499. The Roman Conquest of Britain: Julius Caesar’s Invasion (Part 1)
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Get up to 40% off select online bath plus free delivery at The Home Depot. Subject to availability, see homedepot.com/delivery for details. The natives who had assembled to oppose the landing of our soldiers, and were standing either on dry land or else a short distance out into the sea,

fought with all their limbs unencumbered and on familiar ground, boldly hurling javelins and galloping their horses, who were trained to this kind of work. These perils frightened our soldiers, who were quite unaccustomed to battles of this kind, with the result that they did not show the same alacrity and enthusiasm as they usually did in battles on dry land. But as the Romans still hesitated, chiefly on account of the depth of water,

The man who carried the eagle of the 10th Legion, after praying to the gods that his action might bring good luck to the Legion, cried in a loud voice, "'Jump down, comrades, unless you want to surrender our eagle to the enemy. I, at any rate, mean to do my duty to my country and my general.' With those words, he leapt out of the ship and advanced towards the enemy with the eagle in his hands."

At this the soldiers, exhorting each other not to submit to such a disgrace, jumped with one accord from the ship, and the men from the next ships, when they saw them, followed them, and advanced against the enemy. So that, Tom, was Julius Caesar's account of the Gallic War, as read some years later

by General Maximus from Gladiator. I thought you were going to say Nick Cave, my new celebrity listener. Yeah. Or, I don't know, David Boone or some other Australian. What other Australians do you know, Tom? I know so many Australians, but we haven't got time because we've got to talk about Julius Caesar. Anyway, this was Russell Crowe. I did it as Russell Crowe.

As Julius Caesar. I know, but Russell Crowe's New Zealand, isn't he? Well, he's a bit of both, isn't he? Yeah, I know. I did it as that because I wanted to capture the sort of martial vigour and the excitement of this moment. So this is the moment in 55 BC that the Romans land on...

Are you going to be doing this throughout the four episodes? I think I'll do it unexpectedly when listeners are least expecting it. When the Romans land on British soil. So Tom, the exciting thing for me about this, I can remember when I was 13 doing a big kind of timeline.

of British history. And this was the very first date. It's the first date really in all history, isn't it? 55 BC. It's the first date in British history, obviously. And so there's a famous joke about this in 1066 and all that. It was written in 1930 that makes a joke about the state of historical knowledge in Britain.

And it has 1066 and all that. That's obviously one date, 1066. But the only other date in the entire book is this date, 55 BC. So he says the first date in English history is 55 BC. Oh God, I'm starting to do a New Zealand accent there. In which year Julius Caesar, the memorable Roman emperor, landed like all other successful invaders of these islands at Thanet. This was in the olden days when the Romans were top nation on account of their classical education, etc. And obviously that's a joke that...

depends on people reading this being able to think that Britain is still top nation due to its classical education. It highlights the way in which, maybe in 1930, attitudes to empire and the pacification of natives were slightly different. It goes on to make the joke that the Roman conquest was a good thing since the Britons were only natives at the time.

And so that question of whether the Roman conquest was a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, when I was growing up as a child, I'm sure you read the Lady Bird book about Julius Caesar and the conquest of Britain. I think it was generally held to be a good thing. It kind of introduced hot baths, wines.

Straight roads, all that kind of thing. The end of the use of woad and people no longer being blue. I think hair is an important element of this. We will be coming to that, yes. I think a sense in which the haircut arrived in 55 BC, subsequently when Claudius came in the second invasion. I think there's that element to it. But also, of course, the wider point is the story is always told from the perspective of the Romans. So the people traveling and the people who land, hence the introduction.

But also, do you not think the ancient Britons were not really seen by imperial kind of British writers and readers in the 19th and 20th century as the desired ancestor? The desired ancestor was to some degree the Anglo-Saxons and the heritage is that of Rome. So we identify more with the Romans in that story, don't we? As readers, we're expected to identify with the Romans. I think educated people in the era when the British...

the British Empire existed were much more inclined to side with the Romans. But I think there was a kind of trend to identify with the Britons as well. So you think of the statue of Boudicca, or Boadicea as she was then called, that stands outside the Houses of Parliament and will be coming to Boudicca later in this series. I mean, she is a British heroine, despite

despite the fact that she actually burnt down London. So I think there's always been an ambivalence, and I think that that ambivalence has become stronger over recent decades for obvious reasons. Much greater scepticism about empire and a kind of an awareness of the costs of empire.

But I think that actually it's completely non-debate because of course both sides are unfathomably alien, unfathomably distant from us. And one of the things that when I was just kind of mapping out the course of these four episodes we're going to be doing on the Roman conquest of Britain that struck me was how often I was picking up echoes of other episodes that we've done. So whether, you know, the conquest of the Aztecs or the series we did on Custer and the Plains Indians, there are echoes there.

