Silures

Resistance, Resilience, Revival

Ray Howell

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780750998642
• eBook ISBN: 9780750999885
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

'There are huge gaps in our understanding of the lives of the Silures … Despite what is in many instances a glaring lack of evidence, I've increasingly become convinced that trying to tease out what we can about the social structure of these people offers one of our best avenues to understanding them better.'

Silures explores exciting new discoveries and changing interpretations to give an up-to-date analysis of the Iron Age peoples of south-east Wales.

From 'the study of stuff', new evidence of trade and commerce and archaeological discoveries, to the suggestion of a new research agenda and a consideration of Silurian resonances in modern Wales, Ray Howell's insights are based on personal observations and his own research activities, including excavations in the Silurian region.

1

Tacitus plus

The best starting point for a discussion of the Silures is the historical record. In at least one respect that doesn’t take too long as our written record of the tribe, or possibly more accurately tribal confederation, consists only of the writings of the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus and a handful of later inscriptions.

Relying on a single source is never comfortable, especially when that source seems likely to be one-sided and, to a greater or lesser extent, biased. At least Tacitus was ‘in the know’ – he was eventually a senator, a consul and a provincial governor. Besides, we have to turn to him because he is the only conventionally historical source available.

He was also, as far as we can tell, not only well informed but also quite balanced. After all, in a speech that he attributed to a leader named Calgacus, urging on his forces before the Battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland, he describes the Romans as ‘creating a desolation and calling it peace’! What makes that description a bit surprising is that the Roman general commanding was none other than Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who happens to have been Tacitus’s father-in-law.

There is another issue that will concern some historians. Tacitus refers to the Silures in three of his books. These include the Agricola, which describes the exploits of his father-in-law, and his two main historical works, The Histories and The Annals of Imperial Rome. It is generally thought that both the principal historical works were written between about AD 98 and AD 105, in other words up to half a century after the events described in the territory of the Silures. So, we have accounts written at some distance from the events, quite some time after they occurred, by a potentially prejudiced source. Nevertheless, Tacitus gives us a useful, and at times vibrant, account and, as you have seen, it is the only one we have – so let’s run with it.

Caratacus, Caractacus, Caradog

The story of the Silures and their resistance to the advance of Rome should be put into its wider context. The initial Roman invasions of Britain, led by Julius Caesar himself, came in 55 and 54 BC. While he achieved some limited success against south-eastern tribes like the Catuvellauni, the campaigns were hardly a resounding victory and the subsequent Gaulish rising led by Vercingetorix put paid to further interventions in the short term. Arguably, Caesar’s more important achievement was brought about by his campaign against, and eventual victory over, the Veneti, a powerful Breton tribe that, with a well-established maritime tradition and a fleet of ships to match, controlled much of the trade to, among other places, Britain. The destruction of the Venetic fleet forced a new trading pattern onto British Iron Age communities.

The allure of conquest in Britain, however, did not disappear. It was certainly an appealing objective in the mind of Claudius, an unlikely emperor in need of a military success. When he launched his attack across the Channel in AD 43 he left little to chance. A huge invasion force led by the general Aulus Plautius was made up of four legions including three re-assigned from the Rhine frontier. The Second Augustan, commanded by the future emperor Vespasian, would one day be permanently based in south-east Wales. These legions were supported by auxiliary forces including cavalry and specialist archers. In total, some 40,000 troops were deployed in the campaign.

Not surprisingly resistance came, in the first instance, from the Catuvellauni. They were led by two brothers, Caratacus and Togodumnus, sons of Cunobelinus, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (don’t be confused by the plot of the play, which is, after all, fiction!). Preliminary skirmishing ended with a pitched battle, probably fought in the Thames Valley at a crossing point on the river Medway. Heavy losses by the Catuvellauni included Togodumnus, and with this defeat resistance in the south-east quickly collapsed. Caratacus, however, was determined to carry on fighting and withdrew toward the west with his remaining forces. He finally paused in the territory of the by now divided Dobunni, halting in an area controlled by a faction of the tribe still hostile to the Roman advance, possibly establishing himself behind earthworks on Minchinhampton Common in Gloucestershire.

This move brought him into closer proximity to the aggressively anti-Roman Silures. Not surprisingly, Caratacus and his band soon joined them and the whole focus of the Roman military advance began to shift toward south-east Wales.

From a Roman perspective, despite initial successes, Britain remained a turbulent and often hostile land. When Publius Ostorius Scapula succeeded Aulus Plautius as governor in AD 47, he found that he had to move quickly to try to stabilise Rome’s ‘newest province’. He rapidly dispatched troops to put down a revolt by the Iceni in East Anglia before striking into north-east Wales, attacking the Decangi or Deceangli. Tacitus suggests that the objective was simply booty, but mineral resources and a desire to drive a wedge between the more powerful Welsh tribes of the west and south and the Brigantes, who were on the verge of revolt in the north of England, may have been foremost in his thinking.

