502. The Roman Conquest of Britain: To the Ends of the Earth (Part 4)
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We, the most distant of peoples who dwell upon this earth, the last of the three, have been shielded until today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. But now the most northerly reaches of Britain lie open to our foe, and what men know nothing about is invariably a cause of fascination.

There are no peoples who dwell beyond us, nothing but waves and rocks, and the Romans who are more terrible still, for there is no escaping their exactions by submitting to them and bowing their neck. Men who have stripped the entire world bare, they have exhausted the dry land by plundering all it has to offer, so now they ransack the sea.

A wealthy enemy excites their rapacity, a poor one their hunger for power. The East and West alike have failed to satisfy their appetites. Alone among men, they lust equally after the rich and the poor. What they speciously call empire is merely robbery, slaughter and looting. They create a wilderness and they call it peace.

So that, Tom, was Mel Gibson in AD 83. It was, in fact, Calgacus, a British warlord who, like Mel Gibson, celebrated both for his breeding and for his valour. And he delivered that speech, didn't he, Calgacus, if he did deliver it, as we will discover, on a mountain called Gropius in the highlands of Scotland, or what was then called to the Romans Caledonia.

So we had Boudicca last time and we were talking about how she was the first real great rich character to

in British history. And here we have the first person in all Scottish history, don't we? To have a name. Yeah. Yeah. It was very Mel Gibson because the situation is quite Braveheart. So the Caledonians are on the slopes of this mountain called Graupius. And as on so many occasions in subsequent Scottish history, they're resisting a vast invasion from the south.

And it's been 40 years since the Romans landed in Kent, and they have now reached the highlands. And the process of conquest, as we were discussing last time in the end of our episode on Boudicca, have been devastating. So we said that in that great battle, perhaps 40,000 were slaughtered in the battle that ends her revolt. We've had genocidal campaigning in Wales, hundreds of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands enslaved.

So you can see where Calgogus is coming from. And the line with which he ends that speech, they create a wilderness and they call it peace, is probably one of the most famous denunciations of imperialism of all time. I mean, it's often, often quoted, often repeated. And it seems to offer a counterpoint to the glory that was Rome. It seems to give us the view from the barbarian side, except that

Of course, it's not actually verbatim. It's essentially invented by Tacitus, the great Roman historian, who is, and this is absolutely on trend with what Roman historians do. There's nothing, you know, no one would see it as being poor form. It's absolutely expected. But he is putting words into this Caledonian leader's mouth.

And it appears in the biography of Agricola, who is the governor of Britain, who is leading the legions, say the Roman side, at the Battle of Mount Graupius. And when Tacitus gives these words to Calgacus, it's not total fantasy.

He is very well informed on British affairs. Agricola was his father-in-law. He may well have served in Britain himself. So to quote Anthony Burley, who's a very distinguished expert on Northern Britain in the Roman period, and he says, why not suppose that Tacitus served in Britain in one of the four legions in the army of his father-in-law? He could well have stayed there for two to three years. And he points out that in the account of Agricola's governorship that Tacitus writes,

The first three years are done in great detail and then it becomes slightly more sketchy, implying that perhaps Tacitus was actually present in Britain. So he would have had a good idea of what the Roman conquest meant for the Britons. But having said that, I think that Calgacus' speech actually tells us less about British attitudes to Roman imperialism than about Tacitus' own. And it's obvious, I mean, no man who is capable of composing that speech that you read out

can possibly be reckoned to view empire and conquest as an unambiguous good. So the question then is, does this mean basically he's woke? Is he a woke historian, Roman historian, part of the woke mind virus? So we will see. We will see over the course of this episode.

where Tacitus is coming from. Isn't that interesting? The idea that the germ of the criticism of Roman imperialism, and indeed of imperialism more generally, is right there at the beginning.

within Roman culture itself. The question is, are the reasons that Tacitus is criticising imperialism the reasons that we today might criticise imperialism? And that's something that we can explore over the course of this episode. So let's get into the British context. So what is it? A generation has gone by since the arrival of the Romans in southern Britain. So that speech is AD 83. We've had Boudicca's Revolt.