But I'm always aware that they might be delusory and deceptive because I think one of the things for us and for everyone listening to bear in mind is firstly that the evidence we have for this entire story is very patchy. And the consequence of that is that there's so much about both sides that we can't know.

But I do think that you're right to say that it is easier for us, I think, to identify with the Romans simply because the written sources that we have for this story comes from them. You described Caesar, so he's approaching in his ships and jumping into the sea and

crambling up onto the beach. This is our country, but we're kind of with Caesar's legions in the boats because we don't know really very much about Britain, say relative to what we know about Rome. Right. But also people identify with the Romans from actually quite a small age, a young age, don't they? You often do the Romans at school.

when you're what, five, six, seven? We know a lot about the lives of the Romans. We know a lot about the life of Julius Caesar. We can make educated guesses about his inner life, about his psychology, about what kind of a man he was. We can't do anything like that with any single person, really, who lived on the island of Great Britain at this point in history. All we know is the name. And so I think that because our written sources come from the Romans, but for them, the Greeks as well,

There's a sense in which we're looking at this story. We have a sense of Britain slowly coming into focus that is one that derives from those sources. So if you go right back to the beginning, to the earliest written texts, possibly alluding to Britain, they're Greek, not Roman. So you have Herodotus, the first great historian. He doubts Britain even exists. He says, you know, that there are said to be islands out there, but I don't believe it.

He has a contemporary who's a geographer called Hecataeus. He mentioned there being an island beyond Gaul that he called Hyperborea. He says that it's sacred to Apollo, the god of the sun, and that it boasts a temple that is spherical in shape.

And so people have thought maybe that's a reference to Stonehenge. I doubt it, but I quite like the idea for obvious reasons. And then after them, we do start to get slightly more secure references to Britain. And this is due to a Greek who sails from Massilia, which is the Greek foundation that today is Marseille.

And he sailed to Britain and to this mysterious island called Ultima Thule. Unclear exactly where it is, but probably, I think, Iceland. He describes it as being six days voyage beyond Britain. And it's close to where the sea becomes impenetrable because it's kind of becoming solid, which must be a reference to kind of, you know, ice, pack ice or whatever. So Iceland seems to be the likeliest candidate. And it has to be said that...

He is much quoted, but also much despised. Lots of the claims that he's making are seen as being so outlandish that people discount it. But I think that we can see that he did go there from what he says. So in his book on the ocean, which hasn't survived, but is quoted a lot, he refers to Britain, to Ireland, to all the other various islands in our archipelago as being a single island, the Nessus Britannicae, so the British archipelago.

So the idea of them being British Isles is not something that, you know, it doesn't originate with the British Empire or anything like that. That's the foundational description. Tom, I'm so pleased to hear this. And it's P not B. So it's the Pretani rather than the Britani. And in Welsh, Britain is still, I think, called Pridon to this day. So there's a kind of trace element of that. The name probably means the painted ones. So in Latin, the Picti, the Picts, referring to the

the fondness for tattoos. And Pythias also seems to have given individual names to the two largest islands, so Albion to Great Britain, Ierne is Ireland, and he refers to two promontories in the south. So the westernmost promontory, which is today called Cornwall, is called Beleriand, which is very Tolkien, isn't it? And the eastern one is called Cantian, so that's Kent. And Kent and Thames, the river...

are the two oldest attested place names in Britain, and Pythias mentions both of them. This is in 320 BC, so a long, long time ago. But because so many of the scholars and geographers and historians who follow Pythias, although they use him, they dismiss him as a fabulist and a fantasist.

there is this sense that continues right the way up into the lifetime of Julius Caesar in the first century BC, that Britain is a land of mystery, that people don't really know anything about it. And I think that for Caesar, that's precisely the appeal. That's precisely why he's going there, is that it is a place of such fantasy and mystery that to be the Roman who lands there first is an absolute kind of

massive great tick against his name. So let's put Caesar into some context. We've talked about him in previous episodes of The Rest is History. You've written about him a lot. He is a very charismatic, charming, he is incredibly ambitious from a very well-heeled family. Yeah, but a family that hasn't really measured up to the standards of its ancestry. So Caesar undoubtedly feels that as a burden.

Also, he's surrounded by other big beasts in the Roman political scene, say Pompey or Crassus, who have done great things and Caesar wants a bit of it. I think that in terms of understanding

why he goes to Britain. There's a story that Suetonius, his biographer, reports about 180 odd years later, but clearly has an element of truth, that he's a magistrate serving in Spain. He goes to Gardes, which is Cadiz, and in the temple there he sees a statue of Alexander the Great. When he sees it, Suetonius says, "He groaned as though in disgust at his own lack of accomplishment."

