possibility of new interpretations is a losing battle as we grow older, for the more we think we know and understand, the more fixed and inhibited our minds become. We are reluctant to abandon theories arrived at by much toil and hard thinking. It becomes an affront to our established position when our authority is challenged, and we tend to fight back. But the true scholar and scientist is a humble person, quick to admit that he was wrong, or that his reasoning was faulty. In some professions one can fight for a lost cause for a long time, and still be respected by one’s contemporaries, but there is little chance of this in archaeology, where the problem is that of keeping pace with the rapid expansion of knowledge.

There are, however, some facts which never change, although their accuracy can be challenged and these survive in the work of the ancient historians. It is now most unlikely that any new writings will be found with any record of Britain, so we have to accept gratefully what has survived. The ancient texts themselves have often been corrupted by the copyists, so that suggestions on improvements which may get back to the original wording are always helpful, and new interpretations of the text are then possible. The main difficulty with the ancient texts is their compression and selection of material, and it is necessary to try and understand why these historians wrote their histories, and for whom. Apart from the odd occasional state-ments by ancient writers, the conquest of Britain was described only by Tacitus and Cassius Dio, but there is little comparison between them. Cassius Dio, a Greek, was more of a compiler than an historian, and he accepted his material without any critical appraisal, while Tacitus, as a contemporary, is undoubtedly the main source for the first century. Unfortunately, Dio’s work survives only as a collection of selected pieces, and a further difficulty is that he was writing in Greek of the early third century AD. He was, however, a senator at the time of Severus and at least had an understanding of contemporary events. Since it was the normal practice for readings to be given by professional speakers at select gatherings such as dinner parties, classical historians wrote for a small audience of listeners, although there were serious scholars who read in thc solitude of their own libraries. The historians were, therefore writing with an audience in mind and included, wherever possible, long rhetorical passages in descriptions of debates in the Senate, or the law courts, and in battle scenes the carefully prepared orations of the protagonists were de rigueur with more care devoted to them than the battle itself.

Tacitus developed a terse epigrammatic style of writing which makes him sometimes difficult to understand. He wrote as if each chapter ending was the end of a recitation, which had to be rounded off with a telling sentence to delight the audience and leave them in a state of suspense, eager for the next session. The passages of Dio selected by Xiphilinus for his epitome were considered most appealing to an audience seeking entertainment, rather than for the enlightened reader. This is very unfortunate for the student of today, who wants the facts and not the trimmings. Tacitus had a great gift for compressing a series of complicated events and political relationships into a very small compass, and one grieves today for the omissions, including most of all for the topographical and geographical details which would be so helpful. But one also has to appreciate that, although Tacitus was a true historian and astonishingly accurate with his facts, his writings were also affected by his passionate hatred of Domitian. But most of his working life was during the Emperor’s lifetime, so he was forced to illustrate the ills and misfortunes of the contemporary scene with accounts of the misdeeds of earlier emperors, but even then he had to be careful and choose only those who had been officially condemned, and of these, Nero clearly offered the best material. Nero is portrayed as a paranoiac monster and the contemporary audiences were quick to appreciate the close parallel with Domitian, and could enjoy the savage comments of the historian, knowing that he wrote with Domitian in mind. But the Emperor could hardly persecute the historian for writing so scathingly about an Emperor who officially received the damnatio by the Senate, which, ironically perhaps, was also to be the fate of Domitian.

Archaeology

Casual finds, field work, excavations and aerial reconnaissance are all sources of evidence, but they usually need the experienced and specialist eye for their significance to become apparent. A simple example may suffice to illustrate the problems and the method. Museums are the repositories of archaeological finds made in their locality. This material is normally conserved to prevent any further deterioration, which happens quite rapidly to metal objects when they are suddenly taken out of the soil. The pottery and artefacts are carefully stored and a small proportion placed in cases for the public to see. Unfortunately, very few museums have the expertise and resources to publish the material they collect and store, and it is possible that there are objects wrongly described, or which may have escaped recognition altogether. Any student on the track of the Roman army should first visit all the museums in the area under consideration, and examine all the material. But this is of little use unless the student has sufficient knowledge to identify objects associated with the army. I once saw in a case in a museum in Lincolnshire, two small pieces of bronze which I recognized as fittings of the body armour of a legionary. The name of the place where they were found was stated on the label. There was no other evidence which connected this site with the army, so I had found a place where the army may have been established, and, as this site could well have fitted into the broad strategic pattern of the dispositions of units, it seemed to be a distinct possibility as the site of a fort. The next step was to examine plans and aerial photographs of the area, and visit the site to see if there were any surface indications. These turned out to be negative, but one day, further chance discoveries may bring to light more objects, and so it was necessary to alert local archaeologists to the potential of the site, to make sure any road improvement, or development, was watched for traces of military occupation.

