0401B

.... This is significant both because it shows an awareness of strategy, and because Tacitus goes on to note that, on several occasions, Agricola claimed that he would need only one legion to conquer Ireland. Tacitus also records that Agricola befriended an Irish prince, possibly with the intention of using him as a bargaining tool or collaborator in a conquest. This has been taken by some scholars to indicate that there was an invasion, and they also quote Juvenal, who wrote that 'we have advanced our armies to Ireland, and the recently conquered Orkneys, and Northern Britain with its short clear nights'. But Juvenal was a satirist, and as such, using his work as evidence is problematical; he may be referring to invasions, but equally, he may refer to failures! It should also be pointed out that the Orkneys and Northern Britain were never fully invaded or organised, and advancing armies to a region is quite different to invading it. Finally, the later Chronicle of Tysilio, which is corroborated by the Norman propagandist Geoffrey of Monmouth, mentions a Romano-British expedition to conquer Ireland during the reign of Claudius, but the details of this are unclear.

Drumanagh
Until very recently there has been little archaeological evidence for a Roman invasion. The astonishing find of a �Roman fort� at Drumanagh, fifteen miles north of Dublin, would seem at first sight to show that there was an invasion. This need not be the case, and at any rate we cannot be sure that the final results will be conclusive. The site has not been excavated, so any conclusions drawn now could be dangerously premature. A proper scepticism should also be maintained because the site is unique and no other 'forts' are known or evidenced. It is also entirely probable that, because of trading links with Britain, many Roman and British merchants travelled to Ireland with their goods, and the idea that this 'fort' was a trading post should not be discounted. Gold coins have already been found near Dublin and at Bray; silver and bronze coins at Newgrange; brooches at Knockawlin and Cashel; occasional finds of grave goods have included Roman or Romano-British items. Richard Warner of the Ulster Museum has noted what he claims to be a 'Roman grav'e at Kilkenny with a cremation in an urn. He is surely wrong to claim that this evidence implies 'a strong and secure Roman community' when he himself admits that the number of Roman artefacts found in Ireland is small and that literary evidence is absent. We do not have to accept that there was an invasion simply because there was some Roman influence in the area. Romans often traded with regions they did not invade. Only after a full excavation of the site can we examine with any confidence the question of a Roman military presence in Ireland.

This is not much to go on but the possibility of an invasion remains. Claudius's intentions when he invaded Britain were almost certainly to conquer the whole archipelago, and he was not affected by any notion of frontiers or controlling only part of the islands. He knew of Ireland, and that it was close to Britain.. It is possible that Agricola, in 83 AD, tried to invade Ireland but was unsuccessful, or that he had one legion on standby for such an expedition, supported by Irish allies, but permission was not forthcoming from Rome. Some suggest that he was called home in disgrace which prompted his son-in-law Tacitus to write his biography. Perhaps the tone of Tacitus' account implies an old man who still rankled in his retirement about his recall before he could launch his final conquest.

The evidence against an invasion is quite strong: no ancient source known specifically mentions one. But if there was no invasion or if there was an unsuccessful foray which was not followed up, why was this the case ? Around this time there is a loss of impetus generally in the Roman conquest of Britain, possibly caused by military problems elsewhere in the empire, in the Rhine and Danube regions. The Roman army was not large enough to fight on many fronts, and thus soldiers may have been withdrawn from Britain to conflicts elsewhere. The drive to expand in Britain never really returned, which may explain why there was no subsequent invasion of Ireland. After the mid-second century, Roman frontiers were always under pressure from some direction. By this stage they certainly knew what Ireland was like and that it was probably not worth the trouble of invasion. Additionally Solinus notes that the Irish were an unfriendly, warlike people who smear the blood of slain enemies on their faces and do not distinguish from right and wrong. Ergo, Ireland had not been 'romanised', let alone conquered by 200 AD.

Frontiers
Instead of speculating on the Roman invasion theory let us consider Roman attitudes towards their empire and the wider world and their conceptions of space and power. Frontiers as we understand them did not exist before the 17th century, and certainly not in Roman times. Two main reasons for this have been identified. First, poor geographical knowledge meant that the Romans tended to underestimate the distance between the centre of their empire and its periphery; second, regions beyond the centre were perceived in terms of power rather than territory. Having power over, influence over, or even connections with a region was enough for the Romans to claim it as part of their empire, regardless of whether they had good geographical knowledge of it. Thus the emperor Augustus could claim that he had forced the mighty Middle-Eastern empire of Parthia 'to seek as suppliants for the friendship of the Roman people', even though there was no direct conflict. Contemporary poets expressed the belief that he could bring the whole world under Roman rule; indeed, the poet Virgil, in his epic poem the Aeneid, promises that the Romans will enjoy 'power without end' and that the Roman empire will rule over the whole world. These sentiments were not without parallel. The historian Dio paints a colourful picture of the triumph celebrated by Julius Caesar in 46 BC in celebration of his victories in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa:
'this occasion he climbed the steps of the Capitolium on his knees, neither casting his eyes upon the chariot dedicated to Jupiter in his honour, nor upon the image of the oikoumene [literally 'the inhabited world'] lying beneath his feet, nor upon the inscription which it bore; but later he had the word 'demi-god' erased from the inscription'.
Despite this magnanimous gesture, the implication is that Rome enjoyed power over the world.

Other poets and writers follow suit: Livy, the great historian, stated that Rome was at the 'head of the world', and Horace boasted that 'the fame and majesty of the empire had been extended to the rising of the sun from its western couch'. Additionally, Roman coins depict emperors holding the earth in such ways as to suggest power over it. Of course, whatever the boasts of the literary fraternity, or any other symbol, this was not really the case. Augustus was a great conqueror, but was painfully aware of how the empire could be over-extended, especially after a disaster in Germany in 9 AD, when three whole legions fell to German tribes. His advice to his successor Tiberius, reported in a famous passage of Tacitus, was 'not to extend the empire beyond its limits'. The Latin is ambiguous, and what this phrase actually means has been the subject of dispute. It may mean beyond the empire's present limits, but it could equally mean beyond its potential limits, perhaps the coastlines of the empire. More....