Because at an age when Alexander had already conquered the world, he himself had achieved nothing memorable. And then the following night, he's supposed to have had a terrible dream in which he forces himself on his mother, which is very, obviously, I mean, a horribly unsettling dream. Dr. Freud would be all over that.

But then it's explained to him, and I quote Suetonius, that his mother, whom he had seen powerless to push him aside as he raped her, was none other than the earth, held to be the parent of all, and that his dream was therefore a prophecy that he would rule the world. And so there's this idea, I think, that by reaching out to seize control of distant lands. So first of all, Gaul, Caesar ends up governor of Gaul, and he pacifies that

over the course of the early years of his term of governorship, very bloodily. And then he's kind of looking ahead to other places. So I think the ocean is on his mind because one of the peoples in Gaul that he subdues is a people in Brittany or Amorica as it was called, called the Veneti, the Venetians, confusingly. And they're a naval power and they impose tolls on merchants who want to cross the channel and trade with Britain. And so

Caesar commissions a fleet, which he entrusts to Decimus Brutus, one of his lieutenants, who will end up being one of his assassins. And Decimus Brutus defeats the Venetian fleet. Meanwhile, Caesar has gone along the rocky coastline of Brittany, Amorica, subduing the Venetians there. He describes the Venetians on Amorica, on Brittany, as being surrounded by the great unbounded ocean. Now that Caesar has this fleet, which he's used to defeat them,

He must be thinking, I could use this. And we know that by 55 BC, he's basically pacified all of Gaul, or so it seems.

and he's in a mood to go even further. So his first venture beyond the limits of Gaul is across the Rhine. A couple of German tribes have crossed the Rhine and raided into Gaul. So Caesar builds a bridge, takes him 10 days. He stays in Germany for 18 days. He then comes back and pulls the bridge down. Spectacular stunt. And it illustrates firstly that there's nowhere that the Romans can't go, but more specifically, it illustrates the fact there's nowhere Caesar can't go.

Is that really what the invasion of Britain is? It's a coup. It's a spectacular gesture. Does it not also reflect the fact that he knows, he must know or have some inkling that when he went across the Rhine, he's not going to meet an opposing force at the same level of organization and technological sophistication as his own. So it's kind of cost free, isn't it?

I think it's much, much riskier than that, as we'll see, because I think the element of risk is a key part of it. And actually, the French scholar writing about Caesar and Gaul, Christian Goudinot, he explicitly compares it to the moon landings. So he says of Caesar's expedition that like the moon landings, it's an imagination defying epic, an achievement at once technological and straight out of an adventure story. And so like the moon landings, the drama of it is dependent on risk.

dependent on the sense of going into the unknown where things could go horribly wrong. But a manageable risk, right? A risk that you think, if things go well, it should be okay. And Caesar, I mean, of course, he could be hit by an arrow or a stone or he could fall into the sea. But it's not like he's invading Parthia or something, which would be a much bigger ask. I don't know.

The anxieties aren't just about the human dimension. There's also the divine dimension. If you can compare the mission to Britain, to the moon landings, you can also very obviously compare it to the achievements of the man whose statue in Cadiz inspired Caesar to feel all depressed, Alexander. Because Alexander is said to have pushed to the end of the world and to have reached the ocean, which the Greeks and the Romans believed surrounded

the entire world and to have offered up sacrifice to the ocean there. Caesar, by crossing the ocean from Gaul, is doing something very similar. For the Greeks, the ocean is divine, and the Romans have inherited that. There's always the question about, are you divine enough to trust yourself to its waters? So Caesar, by doing that, is

He's trusting that he will measure up in the divine sphere as well as in the human sphere. Because this is not just the edge of the known world, it's perhaps to some degree the edge of the mortal world. It's kind of a liminal place and who knows what's beyond that mist. Absolutely. And also, of course, I mean, you know, the human dimension is also very, very alarming because it's a deeply held Roman conviction. And I think this tends to be true of most imperial powers.

that the further you go from the center, so in the case of Rome, the Mediterranean world, the further you go out, the more barbarous and savage the peoples that you come up against will be. The Romans have always had a particular dread of the Gauls. The Gauls had conquered Rome back in 390 BC. Great armies of Germans had descended within living memory of Caesar's lifetime.

The man who had married his aunt, a Roman warrior called Marius, had defeated this kind of terrifying onslaught of German tribesmen who were absolutely kind of giants. They were said to eat raw flesh. Women were said to be very into genital mutilation, a bit like the Welsh at Pilith.