It may seem very tedious and time consuming to do all this thoroughly, but this is the only way the serious student can carry out research. Another line of approach is to examine those sites already identified as Roman forts. Sometimes there has been an assumption by our antiquarians of past generations based on the appearance of an earth-work or configuration of the ground. Some of these worthies thought every small defended enclosure had a Roman military origin, and even today, their identifications linger on early Ordnance Survey maps as ‘Roman Camps’, one of their favourite terms. But they did not understand the difference between campaign camps and permanent forts, two quite different kinds of military sites; and often, too, this same label has been attached to a small Roman town which happened to be surrounded with defences.

A much easier way of finding evidence of army military presence is by reading through archaeological periodicals. There was in the midnineteenth century a great enthusiasm generated for historical research, although most of it was directed towards the study of churches and the histories of landed families. Out of this grew the local archaeological and historical societies, until eventually almost every English county, and some of the major cities had their own societies. They still exist, although in these days of accelerating printing costs, it becomes more and more difficult for them to produce their annual volume of local studies. There exist, all the same, learned transactions covering about 150 years and occupying many yards of shelving in our academic libraries. Apart from these provincial publications, there are those of the national institutions, the premier of which is the Society of Antiquaries of London, which has been publishing regularly since 1779. It is indeed a mammoth task which faces researchers looking for particular items of interest to them. It might be thought that the published indexes would make a detailed search unnecessary but, alas, it is rare to find that items of military equipment have been identified, or specifically classified, so one has to examine all the published drawings of small finds, to make sure such evidence is not overlooked. Others may already have trodden the same path, and their selections and comments have to be specially studied.

An example of a discovery made from looking at an old report is Broxtowe, near Nottingham. It started with the publication of the find of a bronze saucepan from the site in the Antiquaries Journal (XIX 1939 Pl lxxxvii); its striking likeness to another find on the site of the early legionary fortress at Gloucester, was noticed. When I made enquiries about the site from local archaeologists, they drew my attention to a publication which would normally have escaped my search. This was the annual Report of the Thoroton Society (the name of the county society of Nottinghamshire) Excavation Section for 1938, and which, as is the case with other similar reports, was not published in the Transaction, but as a separate leaflet. This included an account of excavations by G.F.Campion, with several illustrations of objects he recovered. To my great delight, I immediately identified many of them as military, and I subsequently found more which had escaped publication in the Castle Museum, Nottingham. There seemed little doubt this was the site of a Roman fort of the first century, although by then, most of the site had been covered by a council housing estate. Few excavators are specialists in this field, and quite often illustrate their finds without identificaton, or even get it wildly wrong.

Military tombstones

The most positive evidence is in the form of tombstones. It was Roman practice, fortunately for us, to hold the dead in such respect that they provided elaborate ritual and costly memorials. This would, of course, only apply to those families and heirs who could afford them. Burial, even in those days, was an expensive matter, and prudent men took out an insurance by joining a burial club. The army made its own provisions with compulsory deduction from pay to cover the feast and all the rites, and anything left over could go towards the monument. To secure a good memorial, many soldiers, especially officers, made sure that there were beneficiaries. Usually these were the deceased’s slaves, who often received their freedom on their master’s death, and showed their gratitude in this way. Occasionally the heirs were instructed in the will to build a monument, and this fact is usually recorded on the inscription by the words ex testamento, (i.e. ‘as directed under the will’). This is why we have, in Britain, quite a number of surviving stones, in spite of their excellence as building material, or in some cases, because of it. The remarkable collection of 98 tombstones, now in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, owe their survival to their re-use as large blocks of stone for the rebuilding of the fortress wall, presumably in the late fourth century. There was actually a law passed at this period permitting local authorities to dismantle temples and tomb monuments if stone was urgently needed to provide and strengthen town or military defences. Similarly, the small but important collection at Bath was recovered from the enclosing wall of this templespa, and this is the case with many towns elsewhere, especially in the Rhineland. But some were still lying where they had fallen when ground was opened up for cultivation in the eighteenth century. This is how the Wroxeter tombstones came to light. The two remarkable stones at Colchester of the centurion Facilis (RIB 200) and the duplicarius Longinus (RIB 201) were found, lying face down where they had been overturned in their fury by the rebels under Queen Boudica. They had probably stood in the cemetery for only about 15 years, and the carving is very fresh, since the surface had been protected by a covering of thin gesso, the function of which was to provide a smooth surface for the paint, which helped to portray the figures in their natural colours. Sir Ian Richmond actually found on a close examination, a piece of gesso surviving behind the ear of the centurion. The importance of these tombstones is that they give, in full legal detail, the full name, rank and unit of the soldier, his age and years of service, and in many cases, his carefully detailed effigy in undress uniform. One can readily appreciate the enormous significance this has for students of military equipment and weapons.