Ostorius soon had even more pressing concerns when he learned of the arrival of Caratacus amongst the Silures. He re-directed his troops and invaded the territory of a people who Tacitus tells us ‘neither sternness nor leniency’ discouraged from fighting. He went on to explain that ‘the natural ferocity of the inhabitants was intensified by their belief in the prowess of Caratacus’ who he says was at this point regarded as ‘pre-eminent’ among the British ‘chieftains’.

Commitment of the Roman army against the Silures forced Caratacus to make a bold move. He led his followers, now no doubt bolstered by the Silures, into mid-Wales. This seems to have been an attempt to bring the Ordovices, a tribe of north Wales who shared the warlike reputation of their southern neighbours, into the conflict. The Romans could see the danger and were determined to prevent that from happening.

With the Roman army approaching him in force, Caratacus had to decide his best strategy – flee or fight. Tacitus tells us that he decided to ‘stake his fate on a battle’. Caratacus was now a seasoned campaigner used to Roman tactics and he chose his ground carefully. The position is described in detail although the site of the battle is still unknown and remains a popular subject of debate. The 1851 edition of Archaeologia Cambrensis, for example, featured publication of a lecture given by antiquarian and barrister W. Wynne Ffoulkes in Dolgellau; he confidently asserted that the Breidden in Montgomeryshire was the place. The editor hoped that ‘the controversy on this point may now be considered, if not completely settled, yet at least considerably illustrated, – as far, perhaps, as the long lapse of time will permit’. That was a forlorn hope. Regular alternative sites have appeared and re-appeared over the following 150 years!

What we do know from Tacitus is that Caratacus chose high ground with steep slopes to one side and a river, possibly the Wye, in front with no obvious crossing points available to the Romans. The position was then strengthened as the defenders erected stone ramparts where the slope was less pronounced. Having secured the position as well as possible, they then dug in and waited for the attack. Caratacus is said to have moved among them psyching them up by saying that the ensuing battle ‘would either win back their freedom or enslave them forever’. Tacitus reports that ‘every man swore by his tribal oath that no enemy weapons would make them yield’.

Caratacus had chosen well and initially it looked as though the defenders might achieve a remarkable victory. Even before attempting to cross the river, frightened Roman troops proved reluctant to attack such a strongly defended position ‘dismaying the Roman commanders’. However, in the end discipline prevailed and, when the order to advance was given, the river crossing was made more easily than Caratacus would have hoped. The same was not true of the subsequent attack uphill. When the Romans reached the ramparts that the defenders had erected, Tacitus tells us that ‘in an exchange of missiles, they came off worse’, being forced to retreat back downhill having suffered heavy casualties.

In the end, however, it was the discipline and organisation of the Roman army that determined the final outcome. The Romans re-grouped and, employing their well-tested testudo (‘tortoise’) formation, advanced again. With well-drilled units creating walls and a roof of locked shields, the legionaries, now virtual human tanks, forced their way back up the slope. The close-quarter fighting that followed their breakthrough had an air of inevitability about it. The close formation of the legionary troops supported by javelin throwing auxiliaries was too much for the defenders.

In the confusion of the ensuing defeat, many captives, including the wife and daughter of Caratacus, were taken. Caratacus himself managed to escape and, still determined to resist, fled north to the Brigantes. By this time, however, the Brigantes were divided with a pro-Roman faction wanting to reach accommodation with the Romans and an anti-Roman group wishing to continue to resist. Caratacus went to the wrong faction – the pro-Roman Brigantian queen Cartimandua surrendered him to the Romans!

Caratacus and members of his family, along with other captives, were taken to Rome. There they would have had little hope – a triumphal procession through the thronged streets of the imperial capital followed by death, as had been the fate of the Gaulish leader Vercingetorix, must have seemed the inevitable outcome. It might well have proved to be the end of the story as well. Except, as Tacitus reports, Caratacus, instead of cowering and pleading for mercy, made a powerful speech in front of Claudius himself. It was a notable performance. I’ve quoted parts of the speech before – it’s too good not to quote key sections again.

Caratacus, we are told, proclaimed to the assembled Romans, including the emperor himself, that:

I had horses, men, arms and wealth. Are you surprised I am sorry to lose them? If you want to rule the world, does it follow that everyone else welcomes enslavement? If I had surrendered without a blow before being brought before you, neither my downfall nor your triumph would have become famous.

The speech made quite an impression. Such an impression that Claudius pardoned Caratacus and members of his family, who effectively became pensioners in Rome. There is good reason to think that he continued to impress. Another writer, the Roman historian Dio Cassius, described him later, walking the streets of Rome and marvelling at the scale of the place and its buildings, saying: ‘Can you who have such possessions and so many of them still covet our poor roundhouses?’

With that searching question, Caratacus disappears from the pages of history. Importantly for this book, however, the Silures do not.

The Silurian War

The narrative of Tacitus indicates that the loss of Caratacus made little if any difference to the opposition of the Silures to Rome. Indeed, if anything they seem to have become even more hostile to the Roman advance in the aftermath.