So the sense that the north is an incubator of savages is very, very strongly held by the Romans. And the further north you go, the presumption is, the more terrifying they're going to be. So to go from Gaul to Britain, you are taking an extra level of risk. But that's not just about the prejudice about going further north, is it? Because Caesar believes that there's a kind of economic reason

why the people who live on the island of Great Britain will be more fierce. Because doesn't he say in his commentaries that the further you get from the imperial centre, the less likely you are to have been exposed to the Roman goods of

that make you dissipated and lazy and effeminate and the taint of luxury will not have corrupted the people in Britain. That's a paradox that will run throughout the story, which is that even as the Romans despise the Gauls and even more the Britons for their savagery,

At the same time, they kind of admire the savagery as being the expression of a kind of innocence, that they haven't been corrupted by the fruits of civilization. And it's a constant nagging anxiety for the Romans that civilization and empire and greatness might be sapping them and making them more vulnerable to the onslaught of these kind of barbarians.

That's very familiar. I mean, we're talking about the British Empire. People absolutely thought that in the British Empire. The romance of Africa or of the Northwest frontier was built up with the idea that

urban civilization corrupts you and makes you decadent. And the further away you get, the more authentic and the more manly and all that sort of stuff you are. So there's a lot of that going on. There is, but in turn, there's an aspect of American imperialism in that one of the luxury goods that is being exported by Roman merchants is alcohol and specifically wine. And just as there was a sense in the expansion West in the US that you could use whiskey to

to kind of sap the moral character of the natives. The Romans are doing exactly the same because they've been introducing wine into Gaul for about a century before Caesar goes to Gaul. And the Gauls are taking wine neat. And the effect of this is kind

It kind of turns them into lots of alcoholics. People want wine. The only thing they have to pay for wine is slaves. The only way you can get slaves is to fight with your neighbours. So it serves to foster kind of increased tribal conflict and tension.

The Romans can then take the slaves that they're getting for the wine, bring them back to Rome, bring them back to Italy, set them to work in vineyards, growing more wine, exporting it back. So, I mean, unless you're a kind of Gallic slave, it's completely virtuous circle. But the effect of all this for Caesar is that when he turns up in Gaul,

They're sozzled, they all hate each other, they're all fighting each other. It's much, much easier to conquer them. He says a people called the Belgae, occupying what is now Belgium. I mean, that's why it's called Belgium. He says that these are the people furthest from Rome and its wine merchants. And so therefore they are the strongest. And the same obviously would apply to Britain. But having said that,

There is also a sense that Caesar knows this isn't quite true because he knows that merchants have penetrated into Britain even. There was a little moment earlier on where he talked about the Veneti who control the channel. They exact tolls on people crossing the channel. So people are crossing the channel. So these are merchants. These are even travellers crossing. Well, or there are chieftains in Gaul.

who have allies or maybe a direct overlordship in Britain. Caesar, in his commentaries, is making two contradictory claims. On the one hand, he's saying that nobody in Gaul knows anything about Britain. He repeatedly emphasises this. On the other hand, he says that the Britons are helping the Gauls to fight the Romans and that this is a justification for him to invade Britain. They can't both be true. Caesar is trying to build up the sense of mystery because the commentaries are being written for his public back in Rome. So

And so he wants to make it seem as mysterious as possible. He knows that Britain is like Gaul divided into tribes. He knows that there are Gauls who know enough about Britain that they can kind of advise him on what's going on. So I think that Caesar, when he is standing on the channel looking across at the White Cliffs of Dover, he has a sense that the techniques and methods that he's employed in Gaul to subdue it will probably work in Britain as well.

And does he think that he could maybe take interpreters or people who speak the same language or a similar language to the, or will understand the British customs and religion and all that stuff?

Caesar specifies there's this guy called Commius, who is a king of a people called the Atrebates, which is a Belgic tribe. So again, in the kind of what's Pas de Calais or the Low Countries. And Caesar rates him very highly. He says this man, Commius, the king of the Atrebates, is a man of whose courage, judgment and loyalty he had a high opinion. Because Caesar, of course, is always speaking in the third person about himself.

And Caesar sends Commius ahead of him to negotiate with the various British chieftains there and to try and persuade them to come to terms with the Romans.

Now, it has to be said that initially this plan doesn't work out very well because no sooner has Commius arrived in Britain than he's being imprisoned and loaded down with chains. But Caesar's not worried about this. He carries ahead with his plans. He's got two legions, the seventh and the tenth. So the tenth is the guy with the standard-bearer who jumps into the sea. So that's about 10,000 legionaries. He's also got cavalry, he's got supply ships.

bringing food and so on. So probably about 80 ships, most of it drawn from the fleet that he'd used to defeat the Veneti. And early September, he crosses the Channel.

