0300B

The creation of a Roman province in southern Gaul (Roman Provincia now Provence) had introduced a substantial new demand for supplies by 100 BC. For the Roman army was not only, a military powerhouse, but also a greedy consumer of grain, Ieather (not least for tents) and other goods. The new demand reached as far as the British lowlands, while we may be sure that Roman diplomacy, was at least as energetic. On all frontiers of the empire, the sphere of Roman influence stretched substantially beyond the limits of Roman military control. Roman diplomacy encouraged the cities of southern Britain in their developing tastes for luxury goods from the Continent. British kings and chieftains could now confirm and express their local prestige by the possession, consumption and distribution of Mediterranean wine, for example. Cross-Channel contact, and especially the exchange of goods, escalated hugely through the 1st century BC, all the more so in its closing decades. As excavations show, amphorae filled with wine were soon considered appropriate objects for deposition in the burials of the elite of' the British lowlands.
The significance of cross-Channel contacts is further indicated by Caesar's attempt to justify his forays to Britain as strategic responses to British support for refractory Gauls in their resistance to Rome. Indeed, he stated that Britain was the place to which Gauls travelled for a thorough grounding in Druidism, about which contemporary Rome was both curious and hostile. Meanwhile, he also described a single king as having once ruled both sides of the Channel, with the name Diviciacus. Moreover, Caesar had sent ahead of his expedition a chieftain of Gaul who (as Caesar claimed) enjoyed a significant reputation in Britain and could be expected to wield influence there. This was Commius, whose subsequent career continued to embrace both Britain arid Gaul. Certainly, it was in Caesar's interest to stress cross-Channel ties, but, once again, archaeology and Caesar's narrative present broadly the same picture.
However, it was a very different story in most of Britain beyond the lowlands. By contrast with these major changes in the south and south-east of Britain, there is scant sign of much change at all since the early Iron Age to the north and west, across the Severn and Trent. There the pull of the Continent was markedly weaker. For while the Channel was more a sea-highway than a barrier, the land mass of lowland Britain itself constituted a much more substantial barrier between the more northern portion of Britain and the Continent. It may well be that the developing consumption of the lowlands had some impact upon the society and economy of the hinterland to the north, perhaps through an increased demand for materials and slaves. However, the process of change here was far slower. Accordingly, the larger political entities of the South seem to have come a century or so later in the north of England and perhaps later still in Scotland, though that impression may result from the nature of the historical record. And when they did appear in the 1st century AD, as notably does the confederation of the Brigantes in the north, they were marked by an instability which contrasted sharply with the more settled situation in the south.
Until Caesar invaded, Britain had enjoyed a reputation for wealth and prosperity. Indeed, it seems to have been imagined as a mysterious El Dorado by the Romans. No doubt the reputation had been fostered by the export from Britain of goods for the Continent and the developing British interest in continental luxuries. However, Caesar and his army were very disappointed by the reality of south-east Britain. Marcus Cicero's brother Quintus was an officer on Caesar's staff, though he had remained with the forces in Gaul. In their correspondence Marcus and Quintus bantered about the news from the British front, despite their serious engagement with Caesar and political upheavals in Rome. Quintus reported that Britain had nothing worth taking, except curmudgeonly slaves, and nothing worth noting, except the curious British chariots, which reminded the brothers of Homer. Yet Caesar had seen very little of Britain and certainly not the areas where precious metals might be found. Caesar's invasions were trivial affairs, hardly more than raids in military terms. But even so, they had an enormous ideological importance in Rome, where Britain remained thereafter a key diplomatic and military concern. Caesar himself seems to have been inordinately proud of his British campaigns: the wily Marcus Cicero composed an epic poem on the subject to curry favour with the great man. Perhaps fortunately, it has not survived.
In the decades after Caesar the British elite demanded ever more luxury goods from the Continent. The emergence of Augustus as the 1st Roman emperor (r.31 BC-AD 14) and the heir of Caesar ensured that imperial diplomacy would continue to probe into Britain. At about the turn in the millennium, a British chieftain was buried at Lexden near Colchester with a medallion which bore the unmistakable image of Augustus himself. He may have been one of the British rulers who visited Rome in these years and were accorded the particular honour (with all its overtones of compliance) of sacrificing to Jupiter on the Capitol itself.
Small wonder that at Rome there was strong ideological pressure to
invade Britain again, both upon Augustus and upon his successor Tiberius (r.AD 14-37). Yet the invasion did not come, for conditions in Britain meant that, from a Roman perspective, it was not needed. The geographer Strabo explained that invasion would be superfluous, for the rulers of Britain (in the south and east, at least) furnished Rome with the required stability and income. The local rulers accepted the need for duties on cross-Channel trade, while they also presided over settled regimes which offered no threat, even through brigandage or piracy, to Roman Gaul and associated interests. The Channel was not only secure but profitable. In that context, argued Strabo, any attempt to conquer Britain would be pointless and expensive, for a substantial force would be needed. The contemporary British coinage confirms the soundness of Strabo's assessment, which also suited the inclinations of his tired and distracted emperor, Tiberius. For on their coins the rulers of' Britain displayed their tastes and allegiances, which were such as to encourage Roman inaction. These �royal� British coins often mimicked Roman coinage and could accommodate not only their own heads (sometimes looking very Roman), but also those of the ruling emperors. They might even boast the Roman title rex, �king�. They derived the title not only from the reality of their own kingship, however petty that might seem, but also from the formal recognition of their position and status by their Roman imperial masters, invariably couched in the warm language of friendship and alliance.
The Roman decision finally to invade of itself indicates the breakdown of' these cosy arrangements. Now there was a need, felt at Rome, pressed by elite British refugees and no doubt also by reports from the island and from neighbouring Gaul. In the AD 30s Roman diplomacy could not contain the disorder which followed the death of a king who had presided over a mini-empire centred upon Colchester, namely King Cunobelinus. In the struggle for power that ensued, Rome was by far the most powerful source of support. Rome invaded, driven not only by the desire to restore order, profit and imperial prestige, but also by the need of its emperors (fleetingly Caligula and soon Claudius in AD 43) for the military reputations that their predecessors had gained elsewhere. Military prowess was still the foundation of imperial authority, while, for all his crafty intelligence, the hapless Claudius cut a poor figure as a general. More in Part C....