And after that, the sheer punitiveness, the bloodthirstiness of the Roman response to that, the destruction of the great mass of people, the horde that followed Boudicca,

That sends a very clear signal that the Romans are here for good. They're not going to withdraw. There was that thing that you pointed out last time that the guy who pushed the repression was later recalled and people felt he'd gone too far. So how did the Romans view Britain? I mean, Tacitus is not alone, I think, in feeling that the early decades of the Roman occupation have been pretty badly mismanaged and that Boudicca's revolt is an expression of that. And the aftermath of Boudicca's revolt is...

Firstly, it's now impossible for the Romans even to contemplate withdrawal. Too much blood has been lost. Too much gold has been invested. It would be too great a humiliation. So they're in for the long haul. But at the same time, I think there is a recognition that

you know, they kind of need to up their game. The repression has gone too far. There's a guilt that is a kind of an acknowledgement that Boudicca was mistreated. And there's an anxiety that Paulinus in his reprisals in the wake of the suppression of Boudicca's rebellion. I mean, he is kind of creating a desert and call it a wilderness and calling it peace. And

And the man who applies this perspective in the wake of Boudicca's revolt is the new procurator, so the guy who's in charge of the finances of the province. And this is a man called Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicanus. You know, so the Alpinus points to the fact that he's from southern Gaul in the region of the Alps. So maybe that Gallic background suggests why he might feel more sympathetic towards the Britons.

He writes back to Rome, he writes to Nero, and he says, look, this is all going too far. It's counterproductive. You need to replace Suetonius Paulinus, even though he's the great general. And so Nero sends a freedman, a man called Polykleitos, on a kind of fact-finding mission. Tacitus is very withering about the scale of

the size of the mission that is sent. But it obviously does a very, very good job because it reports back and says, yes, you know, we need a new broom here. And so some ships are lost. And so they use this as an excuse to withdraw him and bring him back to Rome. And the new governor is the nephew of Aulus Plautius, who was the original invader, the general, the head of the invasion force, the first governor of Britain. And his nephew is a man called Petronius Topilianus.

And he and Classicanus work very hard, essentially, at healing the wounds, at trying to repair the damage. And they don't engage in fresh conquests. So no further wars under Topilianus' term of governorship. And Classicanus himself...

Already, London has become the financial centre. London had been obliterated by Boudicca. Clasicanus clearly devotes himself to rebuilding it because he can recognise that it's essentially the natural place from which to administer the finances of Britain. And when he dies in due course in 65, he's given this sumptuous funerary monument in the East End.

so beyond the eastern flank of the city as the road leads out and we know that because it was subsequently used as part of the medieval wall and found in excavations and the original is in the British Museum and there's a replica of it by Tower Hill Tube Station so you can go and see that if you're passing Tower Hill Tube Station

Poor Topilianus comes to a much stickier end. So he goes back to Rome in 63 and is greeted with great honor by Nero. He's generally felt to have done a good job. And so in 68, when rebellion breaks out across the empire against Nero, Nero turns to Topilianus and puts him in charge of the defense of Italy.

And Nero then commits suicide and AD 69 sees a whole host of emperors, four in total, succeeding one another. And Portopelianus gets put to death by the first of these emperors, a man called Galba. But Galba doesn't last very long. His successor, Otho, doesn't last very long. Then you have Vitellius and then you have Vespasian coming to power. And Vespasian, people may remember, was in command of the Second Legion in the original invasion back in AD 43.

and he does know Britain, and he kind of pacifies the empire and puts it back on its feet. But this year, AD 69, the year of the four emperors, has been turbulent for Britain. There are kind of mutinies. There are different legionary commanders backing different emperors. You get one of the legions is completely withdrawn,

And so what had been a garrison of four legions now consists of only three. And this in turn encourages an uprising against Rome in the kingdom of the Brigantes, which again we talked about before. It's essentially northern what's now northern England.

ruled by this extraordinary queen, Carta Mandua, who had been consistently pro-Roman. She was the person who had handed Caratacus over, the great, you know, original freedom fighter in Britain, to the Romans. And she has this extraordinary stronghold in North Yorkshire, a place called Stanwyck, very kind of formidable, great ramparts, four miles long in length.