It's one of the descriptions that I always remember from childhood. It was always illustrated in books. He's approaching the White Cliffs of Dover and there are Britons with bristling moustaches. Waving clubs and spears. Yes, brightly painted blue in chariots, racing along the cliffs. Caesar obviously recognises that this isn't a great place to land. So he passes Dover and he heads up towards the Shingle Beach where Woolmer and

and deal stand. And this is almost certainly where he lands. And it's very, very intimidating for his soldiers. You read out the bit that it takes the standard bearer of the 10th to shame them into climbing out of the boats and wading ashore. And the Britons are terrifying because they seem conjured up from all the worst nightmares of the Romans. They have chariots, they're dyed, they have this unspeakable facial affectation.

Caesar says they shave the whole of their bodies except the head and the upper lip. So that's a moustache that he's describing. They shave their legs, but they have moustaches. It's a concept so abhorrent to the Romans that Latin doesn't have a word for moustache. Weirdly, they don't have archers. They have lots of slingers. If you have a moustache, you don't need an archer. Is that the rule? That's how it works. How does that work? Your opponents are so terrified that you don't need to even shoot arrows at them.

And so it would be unsettling. It would be alarming. And that is why the standard bearer of the 10th Legion has to do what he does, jump into the sea. Everyone piles out. And should we take a break there? And when we come back, see what happens. In the second half, the Romans land and let us see what happens.

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Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The armies of Rome are piling up the beach. They are splashing through the surf. There are flipping javelins or whatever, bits of slings. Slingshot, I think is the word. When they've run out of slingshot, they're throwing the slings. By these terrifying mustachioed figures, this is obviously the moment of maximum danger in the amphibious landing. Once that standard bearer said, come on, follow me, they

They do manage to get a hold on the beach, don't they? And as I said at the end of the first half, and so it begins. How it actually begins after they've landed is that they build a fort because there's nothing the Romans enjoy more than building a fort, any opportunity and they'll do it. So that's what they do. And once they've done that, they then receive emissaries from the local chieftain and they

this embassy is led by Commius. So the guy from Belgium they had sent over. Yeah. So he's been freed and he's acting as a kind of middleman. And Caesar tells us in his commentaries that he reproached them for making war on him without provocation, which I think is- They should have welcomed him with open arms. Yes, exactly. So the Britons duly reflect on their poor behavior and over hostages. And it all seems to be going quite well for Caesar. But

Actually, it's a damn squib. It really doesn't work out well for Caesar at all. I mean, he disguises this as well as he can in his commentaries, but he's got all kinds of problems. So first of all, he can't land his horse transports, which he's brought over. They keep being kind of blown away. So they're very contrary winds and they keep being blown away. And so he's never able to land them. Without cavalry, he can't act on any victory that gets won by his infantry.

And the weather just gets worse and worse. I mean, he's kind of arrived in the middle of September. And so as the days pass, the wind seems to have got worse and worse. And there's one particular storm in which he loses most of his transport ships. And this is obviously really, really worrying because you don't want to be stranded on the island and not be able to get back.

And this terrifies his men. And I imagine probably Caesar himself. It's the first recorded incidence of bad weather in Britain affecting the course of history. This must be the consistently worst weather he's ever known. The rest of his life has been spent in the Mediterranean and Spain and Gaul.

You know, I mean, obviously he's known storms before, but this must be the coldest place and wettest place he's ever visited. Yeah. It's very, very unsettling, as is the chariots, which Caesar really, really obsesses about. It's not just his men who are kind of anxious about. They're only used in Rome for races. The Gauls haven't used them. They're seen as rather old fashioned.

But the Britons are very, very adept at using them. It's the chieftains who deploy them. They are very skilled at kind of running up and down the parts of it that connect it to the horses, doing kind of tricks like that, firing their slings, shooting their spears, all that kind of thing. And so generally, I think you get a sense from Caesar that this is actually tougher than he'd anticipated, that the resistance is more intimidating, the weather is more unhelpful, and

If you have this kind of shadowy sense that you might be intruding in the dimension of the gods, then bad weather isn't just happenstance. It may be expressive of more ominous forces. And so even though Caesar does manage to win another victory, his men are out foraging, they get attacked, Caesar comes to the rescue and beats the enemy off. There's a sense, I think, that

Caesar feels like there's nothing much to be gained by staying on for very long. He's made his landing. He's made his point. He can write back to Rome about it. And so after about a fortnight, he takes a chance to go back to Gaul. And that is that.

