Despite the commercial attractions of British tin and other mineral deposits, we know little about anything that happened between Rome and Britannia until the mid-first century BC when an inquisitive Rome arrived in 55 BC with Julius Caesar. Continued expansion meant that the empire had extended its reach from the Alps and Cevennes to the Channel in the five years before the invasion, so Caesar’s actions in trying to extend these boundaries would have been by no means unusual. Caesar, of course, was a shrewd reporter and a skilful politician, so it comes as no surprise that he states in his inevitably biased and one-sided Gallic War commentaries that his purported aim in invading Britain, his casus belli, was to stifle the military and economic support the Britons had been giving to the Gauls on the mainland. The corollary to this strategy was equally influential; luxury Roman goods available in the import-export markets were valuable bargaining chips for seducing tribes into the Roman political sphere: British chiefs might avail themselves of levels of opulence for home and table unknown or only dreamt about a few years earlier. Archaeological evidence comes in the form of wine jars deposited in the tombs of chiefs and noblemen, silver tableware and bronze-plated furniture. Strabo describes ivory, high-end jewellery and glass. Other exports he mentions include corn, cattle gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves and ‘clever hunting dogs’. Numismatic evidence for this commerce comes from the widespread use of silver and gold coinage on the Gallic model throughout southeast England at the time. Less tangible, less traceable entities such as Roman medicine, law and education would also have been attractive to the more enlightened or ambitious Britons as witnessed on their increasingly frequent trips to the Romanised near continent, and even to the city of Rome itself.
Another Side of Caesar
When we think of Julius Caesar we think of an alpha male, a gifted general and a driven and ruthless politician. And that is true, for the most part. There is, however, another side to Britain’s first invader.
During the stormy days of the First Triumvirate, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus proved a thorn in the triumvirate’s collective side and exercised his right to veto. On one occasion Bibulus bitchily and publicly referred to Caesar as ‘Queen of Bithynia’, an allusion to Caesar’s alleged dalliance with the king of Bithynia when he apparently lived the life of a girl in the court of King Nicomedes (c. 94 BC–74 BC), and was later referred to behind his back as ‘Queen of Bithynia’ and ‘every woman’s man and every man’s woman’. The episode continued to haunt Caesar with repeated innuendo and political slur: Licinius Calvus refers to Bithynia as ‘Caesar’s buggerer’; Curio describes Caesar as the ‘queen’s concubine’ and refers to the ‘whorehouse of Nicomedes’ and the ‘Bithynian brothel’; to Marcus Brutus, Caesar was queen to Pompey’s king. Gaius Memmius describes him as cupbearer to Nicomedes along with other catamites. Cicero reminded Caesar in court while he was defending Nysa, Nicomedes’ daughter, that ‘it is well known what he gave you and what you gave him.’ Even his soldiers joined in the fun, singing a typically ribald marching song during the Gallic campaign: ‘Caesar had his way with Gaul; Nicomedes had his way with Caesar; behold now Caesar, conqueror of Gaul, in triumph, Not so Nicomedes, conqueror of Caesar.’ Even when he was granted the provinces of Gaul and Illyria by the senate, his exultant boast that he would be ‘mounting on their heads’, that is committing oral rape on the enemy, was met with the quip that that would be rather difficult for a woman to do. Caesar shrugged it off by referring to Semiramis and the Amazons as women successful in war.
There was another, far more lucrative, pretext for the incursion over the Channel; this owes much more to the hoary civic institutions enshrined in the Roman forum than to the misty battlefields and dense forests of Gaul. Caesar’s invasions, or more accurately, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering expeditions, would make a vital addendum to his already impressive cursus honorum. The celebrity to be gained by just attempting this foray into the unknown and dangerous world – never mind any success which accrued – would add priceless grist to his political machinations at this time. Caesar would also have been keen to postpone a recall to Rome, where his many enemies could get at him. The invasions of Britannia on the tenuous pretext that it strengthened the security of Gaul would insure against him being recalled on the reasonable basis that his work in Gaul was done. The only risk for Caesar was that, in deploying legions over the unpredictable English Channel, he may leave the mainland territories prone to attack and undo all the good work completed over the last few years. As it turned out this was a risk Caesar, the supreme opportunist, was willing to take, although the prosecution of the two forays turned out to be very unpredictable and uncertain at times.
According to Balsdon, the decision to send an expedition to Britain may have been taken a year before Caesar’s armies set sail: ‘The notion was in his mind, perhaps, in early 56, indeed when he was at Luca, and it may well have been for this project that those ships had been built on the Loire.’ ( Balsdon, Julius Caesar p. 82) But there were clearly other motives beyond the militaristic.