Lots of high quality Roman goods. Cartamundua is clearly absolutely living her best life there, having a fabulous time. It's all great. But she does have problems with her erstwhile husband, who's a man called Venutius. And 10 years previously, Venutius and Cartamundua had had a massive bust up. Cartamundua had kicked him out.

after he'd gone to war with her. The Romans had come to her rescue, but Venutius is still kind of lurking there on the margins, keen to make a comeback and is all the more aggravated because Cartamandua has massively sassed Venutius by having an affair with his armour bearer, a man called Velicatus. Venutius is really furious and he takes full advantage of the turmoil in AD 69 to have another crack at Cartamandua to, you know, finish off his ex-wife.

cartman do it again appeals for help and she's rescued in the nick of time by the new governor who's been sent out by vertelius the third of the emperors in the year of the four emperors and this is a man called vettius balanus who is actually very very effective and he's so effective that even though vertelius is the emperor who gets overthrown by vespasian vespasian is happy to keep balanus in post

And I guess the reason for that is that he rates Balanus highly. And it doesn't matter that Balanus was appointed by Vertelius, because what really matters to Vespasian is that Britain is properly sorted out. So it's under Balanus that the north is pacified. And he's meant to have done really well, isn't he? So I read the poet Statius says he reaches Caledonian fields.

So is Balanus the first Roman to travel to Scotland? That's the question. Probably not. So this is probably poetic exaggeration. But probably what he is doing is sending diplomatic missions up to Caledonia, so beyond what is now northern England into the lowlands.

And the aim is clearly to try and set up friendly relations with the peoples who live up there. And he clearly does a good job because when he goes back in 71, Vespasian gives him patrician rank, which is a very high honour indeed. So he's obviously done well for himself. And I think that the fact that Balanus is putting out feelers north, beyond even Brigantia, into what would now be Scotland, reflects the fact that Vespasian...

wants to see the whole of Britain conquered. And he feels, you know, he had served there, his son Titus, who in due course will become emperor himself, he'd served there as well.

the Flavian dynasty they're called. The Flavians, I think, see it as the mission they've been given by the gods to conquer Britain. And there is one further person who is part of the Flavian kind of family, dynastic setup, who has been engaged in Britain. And this is our old friend Kerialis, who was the commander of the Ninth Legion that had been mauled by the Icani and the Trinovantes when he was marching to try and relieve Camulodonum.

And he is the son-in-law of Vespasian. So he's married Vespasian's daughter. And when Balanus is called back, Vespasian sends Kerialis as the new governor. And you might think this is quite a weird choice, considering that he'd notoriously been defeated by the Britons. But I think Vespasian values him not just because he's obviously very loyal, because he's part of his family, but also because he's very energetic. He's very bold. He's not a man to kind of frowst around in his legionary base. He wants to get out there and crack on.

And so Kerialis has proved his worth as a military man by suppressing a rebellion by the Batavians, who were those Germans who served the Romans as auxiliaries and can swim across rivers and lakes in their armour. And they had perhaps rebelled. It's unclear exactly the degree to which they rebelled or they'd been embroiled in the civil war. But anyway, Kerialis had pacified Batavians.

Batavia and he's now come to Britain and it's an indication of how determined Vespasian is to see Britain conquered that when Carialis comes to Britain he does so with a legion so that the strength of the island's garrison is restored from three to four.

So it's all go. So his plan is to go up. He goes by the 71. So that year that he arrives, he goes up past the Midlands. He goes up north of the Humber. He goes to the river ooze and he's heading towards the place that we would now call York. Exactly. Previously, the most northerly base was Lincoln. He now wants to push further forwards and Lincoln,

And the site of York, or Eberrachum, as the Romans call it, the place of yew trees, apparently it means in Brittonic, is strategically a very good one because it's on the obvious route for marching northwards, the Great Northern Road, as it will come to be called.

but it can also be supplied by sea up the Humber. And so this becomes the new base for the 9th Legion. So it moves up from Lincoln to York and it's obviously a launch pad for further expansion northwards. So over the term of Kerialis' governorship, there are clearly repeated battles on both sides of the Pennines, you know, the great spine of uplands that runs up northern England.

And by 72, you have a fort being established in what will become Carlisle. So almost on the doorstep of what today is Scotland. And in 74, Kerialis is replaced by a very, very impressive man called Frontinus, who wrote a number of works that have survived. He was clearly a very proficient engineer. So he wrote an excellent book on aqueducts, which is our main source for how aqueducts functioned. A huge inspiration to Robert Harris's