So thinking about, for example, when Hernan Cortes landed in what we now call Mexico, I mean, obviously the big attraction for him was he was told there's this great city, there's all this gold, there's clearly a central authority in a kind of political structure. Isn't a big problem for Julius Caesar when he lands in

that there is no central political authority in Britain. So he can't pursue a kind of decapitation strategy. He can't say, oh, well, the capital is Birmingham. I will march on Birmingham, seize it and subdue these people. As far as he's concerned, presumably it's all kind of anarchic chaos and different tribes and things. So what is the point? There'd only be another tribe after the next tribe. As in Mexico, where there are different peoples and Cortes ends up exploiting that as part of his conquest of Mexico, there is a similar situation in

in Britain. And if Caesar had landed earlier, if he'd had cavalry, if he'd come in greater force, if the weather had been better, maybe he would have been able to capitalize on that. And I think indisputably, though he doesn't tell us this, but I think it's clear from what happens the following year, he is...

getting intelligence. He's working out who the various tribes are in Britain, which ones are friendly, which ones are hostile, who might be amenable, who he's going to have to defeat, because Caesar is fully planning to come back the following year. And one of the reasons for that is not just that he thinks that he can beat these people, it's also that the impact of his landing in Britain, even though effectively it's a failure, back in Rome is enormous.

The Senate, who is full of people who really don't like Caesar at all, they decree him a public Thanksgiving that lasts for 20 days.

And Caesar, who is all about making a big splash back in the capital, making himself the darling of the people, he realizes that going to Britain is huge, huge box office. And so I think that that absolutely confirms him in his resolve that he will come back again in 54 BC. So some listeners to this podcast may be thinking imperialism is always driven by the search for markets and resources and things.

Is there an economic reason to go for Britain? I imagine they're thinking the market of the Britons is crucial to our economic success. But is there a resource? I mean, the classic thing that people always say is tin. They came for tin. Is there any truth in that? Well, the tin is down in Cornwall, so the other end from Kent. But

But there are all kinds of rumours that there's gold, that there's silver, that there's lead. So the sense that Britain is full of mineral wealth is very strong. And so therefore, hopefully that will be useful. So there are reports that Britain is full of riches. But of course, even if there's nothing there, there is a source of income, which Caesar has been making great use of in Gaul, and that is slaves. So Caesar in Gaul has enslaved vast numbers of people and become incredibly rich from it.

And I'm sure that just on this abortive trip, he's had a number of clashes. He will have taken prisoners. He'll be taking them back with him to Gaul to sell. He is given an opportunity to go back by precisely the kind of factional infighting on the island of Britain that I was talking about. The sense that actually all Caesar has to do is put out feelers to the various chieftains in Britain as the commander of a large army.

You know, he is of great interest to British chieftains who were fighting their own wars, like in Mexico, the Tlaxcala or the Mexica. They see the Spanish as just a kind of interesting addition to the faction fighting that's going on. Even though Caesar's landing had been very brief,

What people had seen of the Romans was menacing enough that some people decide that they want to use it. And in particular, there's a guy called Mandubracius, who is a prince of a tribe called the Trinovantes. And the Trinovantes are based north of the Thames Estuary in what's now Hertfordshire and Essex.

They're probably the most powerful tribe in Britain, but there's an up and coming tribe to their west called the Catevelani. The Catevelani occupy basically the home counties. They're under a king called Cassivellaunus, and he has overthrown Mandibracchius' dad, the Trinovantian king. Mandibracchius has gone running to Caesar saying, "Please will you help me?" Caesar goes, "Absolutely, I will. Of course, I'm all in."

And so when he sails back in 54, he does it as the ally of a British prince. And I think you can tell that Caesar sees this as being a genuine opportunity for conquests on a Gallic scale because he comes back with a much larger force. So

He'd gone in '55 with two legions. In '54, he lands with five legions. So that's about 20,000 men. He has about 2,000 cavalry. I mean, this is a very, very intimidating force, far larger than any force that a British tribe would be able to oppose him with. And again, he seems to have landed on the beach at Deal or Walmer. The conventional thinking is that he landed on the Isle of Thanet.

The Isle of Thanet, nowadays it's the northeasternmost tip of Kent. There was this channel called the Wantsome Channel, which has

been swallowed up. It's now dry land. But back in Roman times, it was a genuine island. And so one school of thought is that Caesar landed there, made his base there. I think it's improbable because Caesar never mentions the fact that he's crossing to and fro from the channel. So I think he probably landed at Deal again or Walmer. And this time he's not opposed because clearly the force he's bringing is so intimidating that no one wants to stand up to him. And so he marches out, he storms a hill fort, and he's heading westwards when

Again, there's a massive storm and not all his ships have been beached. And so he goes back, he arranges for the ships to be pulled up. And anyone who's been to the beach at Deal or Walmer will know that it's a perfect spot to drag up a Roman transport ship. And then they build an even larger fortification. So they surround it completely so that the ships are secure from the storms and secure from any natives who may try and attack them.

and then he resumes his march westwards again. He goes across Kent and he reaches the Thames. Not only does he have his legions, but he has the Trinovantes and he has five other tribes, he says, all of whom have come to Caesar and have submitted to him. As he's doing that, of course, all the enemies of the Trinovantes, notably the Catephalani, they are also drawing in allies. And so

To us, we might see it as a clash between the Romans and the Catephalorni, but to the Britons it's a clash between the Trinovantes and the Catephalorni. The Romans are kind of incidental to the story. But of course, that's not how Caesar sees it. So Caesar crosses the Thames. We don't quite know how. He's opposed. There are stakes driven into the river, but he brushes it aside. He storms the stronghold of Cassivellaunus.