In Michael Grant’s Julius Caesar (p. 65) we hear of a probable financial motive: ‘Caesar himself like many others hoped for lavish loot of gold and silver and above all pearls.’ And then there was the prestige and celebrity brought by conquering this exotic, mysterious land beyond the borders of the world. The British campaign became a kind of publicity stunt, a PR exercise to further his political aspirations. Campaigning against the barbaric Britons in an unknown, wild frontier was sure to impress and spotlight Caesar as the archetypal heroic Roman conqueror.
The Veneti tribe of Brittany may also have been a factor: they enjoyed a monopoly on British trade at the time but Caesar’s earlier attempts to disrupt this commerce and glean information through commercial espionage had failed, so stoking his curiosity and desire to investigate further: ‘I could not find out anything about the size of the island, the names and populations of the tribes . . . their methods of fighting or the customs they had, or which harbours there could accommodate a large number of big ships.’ (De Bello Gallico 4, 20)
Cursus honorum
The cursus honorum or ‘road of honour’, was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians of senatorial rank in the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank and comprised a sequence of age-related military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election and there were minimum intervals between holding successive offices and laws which forbade repeating an office. These rules were altered at whim and flouted in the last century of the republic. Military operations in Britain would, as noted, have looked very good on the record of Caesar’s cursus honorum, his CV in effect. See Appendix 9 for more details.
To finance any largesse and to pay his troops, Caesar, like any other ambitious Roman consul-commander, needed money, and lots of it. His desire for plunder he could liquidate and land for resettlement was sharpened by an urgent requirement to pay off the huge debts incurred during the civil wars to pay for troops and bribes, and to settle his veterans. Generally speaking, booty from foreign conquests was recognised as obvious, easy pickings, fuelling a scramble to overrun and despoil rich new territories. Money from booty was also needed by the state to support and finance the expanding urban economies that were generated by the influx of agricultural workers from the surrounding lands. As increasing numbers of foreign territories fell under Rome’s sway, the wealth, extravagance, opulence, tax revenues, and ostentatious military triumphs increased. It would all culminate in the bloody civil wars, in which the various triumvirs and their armies relentlessly battled and battered each other, until one general, Octavian, emerged as the victor at the Battle of Actium. By then the republic was ancient history – the empire was its future.
Caesar and Gaul
By 60 BC Caesar was one third of the First Triumvirate, an uneasy and edgy political alliance between himself, Pompey, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. The three effectively held most of the power in Rome. His consulship in 59 BC over, Caesar, to ensure a governorship and continued immunity against prosecution, with the help of the tribune Publius Vatinius, passed the ‘Lex Vatinia de provincia Caesaris’ which gave Caesar the proconsulship of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum – a five-year posting unprecedented in length for a province that was relatively secure. Coincidentally, the current governor of neighbouring Gallia Narbonensis, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, died, and his province was also assigned to Caesar. So Caesar left Rome for Gaul where he spent the next ten years honing his military expertise and seeking glory and the spoils of war. But it was only a matter of time before he would be legally obliged to return to Rome where he would be politically vulnerable, unencumbered by any magisterial and military authority, at which point he would lose that vital immunity against prosecution. It was this predicament which ultimately triggered the crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BC and the effective end of the Roman Republic.
Caesar was preoccupied with his wars in Gaul from 58 to 51 BC. In this wider context the incursions over the Channel, whatever their official intention, were not that much more than sideshows. His co-duumvir, Pompey, was left to deal with a Rome that was engulfed in bribery scandals, gang warfare, cancelled elections and street fighting. Caesar, that less than impartial source for the Gallic campaign, would have us believe that his campaigns were a pre-emptive, defensive war. In reality, Gaul was, as noted, used by him as an extension to his political ambitions and a means of paying off his substantial debts through booty. In 56 BC things had gone well for Caesar in Gaul, ensuring its near total pacification, and he now badly needed to extend his range of operations if he was to enhance his military reputation, keep himself free from prosecution and, ever the media star, keep his name and image before the Roman public.
Caesar’s Gallic War comprises seven books, each devoted to one year of campaigning. Roman and Italian merchants and Roman commanders would have communicated what they knew about Gaul and Britain before Caesar’s wars. But there still remained much mystery and suspicion, in common with other lands which were largely terra incognita. The descriptions of the Greek navigator Pytheas, by Caesar’s time some three centuries old, was, as we have seen, the best that might be expected, with the exception of the fantastic description given by Xenophon of Lampsacus. He told the world, as quoted by Pliny the Elder (Natural History 4, 95), that in the Gallic north there were people with horses’ hooves and huge ears; on the Birds Islands, Xenophon said, people lived on oats and eggs.
Gaul was of considerable strategic importance to Rome and Caesar was doing the state a rare favour when he finally quelled the troublesome natives and secured the Rhine as a natural frontier of the empire. Caesar’s war against the Gauls culminated in the decisive Battle of Alesia in 52 BC, in which the total Roman victory resulted in the expansion of the Roman Republic over the whole of Gaul.