Dominic, who you talked to on a bonus, didn't you? He wrote a book about Pompeii and Frotinus' book on aqueducts was a massive source for Robert Harris when he was writing that. Very concerned with how you repair leaks, which is one of the themes that runs throughout that novel. He's also very much a military man, so he wrote a book on military stratagems through the ages. And in doing that, he could boast a very formidable track record because he is setting out to absolutely pacify

two upland areas that are on the doorsteps of the kind of the lowlands which is brigantia and wales so brigantia pretty much has been pacified by 77 except perhaps in the late district you know helvellyn and all that very difficult to sort out so people who've been to the late district may have visited the roman fort at hard knot that's built you know several decades later it's a sign that

That is the one region of Northern England that remains difficult for the Romans to pin down. And of course, Wales has been a constant source of stress for a succession of governors and frontiners. He's doing his bit. So he found two massive new legionary fortresses, one at Celeon and one at Chester. The Roman remains in those two sites are still very impressive to this day. More forts across Wales.

And the reason why I think Frontinus is particularly interested in seeing Wales pacified is because as an engineer, he's interested in all the mineral wealth that Wales has to offer, all the gold, the silver, the lead and so on. And so he's absolutely determined to secure them. So on this, people like Frontinus, my sense had always been that Britain was a complete backwater in the Roman Empire and that basically a posting there was a demotion, like being sent to run one of Goldhanger's other podcasts, Tom. Yeah.

But no.

Britain is the rest is history of the Roman stable, is it? Because actually some of the people who are being sent to run Britain are absolutely tip-top people. Is that right? Well, of course, there are kind of recalcitrant and turbulent elements in the rest is history who need a whip hand to rein them in. So maybe to that extent, I think there's a sense that Britain is the most challenging province to administer. And so it's not Syria or Egypt, which really are the kind of the plum postings.

because you can get rich there, basically, and it's not going to be too stressful. But Britain is where you send your most competent people, the guys you can trust to do a good job. And that reflects the fact that

In Britain, a governor needs to be a very proficient general. There's a lot of fighting to do. But you also need to be very good as a civil administrator. So that's where Suetonius Paulinus fell down. He was a brilliant general, but he was absolutely hopeless at kind of pacifying territories that had been conquered and kind of introducing them to civilization, as the Romans would define it. By the 70s, you have the war zone in the north. This is targeted for conquest.

But by this period, the lowlands in the south are starting to recover from the depredations of the conquest and Boudicca's rebellion.

This matters because you can't essentially fund the campaigns that have to be launched without extracting a bit of wealth from the lowland provinces. You know, you need that. So that's why I think in 77, when Frontinus is recalled by Vespasian, he sends as the new governor, a man who really couldn't be better qualified for the job. So this is a man who,

called Gnaeus Julius Agricola. We've mentioned him various points throughout the series so far, but just to give a bit more background on him, he comes from a long line of Roman citizens in southern Gaul. He'd been a student in Massilia, present-day Marseille, so that was the home of Pythias. So perhaps it fostered an early interest in the northern reaches of the ocean. Very experienced in British affairs, we've already said he served under Paulinus during the Boudiccan revolt and

and with him in Wales. He'd commanded a legion under both Balanus and Kerialis. He'd then been given experience as a governor by Vespasian in Aquitaine in Gaul. Essentially, he has every attribute and level of experience that Vespasian would want in a man charged with the ultimate conquest of the whole of the island. And so it's Agricola who is now in a position

to solve all kinds of mysteries that Pythias had hinted at, that subsequent geographers had hinted at. Is Britain an island? If it is, what lies beyond Britain? Can the whole of the landmass be brought under Roman rule? What about Ireland, this other great island, you know, just across the sea? And it's Agricola's mission, clearly, to provide answers to all these questions and to

It's a measure of how challenging this mission is, but also how effective Agricola is. He will end up serving a term as governor for seven years, which is completely unprecedented. And it witnesses seismic changes in the course of the Roman conquest of Britain. So Gnaeus Julius Agricola arrives in Britain in the year 77 and come back after the break to find out what happens next.

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Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The Britons readily submit to military service, the payment of tribute and the other obligations imposed by our imperial administration, provided that there is no abuse. This they bitterly resent, for they are broken into obedience, but not as yet to slavery.