Tacitus reported that ‘in Silurian country’ Roman troops under the command of a praefactus castrorum were directed to build forts, presumably at this early stage marching camps to facilitate an invasion. But they were surrounded and were only saved from annihilation because commanders of neighbouring fortresses, learning of the attack, ‘speedily sent help’. The beleaguered force may have been saved from being massacred but their rescue came at a very heavy cost. We are told that ‘casualties included the chief of staff, eight company commanders and the pick of the men’. This quote needs a bit of interpretation to understand the size of the defeat. The praefactus, translated here as chief of staff, was the senior centurion; the other centurions, here called company commanders, would have been at least nominally in command of eighty legionaries (army re-organisation had reduced the century from 100 men to eighty). Tacitus doesn’t enlighten us as to how many soldiers were killed, but the death of the centurions that he does report suggests a military defeat on a very large scale.

For the Silures, this victory was just a start. They attacked a foraging party, and a rescue attempt made by Roman cavalry and auxiliary infantrymen failed. It was only the intervention of legionary troops that held the attackers at bay. As night fell, we are told that the Silures simply ‘faded away almost undamaged’.

Hit-and-run attacks became the order of the day. Tacitus tells us that ‘battle followed battle’ and concluded that ‘the Silures were exceptionally stubborn’. The Silures had begun a highly effective guerrilla campaign – a war that would last for a quarter of a century.

Tacitus describes what ‘were mostly guerrilla fights in woods and bogs. Some were accidental – the results of chance encounters. Others were planned with calculated bravery.’ He concluded that the ‘the motives were hatred or plunder’. The governor Ostorius became so exasperated by the ongoing hostilities that he suggested the only solution for such a tribe was utter extermination or transplantation to Gaul. The threat of a genocidal war of extermination seems not to have cowed the Silures. Indeed, they simply intensified their opposition.

Two auxiliary units, busy plundering native land, ‘fell into a trap laid by the Silures’, who sent their captives as well as some of the spoils gained to their neighbours. Tacitus was no doubt correct that their motive was ‘to tempt other tribes to join their rebellion’.

This war of attrition took its toll on the Romans, including their governor. With such a string of reverses, we are told that in AD 52 ‘exhausted by his anxious responsibilities, Ostorius died’. The Silures, Tacitus tells us, ‘exulted that so great a general, if not defeated in battle, had at least been eliminated in warfare’. The authorities in Rome will obviously have seen this as a bad situation; but, from their perspective, it was about to become even worse.

The Romans named a new governor, Aulus Didius Gallus. Before he arrived to take up the post, however, Roman forces had suffered an even more memorable defeat. The senior military commander in Britain after the death of Ostorius was the general Manlius Valens. He seems to have had the sort of idea that periodically crops up among military commanders through history – he would gain the glory by defeating the enemy before the new governor arrived. Consequently, he led a legion into Silurian territory. The Silures defeated the legion! When I’m giving a lecture about the Silures, I always like to pause and repeat that for dramatic effect – the Silures defeated the legion. Roman forces suffered many reverses during their imperial expansion, often at the hands of alliances of resistance groups. It isn’t that often that we find individual tribes defeating a legion. Tacitus makes it clear, however, that it happened in the land of the Silures.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tacitus provides a fairly low-key account, simply noting that ‘again the damage was due to the Silures: until deterred by the arrival of Didius, they plundered far and wide’. Nor is it clear from his description that they were overly deterred when he did arrive. The new governor seems to have decided that his options were so limited that he could only act ‘on the defensive’. Tacitus clearly wasn’t impressed with a strategy of simply trying to defend the frontier rather than resuming the invasion.

It was only with the appointment of a new governor, Quintus Veranius, that active intervention was resumed. During his governorship in AD 57–58 he resumed hostilities, invading Silurian territory. The incursion didn’t last long. Tacitus reports that ‘Quintus Veranius had only conducted minor raids against the Silures when death terminated his operations’. The Silures must have been delighted that they had seen off yet another governor. They were no doubt even more pleased when the revolt of Boudica came close to forcing the Romans out of Britain altogether in AD 60/61.

The Boudican revolt is beyond our remit here except to note that it was eventually suppressed. Unfortunately, we can’t say that much more about the end of the Silurian War. Tacitus was distracted by other issues and gives us only a cursory account of the end of the conflict.

What he does tell us is that in AD 73–74 Sextus Julius Frontinus became governor, replacing Quentius Petillius Cerialis. Frontinus came straight from a highly successful military command, suppressing rebellion in the Rhineland. Eventually he would gain considerable renown in Rome itself, becoming consul three times and holding the office of curator aquarum, with responsibility for the aqueducts that were key to the water supply of the capital. He produced a notable two-volume book, De aquaeductu, in which he provided a detailed description and history of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Tacitus plus
• 2 Inscriptions: What’s in a name?
• 3 Art and artefacts: ‘The study of stuff’
• 4 Trade and commerce: Wheels and keels
• 5 Commerce: The daily grind
• 6 The Silures at home: Life in the round
• 7 The hills were alive
• 8 Belief: A world of spirits?
• 9 What did they ever do for us?
• 10 Not very dark at all
• 11 Face to face?
• 12 Clans and clusters: A research strategy
• Conclusion
• Notes and further reading
• Appendix