To take these two fine examples (Pl 1), Marcus Favonius Facilis was a centurion of Legio XX, which indicates beyond any doubt that this legion was stationed here before AD 60, probably immediately after the entry of Claudius into the British capital. The legion remained here until the foundation of the colonia by Ostorius Scapula in 48 or 49, when he needed it for protecting the lower Severn from the savage attacks of Caratacus. This is a reasonable inference of Tacitus in his Annals (xii 32), and another tombstone of a soldier of this legion was found at Gloucester, but unfortunately is lost (RIB 122). Excavations at both places, as will be seen below, have now produced legionary fortresses, and so the epigraphic, historical and archaeological evidence, all comes neatly together.

The cavalry tombstone (Pl 19) is equally fine and significant. It portrays the trooper, a duplicarius (i.e. he had double pay as an NCO), on his large horse somewhat shortened to squeeze it onto the stone. His face has been sliced away by a blow from one of Boudica’s followers and his lance has vanished, but this could have been made of bronze and decayed in the soil. He wears a cuirass of large scales, a small hairy Celt crouches in terror beneath the towering horseman, symbolizing victory over death. The inscription tells us his name, Longinus Sdapeze, and that of his father, Matygus. The trooper’s name is half-Roman and half-Slav, difficult for the western tongue, but typical of Thrace, his country of origin, since his birthplace is given as Sardica, more commonly Serdica, which is now Sofia, capital of modern Bulgaria. His unit was the crack cavalry regiment Ala I Thracum. Aerial reconnaissance has recently revealed a fort of a size suitable for this type of unit, near the religious site at Gosbecks¹. This may have been the first military post on the site of the British capital, to be replaced, or supplemented by the Legio XX, when all the initial resistance has been overcome.

There are other aspects of these tombstones which will be considered later; they are introduced here merely to exemplify the value of such evidence, and how it can be used to interpret the operations and dispositions of the Roman army units. Sometimes the evidence from other sources is tantalisingly limited, as with the two lead tags from Wall, on one of which is scratched the name of a centurion. It is not necessarily evidence of the presence of a legion, since auxiliary cohorts also had officers of that grade, but it does establish military presence there, and this has been confirmed by the discovery of a sequence of forts on the hilltop.

Evidence from coins

Yet another source of information comes from coins of the invasion period. The British tribal coins were in such variety of metal and weight, that they were unsuitable for a ready currency required by the Roman troopers when they arrived and wished to purchase goods from the Britons. The supply of Imperial coins was inadequate, perhaps because it was a problem not foreseen by the authorities. The result was that the army had to strike its own bronze coins for small change. The models were the current issues of Claudius, and Britain produced a large quantity of these imitations of varying competence. Dr C.V.H.Sutherland has recognized four grades from reasonable copies to very bad ones². Although these coins are clear indications of the Roman army in Britain, the find-spots do not necessarily indicate the site of a fort, since the Britons would also possess them through trade. It is, however, always worthwhile examining this evidence, since many have been found on military establishments. Unfortunately, there is a snag in their continued use up to c. 65, as Nero was reluctant to issue his base metal coins until he found Greek designers and die-cutters who would provide him with a satisfactory artistic product. So the Claudian provincial imitation issues continued to circulate all through this period, many coins becoming so worn that they had to be overstruck with a countermark to make them legal tender. This means that they could be found on many military or civil sites up to c. 65, so their archaeological value is thereby limited.

Evidence from pottery

Far more plentiful and universal are pottery sherds, but as signposts to military occupation they present problems and difficulties, which can only be overcome by much careful study. Fortunately, after a period of stagnation in this important field of research, there has been a resurgence of interest, especially among the young professionals, and if this continues we will be in a much better position in the years ahead to come to terms with this difficult material than we are at present. The main problem is the sheer quantity of pottery and the many and diverse sources of supply. There...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. The Sources of Evidence
• 2. The Celts and Julius Caesar
• 3. The Tribes of South-East Britain and Their Rulers
• 4. The Opposing Forces
• 5. The Invasion and Advance to Camulodunum
• 6. The Shape of the Roman Province
• 7. The Claudian Celebrations and Departure of Plautius
• References
• Appendix 1: Translation of Cassius Dio Lx 19–22, 2
• Appendix 2: The Number of Units In the Army of Plautius
• Appendix 3: Abbreviations
• Appendix 4: Biographical References
• Appendix 5: Glossary of Latin Terms
• Appendix 6: Glossary of Technical Terms
• Appendix 7: Place Names In the Modern and Roman Forms