So that was Tacitus, the great Roman historian, in his biography of Agricola, the man we introduced at the end of the first half. And Tacitus wrote that in about 98, in AD 98. It's a great sort of eulogy to his father-in-law and a portrait of Agricola as the ideal Roman governor. So brilliant at the arts of war, but also the arts of kind of peace and civil administration and so on. But Tom, I see in your notes, you say it's darker and more subtle than that.

a portrayal of empire itself as a kind of poison. So what do you mean by that? The passage that we opened this episode with, the description of empire as a kind of spacious form of robbery and plunder and rape, and that the Romans create a wilderness and call it peace. This is in the Agricola. Tacitus is writing it. And

Well, we'll see what he means by it, what his perspective on the empire is. But it is clear as well that he hugely admires his father-in-law, as well he should. You know, there is inevitably some revisionism about Agricola's record. There's surprisingly few inscriptions that bolster what Tacitus claims for him.

But the evidence is clear. He's a very, very formidable figure because we do know that he does end up going very, very far north indeed. But before he launches his campaign into Caledonia, he first has to finish off the kind of the running sore that has been Wales. And because he had served with Suetonius Paulinus there, both in the kind of the highlands of northern Wales and in the attack on Anglesey,

you know, he has a good sense of what it would take to finish this campaign off. So according to Tacitus, he attacks the Ordovicians who were the tribal grouping in the north of Wales, directly up in their kind of their mountain fastnesses, leading his men from the front. Tacitus writes, he cut to pieces almost the whole fighting force of the tribe. Having done that, he then attacks Anglesey, finishing off the job that Paulinus had been distracted from doing by the news of the Boudiccan revolt.

doesn't have boats on this occasion, but does have the Batavians who strap on their armour, jump into the sea, wade across, and it's curtains for all resistance on Anglesey. And it's the measure of the kind of the renown and the mystique that this ancient stronghold of the Druids has in Rome that this is greeted with great enthusiasm back in the capital. And there's a kind of coin is minted showing a trousered figure from Anglesey kneeling down in the ground and accepting defeat.

And this is the last mention that we get in classical texts of campaigning in Wales. So from this point, we can basically assume that Wales has been pacified. And the way that it's done is, again, it's a bit like the way that Edward I, a thousand years and more, will pacify Wales. He does it by building forts, strongholds, places that essentially can kind of act like fetters thrown across the landscape. So...

The gap between forts in Wales are kind of rarely more than about 15 miles. The main corridors of movement between them are all very, very tightly controlled. To quote David Mattingly in his book, it's the first book in the New Penguin History of Britain, an imperial possession. Brilliant book.

The Roman deployment was designed in part to control the spaces between the major British peoples rather than simply occupying their heartlands. By segregating people and supervising contact between them, Rome applied the principle of divide and rule. And those forts remain occupied up until about the 160s. So essentially, Agricola finishes off the job. And that means that he's all set for...

further north. But we said how it's important that a governor be effective as a campaigner, but he also has to heal the wounds. In the lowlands, he has to kind of fatten the sheep up, ready to be fleeced. And I think that because he had lived through the

he is alert to the feelings of injustice that the rebels had felt. And so, I mean, again, if we can rely on Tacitus, and I see no reason not to, he makes a point of ironing out kind of palpable injustices. So Tacitus says that he never showed favouritism in his appointments. The best, he was sure, would best justify his trust. So he's keen to have

people who are honest, people who can be trusted not to go around kind of, you know, whipping and raping leading British figures. The only question though here, Tom, is how much can we trust a book written by his son-in-law that's a deliberate hagiography of him? I think because there are no further rebellions and because Tacitus describes Agricola fostering the arts of civilisation, by which he means essentially, I guess, Romanisation,

in the southern lowlands and the archaeological evidence backs this up. So Tacitus tells us that Agricola encourages the elites to learn Latin, to wear the toga, to enjoy fine dining. You know, this is the classic approach that the British in India will adopt, encouraging leading figures in India to speak English, to play cricket, to buy Rolls Royces, whatever.

And, you know, it's not coincidence because, of course, all the British administrators have read the curricula. So there is a kind of possibly a kind of direct influence there. And also what he's doing is he is encouraging the process of urbanization because the Romans need cities if they're going to make the province pay. So London is the classic example of a boomtown. And with Classicarnus' sponsorship,

It's already started to recover. So in AD 65, we have the earliest known mention of its name. It appears on one of the Bloomberg tablet documents that we mentioned found in the Walbrook. But even before Agricola arrives, the forum and an amphitheater has been constructed. And by the time that Agricola is there, it's already become the largest city in Britain. It's well on its way to becoming the imperial capital, although Camulodonum holds that position till the early second century. And its wealth is tribute to

to the economic benefits that Britain's integration into the empire brings because the combination of a kind of unitary state at peace in southern Britain combined with access to markets on the continent means that London is almost inevitably going to boom.