So the Romans call it an opidum, which means a kind of fortified town. That's probably to dignify it. It's a bit like Milton Keynes. It's a sprawl of low buildings, doesn't have the feel of a town, of an urban center. So that gets stormed. There's lots of massacre, lots of enslavement. And Cassivellaunus kind of recognizes that he's beaten.

And so he approaches our old friend Commius, the Atrobaton king, the Belgian bloke, to go and see if he can negotiate a surrender. And Caesar agrees terms. Mantabracchius is restored to the throne of the Trinovantes. Cassivellaunus agrees to leave him alone. Both kings hand over hostages to Caesar and agree to pay annual tribute to Rome. And so in late September, he heads back to Gaul. He has lots and lots of prisoners.

He has promises of tribute, he has hostages, and above all, he has a story because he can go back and really, really major on the fact that Britain is unbelievably dangerous and savage. So he writes a very detailed ethnographic report about it. He writes women are shared between groups of 10 or 12 men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons.

He says how in the interior of Britain, of course, he hasn't reached, though he's relying on hearsay. He says that they drink milk, which is obviously a disgusting habit. They eat only meat. And he describes them as being nomadic, which of course they're not. But Romans expect really savage barbarians always to be nomadic. And so that's what Caesar is serving up for them. So those things, this is the first description effectively of life in Britain.

So nomadic, meat-eating, milk-drinking, and they share women between 10 or 12 people, including fathers and sons. Are any elements of this true? I think they do drink milk. I think they do clearly eat a lot of meat. The thing that is really strikingly inaccurate is the nomadic stuff. But Caesar's not particularly interested in accuracy. He wants to give a good story. And again, back in Rome, everyone is completely thrilled by this. So we know this because we have letters by Cicero, the great orator,

and philosopher, an opponent of Caesar's. He writes to a friend and he says, "The reports back from Britain is that it's more savage than rich, that basically all there are are slaves." Cicero is absolutely withering about the quality of the slaves. They have no aptitude for literature. They don't know anything about music. Who would ever expect anyone with a knowledge of literature to come from Britain? This is a kind of amused tone of O'Toole. It doesn't fool anyone. Cicero is as thrilled as everyone else.

He also, according to Pliny, brings back pearls. Pliny says that he makes a kind of corslet, a cuirass, out of these British pearls, and he dedicates it to his ancestor as Venus in the great temple to Venus that Caesar builds in due course when he gets back to Rome. I mean, I know nothing of pearls.

Is there just a finite stock of pearls and Caesar took them all? Or I've never heard someone talking about how brilliant British pearls are. I honestly don't know, Dominic. What I do know is that oysters are a very big thing. British oysters are seen as being the best in the world, equal first with the oysters that you get from the Lucrine Lake in the Bay of Naples. I mean, I think in a way...

All this discussion about pearls and oysters and stuff, it's not really the point because the point is the story. It's the opportunity it gives Caesar to play act as Alexander.

That's what he's got from it. But having said that, I do also think that all this stuff about treaties and hostages and so on, Caesar is clearly laying the grounds for another visit to Britain where he's planning to do what he'd done in Gaul. He can manufacture an excuse for intervention at any point that he wants. This is exactly the course that he'd been doing in Gaul. This is what had enabled him to conquer the whole vast expanse of Gaul. Or so he thinks.

Because in the event, he never goes back to Britain. Because actually, even in the late summer of 54, rumours are coming in from Gould that the harvest is failing. And over the course of 53, the impact of that and of general Gallic resentments mean that there's a kind of festering sense of insurrection. And

In 52, there is a mass revolt in Gaul led by Vercingetorix. So anyone who's read Asterix, Vercingetorix is the guy who is shown throwing his armor down on Caesar's feet.