Roman Commanders and Their Armies
The first century BC saw significant changes in the organisation of the Roman army and the relationship between rank and file soldiers and their commanders. In the old days, armies were raised in the late spring, fought their battles on the Italian peninsula and laid down their weapons in the autumn to go back to work the farmlands from whence they had come. Looking back on 800 years of Roman history, Josephus remarked that the Romans left the womb ready-equipped for battle. Cicero had already said so much when he asserted that ‘glory in war exceeds all other forms of success’ – this is what makes a Roman and ensures Rome’s eternal fame (Pro Murena 9, 22). Rome and the Romans were wired for war; it was in their DNA. Extending the boundaries of empire, not rhetoric or governing lands already subjugated, (in regendis), was the essential thing in life: in propagandis finibus. Virgil echoes this in the Aeneid, Rome’s national poem written between 29 and 19 BC, one of the two themes of which is arma, arms, first at the beginning with Jupiter’s mission statement for Rome (1, 278-230): ‘I lay upon Rome boundaries neither of space nor time; I have given them empire without limit’, imperium sine fine dedi; and then in book 6 when Aeneas in the underworld receives the template and programme for the future of Rome from the shade of his father Anchises. The key message is parcere subiectis et debellare superbos: ‘spare the defeated and crush the proud’. Cicero’s words would have resonated with Julius Caesar and Augustus, and Virgil’s with Augustus as they each in their own times deliberated whether to invade or not to invade. The contemporary historian Livy (64 BC – AD 12) lends his support with the unequivocal statement in his Ab Urbe Condita (written between 27 and 9 BC) that Rome, through war, will rule the world: Proculus Julius to Romulus, founder of Rome (1, 278f):
‘Go’, he said, ‘and declare to the Romans the will of Heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human power can resist Roman arms.’
So Rome’s very raison d’être, as officially sanctioned, was to conquer and rule, to impose the Roman version of peace on the wider world, to spare those they deemed worthy of sparing and to bring to book anyone they thought arrogant. So absolute and unequivocal was this that it presumably did not occur to many Romans that the mantra itself was the epitome of arrogance, allowing them, theoretically at least, to strut around the world doing as they pleased and exterminating any nation or tribe who was unimpressed with the prospects of Roman imperium or who had the audacity to resist or protest. Such an attitude, of course, occasionally had its consequences, as we see in the AD 9 Teutoburger Wald German massacre and the bloody British revolt of Boudica in 60 BC.
Given this national mindset, this obligation to expand, it is hardly surprising that first Julius Caesar and then Augustus, Caligula and Claudius were sorely tempted to extend the empire and to subjugate Britannia.
Warfare, of course, was a fact of life for many Roman men during the monarchy and the early republic; most would have seen service at one time or another unless they were of the lowest orders – freedmen or slaves. Their women would have taken on the responsibility of running the farmstead and the household in their husbands’ and older sons’ increasingly frequent and lengthier absences. Roman warfare was inextricably linked with politics and economics, with land and the Conflict of the Orders being constant concerns during wars. Economic return on his land gave the soldier the wherewithal to qualify for military service, and to pay for his armour and weapons.
Eligibility for call-up extended from age 17 to 46 (iuniores) and 47 to 60 (seniores) – the latter usually forming a kind of home guard. By the second half of the second century BC, there were between 380,000 and 480,000 men under arms – three quarters of whom were iuniores. The Second Punic War (218–201 BC) saw the army at its greatest strength, with twenty-two legions on hand comprising of (on average) 4,200 infantry and 200 cavalry.
Sixty centuries made up a legion (legio) – originally a militia of heavily armed landowner infantry wielding pilum, a shield, and a sword (gladius). The legions would be supported by the cavalry, with the wealthy equites initially in eighteen centuries – thirty-two centuries of slingers and other auxiliaries provided further back-up. The original legio was divided into two in the early republic, each the responsibility of one of the two consuls. By 311 BC there were four legions, reinforced by troops provided by Rome’s Italian allies and by mercenary archers. By the middle of the republic, the legions were generally divided into cavalry, light infantry, and heavy infantry.
The Roman war machine needed to be constantly fuelled by new recruits, a fact which created something of a vicious circle. By the end of the third century BC approximately one third of Italians south of Rome had been subdued, and were Roman citizens; they were, therefore, eligible for military service. These citizens were supported by troops supplied by allies, often as auxiliary forces. However, the casualties sustained in continuous bloody wars – not to mention the total disasters at Lake Trasimene and Cannae for example – often meant that Rome had to keep on conquering if it was to maintain her steady supply of recruits, and thereby keep her forces up to strength. Once the Romans were on this treadmill they could not get off as war inexorably had to follow war.