It's the obvious kind of nodal point within Britain. And its docks mean that, you know, ships from Gaul and so on can come there. So its growth is unsurprising. There's one other urban centre that seems to grow organically and naturally in this period under Agricola. And this is Aquae Sulis, which is Bath. And the reason for that is that it has the springs, the hot springs. And so it's a perfect place.

for baths and so that grows as well. But the thing about other urban settlements in Britain is that they're pretty all artificial.

They're artificial in the way that, you know, a McDonald's in an American camp in Afghanistan is artificial. It's the kind of place that if the Romans weren't there, it wouldn't last. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, looking way ahead, when Roman rule collapses in Britain, those towns go to rack and ruin very, very quickly. So in other words, their foundations are very shallow from the very beginning, because you said looking ahead. I mean, you're looking three centuries ahead or whatever, right?

In all that time, they don't really put down enough deep enough roots to survive once the colonial power has gone. No, and that's why, you know, again, Tacitus is bigging up Agricola, but I'm sure it's not just Agricola. All the governors are doing it. But Tacitus says of Agricola, he gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses because it wouldn't happen without Roman encouragement. We've not talked at all about...

How many Romans actually are in Britain? People don't move to Britain voluntarily, presumably, in great numbers. I think they do if they're merchants, if they're suppliers. Of course, the military. We saw lots of veterans settling at Camledonum. That didn't work out well. But veterans continue to do that. But people aren't generally sitting there in Spain or southern France or somewhere and saying, I'd like to move to Britain. No, they're not. Because what's there for you? Britain remains despised by the Romans, certainly the Roman ruling classes.

right up to the end. So even in the late fourth century, you have...

poets in Gaul who just find it hilarious, the idea that you might have a poet in Britain, like Cicero had been. I mean, nothing has really changed. And I think the sense of Britain as a frontier state, it endures. Yeah, so there's a guy called Stuart Laycock who wrote a book called Britannia, Failed State, and then another book on Roman Britain, in which he essentially argues that the tribal groupings persist in a much stronger way than people have thought, and that the

But equally, Britain will always be heavily garrisoned. And so that means that as long as there are successful armies there, there are opportunities for a kind of simulacrum of classical Mediterranean civilization to be planted there. And that matters because, you know, just to reiterate, you need these urban centers if you are going to have a proper taxation system.

And taxation system is crucial to the successful functioning of the province. And you can't have a taxation system in the Roman opinion without a census. So we know that from, you know, from the New Testament. It's why the story of the Holy Family going to Bethlehem is kind of faintly credible. And

Wherever the Romans go, they hold a census. Agricola, we're told by Tacitus, does this. Records are compiled, stored in London, which has already become the financial capital. And, you know, by the standards of a pre-modern system, this is amazing. I mean, it's a very, very sophisticated system.

framework for extorting money out of conquered peoples and provides a kind of template for subsequent imperial systems and it establishes a template as well for a grickler's terms of office so in the winter he operates on building baths or you know holding censuses and sorting out tax and the summer he goes off to war so this

This is the great project for which he's best known. The mission that Vespasian has given him, which is the conquest of Caledonia. As you said, the Flavian dynasty see this as their mission from the gods. Of course, Vespasian dies in 79. He's succeeded by his son Titus. And Titus is a little bit like, I guess, any new emperor, a bit like Claudius. Right at the beginning of this story, he needs the boost of conquest to give him legitimacy.

And so that presumably lies behind Agricola's Enterprise. It does. And by 80, so that's the second year of Titus's rule, when he inaugurates the Colosseum back in Rome, one of the beasts that is featured in the inaugural games is a bear from Caledonia.

There's a criminal who's kind of crucified and the bear is encouraged to devour his intestines. And this is seen as all very exciting. And the fact that you have a bear from Caledonia imprisoned within the arena symbolically is an illustration to the Roman people that not just the beasts, but the land and the peoples that live on the land have now been subordinated to.

And this is seen as an amazing feat because to Roman geographers, Caledonia is the epitome of barbarism. They describe it as being one continual forest, which of course it isn't. But by casting it as a forest, they're essentially saying, you know, it is absolutely the pits. They completely take for granted that its inhabitants are beyond savage. You know, these are barbarians who are even larger boned than the Britons in the south. They're orange haired.