It's a kind of parody of a famous picture of Vercingetorix surrendering to Caesar, which he does in due course. But it's a very, very close run thing. And Caesar's efforts are devoted entirely to pacifying Gaul. He just doesn't have time to bother with Britain. And then, of course, in 49 BC, he crosses the Rubicon. The Roman world is engulfed by civil war and war.

people forget about Britain. There's no prospect of the Romans returning there because now what is at stake is what is the future of Rome itself going to be. And then once that is settled, Britain is still too tangential. If you're Augustus or Mark Antony, all the actions in the Mediterranean, all the money or the power or the prestige, I mean, who cares about Britain? Right. Whereas the converse, I think, is that for the Britons, the impact of Caesar's invasions are actually...

considerable. First of all, because even the few weeks that Caesar had been in Britain, the impact of Roman militarism had been highly destructive. For any British chieftain with eyes to see, it had been a warning of just how potent these foreigners across the seas are. Equally, the coming of the Romans to Britain opens up the eyes of people to just how rich Rome is.

how wealthy it is, how impressive its kind of material goods are. And so again, that serves to integrate Britain into a Roman world, even if there's not a kind of direct colonization.

And the fact that Gaul is occupied by Rome, that Britain isn't, because there are so many links between Britain and Northern Gaul, the Roman occupation of Gaul inevitably has an impact on Britain as well. And you can see this through the afterlife of Commius, the guy who was sent to the British chieftains by Caesar, who plays a very complicated game. And the complexity of the game that he plays, I think, is the best highlight that we have into this kind of

matrix of relations between Gauls, Britons and Romans. So Commius goes back with Caesar in 54 to Gaul and he assists the Romans against the Gallic rebels there because he's an ally of Rome. But then in 52, when it looks as though the Romans are going to lose and Vercingetorix is going to win, he switches sides.

And he's one of the leaders that leads an enormous force to try and rescue Vercingetorix in Alesia, the fortress where Caesar is besieging him. That expedition gets wiped out. Vercingetorix is forced to surrender. Commius retreats.

goes into hiding. There are two Roman attempts to try and assassinate him. But then when civil war breaks out, Commius negotiates a deal with Mark Antony, who is Caesar's lieutenant in Gaul, and he gives up hostages. But he demands from Antony that he doesn't have to have dealings with the Romans in person because he's worried that if he does that, the Romans will try and kill him or capture him. So that's agreed. So having done that, while Caesar and Antony are off fighting the civil war in the Mediterranean,

Commius moves back to Britain. He sets himself up there as a king in what's now Hampshire. And again, he's ruling a people called the Atrebates. And it's unclear quite what's going on there. So there's a tribe called the Atrebates in Belgium. There's a tribe called the Atrebates in Britain. Commius is ruling both of them.

Are the Atrebates and Britain people that Commius has conquered, are they genuinely kith and kin? Could be a bit of both, couldn't it though? Don't people make that argument about, for example, the Anglo-Saxons, that identity is not just ethnic, it can be kind of assumed because you are copying the warlord, that kind of thing? I don't know. But what is clear is that as well as the Gallic-British link, there is also a Roman one. Because Commius...

Even though we have no further references to him in any classical texts after his dealings with Caesar, we do know about him because there is actually a written record. And it's a written record that comes from Britain. And it's stamped on coins that he issues that have his name. And so with this, Britain ceases to be an entirely prehistoric culture. For the first time, we have

So is this the very first writing in Britain? Commius's coins? Yeah, probably. Wow. And that's because of the link with Caesar and... because are they in Latin? Yes. So he's picked that up from Gaul, which has been conquered by Caesar, and he's taken that across into Britain and then produced because they are a marker of prestige and status and kingship, I guess. Yeah. And as we'll see in the next episode, they have a huge influence on other tribes as well. And...

Britain, as I said, it ceases to be entirely prehistoric. And it's reflective of the way in which, I guess, societies on the margins of a great imperial power don't have to be ruled directly by it to come within its orbit, to come within its sphere of influence. So the fact that you're starting to get these coins with names on them in Britain,

is clearly a marker of Roman influence. But the question for the British tribes is, is that all it's going to be? Is it always going to be a hands-off relationship? Or are the Romans, once they've sorted out their civil wars, which are raging in the decades that follow, once the Romans have sorted that out, are they going to be back? Well, spoiler alert.

They are. They are going to be back in the form of the Emperor Claudius and a proper invading army in AD 43. And if you want to hear that episode right away, you can, of course, do it by joining our own empire at the Rest Is History Club.

Rather like the Romans, actually. We rule it with a rod of iron, ruthless, but there are all kinds of extraordinary material benefits. The gifts of civilization. And the prestige and status that come with being a Restless History Club member. So if you're a Restless History Club member, you can crack on and listen to it now. If you're not, you can join at therestlesshistory.com. And if you want to remain on the periphery, covered with woe, drinking milk, and with your moustache and your blue paint...

Then you can hear the next episode on Thursday. And on that bombshell, Tom, thank you very much. A tremendous tour de force. Goodbye. Allez. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girl, four for a boy.

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