The Punic Wars (264–146 BC) changed everything. There were now serious manpower shortages, caused by heavy casualties and the poverty created by widespread depredation of Roman land and farms. It is estimated that over 120,000 Roman citizens perished during the three wars – a casualty rate that would have crippled most nations. Slaves were enlisted, as an emergency measure, to make up the losses. The lands acquired by the elite and the rich were increasingly worked by slaves – captured, in their droves, by conquest – meaning less land was left for the indigenous farmer and no work was left for the peasant workforce. Therefore, peasants seeking work poured into the towns and cities. Land-owning soldiers found their lands devastated or confiscated on their return from the battlefield, or else they faced high taxation, rents and growing debt; this meant that they too headed for the towns. State land distribution ceased in 170 BC, but demand for land did not. The inevitable result was that commanders saw an opportunity to offer the chance to salvage countless livelihoods as they were now able to raise armies independently, tempting recruits with their private beneficence and the distribution of private land.
Military campaigns were increasingly extensive and costly, taking men away from their land and families for long periods as Rome’s expansionism continued apace; new, far-away territories required permanent garrisons. Now that much of the Italian peninsula was under Roman control, booty and land from close-to-home conquests were considerably less plentiful. The low-hanging fruit was all gone: the pressure to recruit further afield was relentless.
In 107 BC, Gaius Marius saw the need to accept volunteers (proletarii) without the traditional land or wealth qualification, and the need to have the state pay for the equipment and weaponry for the war against Jugurtha in Africa. These were groundbreaking and highly untraditional changes: soldiers now lived and died for the army – crucially, they now had no land to return to. The legion was their lives, and they developed an intense loyalty to their commanders. Hitherto these proletarii were only conscripted as a last resort, in times of crisis (tumultus). The new revolutionary changes all coincided with the senate’s failure to align the new, permanent professional armies to the state and its unwillingness or inability to pay pensions to veterans on retirement.
It is unlikely that Marius anticipated one of the major consequences of his military reforms. As we have seen, the new non-land-owning class of soldiers now had no lands to go back to, so they inevitably grew dependent on their generals for lifelong support. At the same time, the state had no means of paying adequate discharge payments to its burgeoning armies. Commanders saw an opportunity here: they could recruit and retain armies with the promises of generous pay and pensions which, through long-term mutual loyalty, might well lead to prodigious military and political power for themselves. From now on the soldiery was in the pay of the consuls and generals – and not the state. Individual military leaders could exercise significant political power and influence through their armies, perhaps even to effect revolutionary change in Rome.
Julius Caesar was one of the early beneficiaries of this new order with its close bonds between commanders and men, and the expeditions to Britannia were attempts to exploit the hoped-for financial and military benefits on offer.
The Invasion of Julius Caesar 55 BC
After Gaul, Britain, that enticing island over the intimidating English Channel, was next to come into Caesar’s sights in 55 BC. Caesar obviously believed that this diversion from the main event had a good chance of bringing in the booty and enhancing his popularity back home and his reputation as a prominent military commander; he was seduced by the kudos perceived success would bring him. What is more, invasion (of sorts) might also allow him to deal with the troublesome Gallic connection: the Belgae of northeastern Gaul had raided Britain, establishing settlements, and Diviciacus, king of the Suessiones, had had the temerity to wield power in Britain as well as in Gaul. This unacceptable activity had been going on for some time: Gallo-Belgic coins found in Britain predate 100 BC, and perhaps are as early as 150 BC; they were minted in Gaul and found mainly in Kent. More significantly, Caesar had reason to believe that the Britons had embarrassed and compromised his campaigns in Gaul. They had lent support to the efforts of the mainland Gauls against him and provided safe harbour for fugitives from the Gallic Belgae fleeing to Belgic settlements in Britain. Moreover, he believed that the Veneti of Armorica, who controlled seaborne trade to the island, depended on military aid from their British allies in their conflict against him in 56 BC (De Bello Gallico 3, 8-9). Strabo adds that the Venetic rebellion was fomented to prevent Caesar from travelling to Britain and disrupting their trade (Geographica 4, 4). Caesar believed that the much-dreaded druids had their origins in Britain before spreading to Gaul (De Bello Civili 6, 13), where they enjoyed significant political power.
Caesar’s planned invasion, however, had to be postponed until the August due to an uprising in eastern Gaul which needed quelling. Since winter was rapidly approaching, Caesar had to scale back his operation to a ‘reconnaissance expedition’, which was all that could be realistically accomplished in the time available if he was to avoid wintering in Britain, marooned by the weather.
Caesar dispatched a tribune, Gaius Volusenus, as a scout in a single warship to reconnoitre the Kent coast between Hythe and Sandwich, but Volusenus was unable to land, since he ‘did not dare leave his ship and entrust himself to the barbarians’, and after five days returned to give Caesar what little intelligence he had gleaned. Crucially, he had failed to identify a suitable harbour; had he done so he would have prevented the damage Caesar’s exposed ships would later suffer at high tide and obviated the need for the deep-water disembarkation forced on the Romans at Walmer, the selected landing point. Envoys from some British tribes, tipped off by merchants, came to offer alliances but Caesar sent them back, along with his ally Commius, king of the Gallic Atrebates, to win over as many other states as possible.
The Evidence for Pegwell Bay
In 2017, research led by Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, of the University of Leicester’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History, seems to prove that the landing took place at Pegwell Bay on the Isle of Thanet. It had never previously been considered because the location was separated from the mainland until the Middle Ages; but the location matches Caesar’s own personal account: its visibility from the sea, the existence of a large open bay and the presence of higher ground. His army immediately constructed a fort there. Iron weaponry, including a javelin, and other artefacts dug up at neighbouring Ebbsfleet overlooking the bay suggest that it was a Roman base dating to the first century BC. The site is now more than 900 metres inland, but at the time of Caesar’s invasions it was closer to the coast.
Fitzpatrick adds that
the Wantsum Channel [which separates it from the mainland] was clearly not a significant barrier to people of Thanet during the Iron Age and it certainly would not have been a major challenge to the engineering capabilities of the Roman army . . . Caesar describes how the ships were left at anchor at an even and open shore and how they were damaged by a great storm. This description is consistent with Pegwell Bay, which today is the largest bay on the east Kent coast and is open and flat. The bay is big enough for the whole Roman army to have landed in the single day that Caesar describes.
At Portius Itius (Boulogne), Caesar assembled a fleet of eighty transport ships, big enough to carry Legio VII and Legio X, along with warships. Another eighteen transports of cavalry were due to sail from Ambleteuse. That the legions travelled without baggage or heavy siege machinery confirms that the invasion was for surveillance only. Dubris (Dover), with its natural harbour, was rejected at the last minute as a beachhead because the Britons on the cliffs above were able to rain down their javelins on the Romans from up there.
The exploratory fact-finding operation was beset by bad luck from the outset when atrocious weather wrecked most of the Roman fleet. The massed chariots of the Britons on the Kent clifftops put the fear of the gods into the two legions below as they tentatively approached in their vessels. The ships off Walmer were sitting too low in the water due to their loads, preventing them from getting close enough inshore so the troops had to disembark in deep water, all the while under attack from the enemy. They had to be urged on by the aquilifer (standard bearer) of the Xth legion who jumped into the shallows shouting: ‘Jump down mates, unless you wish to betray your eagle to the enemy. As for me, I’m going to do my duty to the state and to my general.’
The Romans finally repulsed the British with catapultae and slings fired from the warships into their exposed flank; but strong winds had delayed the cavalry so they could not finish them off. We have archaeological evidence for a camp set up by the Romans; they received ambassadors and had Commius, who had been arrested by the Britons as soon as he had arrived in Britain, returned to them. Within four days the natives were giving hostages, but things only got worse for Caesar when the ships carrying the cavalry were scattered and forced to turn back to Gaul by the storms. Food was running short, his beached warships were taking on water, and his transports, riding at anchor, were smashing into each other. Some ships were wrecked, and many others were rendered unseaworthy by damaged rigging or other vital equipment. Caesar’s journey back to Gaul was threatened.
The British strategy was to detain Caesar in Britain over the winter and starve him into defeat. The Britons then ambushed one of his legions as it foraged near the Roman camp; the foraging party was relieved and the Britons were again beaten off, only to regroup after several days beset by storms with a larger force to attack the Roman camp. This attack was also driven off in a costly rout, deploying cavalry that Commius had gathered from pro-Roman Britons and a Roman scorched-earth policy. The British sent envoys but Caesar, to avoid a winter crossing, set off back to Gaul. Here is Caesar’s version of the invasion:
When the ships had been beached and the camp thoroughly well entrenched, he [Caesar] left the same forces as before to guard the ships: he himself then set out for the point where he had reached before. When he got there he found that even more Britons had assembled there from every direction, and that they had entrusted the supreme command and conduct of the campaign to Cassivellaunus, whose territories are divided from the coastal states by the river Thames, about eighty miles from the sea. Before this there had been continuous wars between Cassivellaunus and the other states; but our arrival had moved the Britons to appoint him commander-in-chief for the conduct of the whole campaign.
The enemy’s cavalry and charioteers engaged in fierce conflict with our cavalry on the march, with the result, however, that our troops proved their superiority in all respects, and drove them into the woods and uplands; but, pursuing too eagerly after slaying several of the enemy, they lost some of their own men. After an interval, however, when our troops were off their guard and busy entrenching the camp, the enemy suddenly dashed out from the woods, and charging the detachments on outpost duty in advance of the camp, they did battle fiercely. Though Caesar sent up two cohorts in support—and those the first cohorts of two legions—and two detachments had taken up post soon after, the enemy most courageously broke through in the middle (as our troops were wrong-footed by the new way of fighting), and retired safely from the field. On that day a tribune, Quintus Laberius Durus, was killed. The enemy were driven back when more cohorts had been sent up.
(De Bello Gallico 5, 11-15)
Caesar’s efforts then did little to dispel the island’s reputation for mystery and danger and, for most Romans it remained a misty island located beyond the ocean at the edge of the known world – ultima Thule – so great was the trepidation it evoked. If Caesar had intended the invasion as a full-scale campaign, invasion or occupation, then clearly it had failed. It also had not fully succeeded as a reconnaissance operation or a show of strength to deter further British aid to the Gauls.
Nonetheless, going to Britain and taking Rome beyond the ‘known world’ carried such prestige for a Roman that the senate decreed a supplicatio of twenty days on the basis of Caesar’s report. It may also be that this invasion established alliances with British kings in the area which smoothed and facilitated the later invasion of AD 43.
Supplicatio
If Caesar needed reassurance that his incursions had curried the popular favour he craved in Rome then the voting by the senate of an impressively lengthy supplicatio provided that reassurance in spades.
A supplicatio is a day of public prayer when the men, women, and children of Rome processed to religious sites around the city praying for divine aid in times of crisis. It also served as a thanksgiving, when a great Roman victory had been won, usually decreed as soon as official intelligence of the victory had been received by a report from the general in command. The number of days of the supplicatio was proportionate to the importance of the victory. Sometimes it was decreed for only one day, but more commonly for three or five days. A supplicatio of ten days was first decreed in honour of Pompey at the end of the war with Mithridates and this one of fifteen days, after the victory over the Belgae by Caesar, was an honour which Caesar says had never been granted to any one before. Subsequently, a supplicatio of twenty days was decreed after his defeat of Vercingetorix.
As noted, Caesar’s stated official motive for the invasion was to quell Gallic support from Britain: ‘in almost all the wars with the Gauls military support had been offered to our enemy from that country.’ However, the possibility of exploiting tin reserves and other mineral resources remains another motive. Cicero refers to the disappointing discovery (from his brother Quintus) that there was no gold or silver to be found in the island, although how this could have been established for certain in such a short and geographically limited visit – particularly as the Romans were hundreds of miles from the recognised source in Cornwall – remains problematic. As it happens, silver was mined from soon after the Claudian invasion although not in the areas penetrated by Caesar. Quintus is on safer ground with the chariots as British weapons of war: ‘In Britain I am told there is no gold or silver. If that turns out to be the case, I advise you to capture a war-chariot and hasten back to us at the earliest opportunity.’ (Cicero, Ad Familiares 7, 7) – to C. Trebatius Testa (who was serving in Caesar’s army) on his way to Gaul, from Cumae, April 54 BC.
The chariots were obviously a cause for concern back in Rome as this reference to Trebatius makes clear: ‘look out, while in Britain, that you are not yourself taken in by the charioteers’ (Ad Familiares 7, 6); but not just the chariots . . .
The result of the British war is a cause of anxiety for it seems that the approaches to the island are protected by astonishing masses of cliff. Moreover, it is now known that there isn’t a pennyweight of silver in that island, nor any hope of booty except from slaves, among whom I don’t suppose you can expect any instructed in literature or music.
(Cicero, Ad Atticus 4, 17)
Suetonius reports that Caesar was said to have gone to Britain in search of pearls (Caesar 47). Caesar did later dedicate a thorax decorated with British pearls to Venus Genetrix in the temple dedicated to her that he later built (Pliny, Natural History 9, 116) and oysters were later exported from Britain to Rome (Pliny 9, 169 and Juvenal, Satire 4, 141).
When Caesar landed in 55 BC, Britain had an estimated population of between one and four million. The lowland south east with its expansive tracts of fertile soil encouraged extensive arable farming, while communications developed along trackways, such as the Icknield Way, the Pilgrims’ Way and the Jurassic Way, and along navigable rivers such as the Thames. North of a line from Gloucester to Lincoln, workable arable land was less in evidence. Settlements were usually built on elevated ground and fortified, but in the south east oppida were established on lower ground, often at river crossings, suggesting that trade was increasing in importance. As already noted, trade between Britain and the continent had been growing since the Roman conquest of Transalpine Gaul in 124 BC; Italian wine was being imported via the Armorican peninsula, mostly at Hengistbury Head in Dorset.
The Invasion of Julius Caesar in 54 BC
The following year in 54 BC Caesar went back. This time he was better prepared, he had learnt from his mistakes to some extent, and was working to a more adventurous strategy. For a start he took with him a larger force: no fewer than 600 new, specially built transports and twenty-eight ships of war constructed with the latest Venetic shipbuilding technology. His plan was to win over, or compel, native Celtic tribes to pay tribute and give hostages in return for non-aggression. Sadly, there is no truth in the story told by Polyaenus that Caesar defeated Cassivellaunus’ men while defending a river crossing by striking fear in their hearts when he deployed an armoured elephant complete with a turret from which archers and slingers let loose:
When Caesar’s fording of a wide river in Britain [the Thames] was opposed by the British king Cassivellaunus, at the head of a strong cavalry force and many chariots, he ordered an elephant, an animal till then unknown to the Britons, to enter the river first, mailed in scales of iron, with a tower on its back, on which archers and slingers were positioned. If the Britons were terrified at so extraordinary a spectacle, what shall I say of their horses? Amongst the Greeks, the horses bolt at the sight of an unarmed elephant; but armoured, and with a tower on its back, from which missiles and stones are continually hurled, is a sight too formidable to bear. So the Britons with their cavalry and chariots took flight, leaving the Romans to pass the river unmolested, their enemy routed by the appearance of a single beast.
(Polyaenus, Strategemata 8, 23, 5 – adapted from the translation by R. Shepherd, 1793.)
The five legions and 2,000 cavalry were conveyed in ships better suited to amphibious beach landings, being broader and lower. Portus Itius (somewhere in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais) was the port of departure.
Caesar left Titus Labienus at Portus Itius to ensure the lines of supply. Interestingly and astutely, the naval ships were joined by a trade delegation in the shape of a flotilla of commercial vessels looking to secure business with the Britons. The fleet totalled 800 ships. If nothing else, this civilian contingent proved that, for them at least, Caesar’s earlier invasion had dispelled all the anxiety and superstition relating to this strange place at the end of the world; money spoke and for the hopeful merchants Britannia was now a former terra incognita, stripped of its ancient terror.
The Britons offered no opposition to the landing. Caesar delegated protection of the beachhead to Quintus Atrius and made an immediate night march some twelve miles inland where he clashed with the British forces somewhere on the River Stour. The Britons were driven back and regrouped at the hillfort at Bigbury Wood, Kent, only to be defeated again.
Bad news came when Caesar heard from Atrius that his anchored ships had (again) been smashed against each other in a storm with the loss of forty vessels. He returned to the coast to repair his fleet, working day and night for ten days, and building a fortified camp around them. Labienus was ordered to send more ships.
When Caesar returned to the Stour river crossing he found the British forces waiting for him. Cassivellaunus (again) was the leader of the British combined forces; he had a chequered past having previously been at war with most of the other British tribes, and had recently deposed the king of the mighty Trinovantes, exiling his son. But the Britons were repelled and routed by the Roman cavalry when they attacked a three-legion foraging party under Gaius Trebonius.
Cassivellaunus knew his limitations. Realising he was unlikely to defeat Caesar in open battle, he resorted to guerrilla warfare, relying on the mobility and speed of his 4,000 chariots and his superior knowledge of the local terrain. Caesar reached the Thames at the one fordable place available to him – only to find that it had been fortified with sharpened stakes, both on the shore and under the water; the far bank was defended.
British opposition then collapsed. The Trinovantes sent envoys promising Caesar aid and materiel, grain and hostages. Mandubracius was restored as their king. Five more tribes, the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and Cassi, surrendered to Caesar, and, crucially, revealed to him the location of Cassivellaunus’ stronghold – the hill fort at Wheathampstead, which was duly besieged.
Cassivellaunus responded by sending word to his allies in Kent, Cingetorix, Carvilius, Taximagulus and Segovax, the ‘four kings of Cantium’, to stage a diversionary attack on the Roman beachhead to draw Caesar away. But this failed, and Cassivellaunus sent ambassadors to negotiate a surrender. Caesar was anxious to get back to Gaul so an agreement was mediated by Commius, the terms of which were that Cassivellaunus give hostages, agree an annual tribute, and undertake not to make war against Mandubracius or the Trinovantes. Later Commius switched sides, fighting in Vercingetorix’s rebellion over in Gaul.
After a number of unsuccessful engagements with Caesar’s forces, Commius cut his losses and fled back to Britain. Sextus Julius Frontinus, in his Strategemata, describes how Commius and his followers, with Caesar in pursuit, boarded their ships. Although the tide was out and the ships still beached, Commius ordered the sails be raised. Caesar, still some distance away, assumed the ships were afloat and called off the pursuit. Some reject this, positing instead that Commius was sent to Britain as a friendly king as part of his truce with Mark Antony. Commius established a dynasty in the Hampshire area, evidenced from coins of Gallo-Belgic type. Verica, the client king whose exile was to prompt Claudius’ conquest in AD 43, styled himself a son of Commius.
What the two British expeditions lacked in military success or benefit they more than made up for in propaganda value, although many back in Rome criticised them as expensive and over-ambitious exercises in expansionism. The senate decreed another supplicatio, this time for twenty days. Furthermore, Caesar learnt something important from his invasions: the tactical value of the war chariot, something new to the Romans. Caesar describes them as follows:
This is how they fight with their chariots: firstly, they drive about in all directions and throw their weapons and generally break the ranks of the enemy with the very fear inspired by their horses and the noise of their wheels; and when they have insinuated themselves in between the troops and cavalry, they leap from their chariots and fight on foot. The charioteers in the meantime withdraw a little way from the battle, and place themselves in the chariots so that, if their comrades are overpowered by the enemy, they can offer a ready retreat to their own troops. Thus they display in battle the speed of horse, [together with] the solidity of infantry; and by daily practice and exercise attain expertise that they, even on a slope and steep place, can check their horses at full speed, and manage to turn them in an instant and run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, and then get back with the greatest speed to their chariots again.
During the civil wars, Caesar made use of a kind of boat he had seen used in Britain, similar to the Irish currach or Welsh coracle. He describes them as thus: ‘The keels and ribs were made of light timber, then, the rest of the hull of the ships was wrought with wicker work, and covered over with hides.’
Caesar then returned to Gaul having made no actual conquest. The timing was fortuitous because he reached Gaul just in time to see the beginnings of a significant Gallic revolt which threatened not just his earlier conquests but the military reputation on which he relied so heavily. But, just as importantly, his restoration of Mandubracius crucially marked the beginnings of a system of client kingdoms in Britain, so drawing the island firmly into Rome’s sphere of political and military influence. Diplomatic and trading links developed further over the next century, always threatening the eventuality of permanent conquest. While the mysterious and misty island at the edge of the world remained unconquered, Caesar certainly benefitted from the excitement and sensational publicity his two missions would have generated around the Roman Empire, evidence for which can be detected in Cicero’s letters. In crossing the Channel, Caesar had ventured beyond the world known to Romans – the orbis terrarum – and he had brought Britain under the sway of Rome, albeit tentatively for the time being.
As we know, Caesar’s invasion of Britain was part of a much bigger campaign: the nine-year battle for Gaul waged between 58 and 51 BC. As stated above, our main source is Caesar’s own despatches. Roman generals were obliged to send despatches, litterae, reporting their activities to the Roman senate; they might also write extensive reports, or commentarii; Caesar’s De Bello Gallico is a literary example of this – it is obviously propaganda, ‘bigging-up’ the author. These documents would also serve as a vehicle to remind the Roman public of his accomplishments in the name of their city. The work may also have been intended as a retort to political opponents of Caesar who questioned the necessity of such a costly war which, at the time, was apparently one of the most expensive in Roman history. In summary, Caesar describes how he campaigned across modern France, Belgium, and west Switzerland, and how he twice crossed what the Romans regarded as major boundaries: the River Rhine, which he presented as the border between the Gauls and the Germans, and the perilous sea that was believed to encircle the Roman world.
The Significance of Caesar to Roman Britain and to York
To quote Tacitus (Agricola, 13): ‘It was, in fact, the deified Julius [Caesar] who first of all Romans invaded Britain with an army: he overawed the natives by a successful battle and took control of the coast; but it may be said that he revealed, rather than left, Britain to Rome.’
Tacitus (c. AD 56–c. AD 120), with the benefit of 150 or so years of hindsight, was right. Caesar adumbrated and exposed the potential benefits a viable invasion might bring to Rome. So much so that by the time of the Claudian invasion, the military was in possession of far more and far better intelligence which extended into territory way beyond Caesar’s south-east corner. Much of this would have come from the extensive network established by Roman merchants who no doubt pushed relentlessly further and further north, softening up the increasingly comfortable better-off locals with their luxury items and sumptuous fare. Caesar can take credit for much of this, providing a much-publicised spearhead for increased commercial and economic development extending over a much wider area than his actual sphere of operations.
The campaign was not without its examples of bravery. The first century AD historian Valerius Maximus, in his Memorable Words and Deeds (3, 2, 23), tells of the bravery of Marcus Caesius Scaeva, a centurion under Caesar, who, deserted by his comrades, held his position alone against a horde of Britons on a small island, before finally swimming to safety.
Bigger issues claimed attention. The turmoil and anarchy preceding the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the subsequent establishment of the principate under Octavian, now Augustus, obviously caused matters relating to imperial expansion and international diplomacy and trade to be, at best, paused. It was not until things started to settle down politically that Britain re-emerged as an issue to be dealt with and reappeared on the imperial agenda.