Pomponius Mela, who's a geographer writing back in the time of Claudius, he describes the inhabitants of Caledonia as being uncouth, more ignorant of what makes for civilization than people anywhere in the world, almost wholly lacking in respect for the gods. And the literal meaning of Caledonia seems to be

Hard men, hard land. Yeah. Made in Scotland from girders. That kind of image. And the orange hair. They pick up on the orange hair so early on. They do. So by 81, which is four years into his term of office, Agricola has secured a frontier that is spanning the Clyde and the Forth. So that's basically between Edinburgh and Glasgow now. It's where the Antonine Wall will run in due course. And from here, he's in a position to scope out

you know, Caledonia to the north, the Highlands, but also Ireland, you know, which isn't far, kind of within, you know, you can see it from the southern tip of Scotland. And Ireland in Agricola's time is to Britain what Britain was to Gaul back in Julius Caesar's time. So

you know, as in Caesar's time, merchants going to Britain can report back to the imperial authorities in Gaul. So you have merchants, Roman merchants, going to Ireland and reporting back to Agricola. And Agricola has established treaties of friendship with various Irish leaders. You have an Irish king who's been thrown out, who takes refuge with Agricola, asks him to intervene. So this is very, very familiar from

both the time of Julius Caesar and Claudius. These are all the opportunities that the Romans need to launch an invasion. And in fact, according to Tacitus, Agricola was very tempted. So Tacitus writes, I've often heard Agricola say that Ireland could be reduced and held by a single legion with a fair-sized force of auxiliaries, and that it would be easier to hold Britain if it were completely surrounded by Roman armies, so that liberty was banished from its sight.

Fortunately for the Irish, Agricola decides, you know, he doesn't have time because his focus is Caledonia. That's what Titus back in Rome wants him to do. And so Ireland is left alone. And in 81, when Titus dies and is succeeded by his brother Domitian, and Domitian, unlike Titus, has not served in Britain, in fact, hasn't served in a military context anywhere.

he has even more reason to want great military glory that he can trumpet. And so this means that essentially Agricola has been told, get on with it. I want all of Britain conquered. And so

This is what Agricola sets out to do. And he pursues a two-pronged strategy by land and by sea. So by land, advancing along the kind of the lowland strip on the eastern flank of Scotland. So leaving the highlands, you know, the mountainous regions well alone. He doesn't even attempt to go into them. And he reaches almost all the way up to the Murray Forth. So up to Culloden, of course. What does he find?

As in, obviously, there's so much we can't know because there aren't really many written sources other than Tacitus. But is our sense that what he finds in what's now Scotland is pretty similar to what he finds in Wales or northern England, i.e. the village settlements, people painted blue, all that kind of stuff? Or is it very different? Let me read you what Ronald Hutton in his book, Pagan Britain, has to say on this.

So this is a description of Britain in the late Iron Age, just before the Roman invasion. And he says, there's the southeast itself, you know, very Romanized, imported Roman or Roman style goods. Then north and west of this area, so the Midlands, Yorkshire, so on. A zone that had smaller settlements and farmsteads, numerous enclosures and a greater emphasis on pastoral farming.

The rest of the island, so that would include Wales and it would certainly include Caledonia, exhibited much more continuity with the earlier Iron Age, lacking coins, lacking continental manufacturers and indeed large central places of assembly. So political units, like when a greek leader gets into Caledonia, are there tribal strongholds? Are there warlords? No, it's kind of homesteads, fortified enclosures.

on a much, much kind of smaller scale. So therefore, on one level, kind of easier to conquer, I suppose, but on another, kind of impossible because you can't pin them down. There's no central authority. No capital, no king, nothing that you can capture to end the war. Yes, and...

You can be kind of lulled by this, I suppose, into thinking that, you know, the Caledonians are like midges. They're kind of annoying, but they can't ultimately do you that much damage. Except, of course, there is always the risk that if you go crashing up there with your legions...

it will encourage people who previously had been isolated and disparate to gather together to try and form a kind of guerrilla army that can then attack the invaders. And this is actually what happens in 82. So this is the sixth year of Agricola's term of office as governor. The Caledonians launch a night attack against the hapless 9th Legion who are always regularly being mauled. And

The 9th Legion is taken by surprise. Their camp might almost have been overrun, except that Agricola is able to come and reinforce them. And Agricola turns it to his own ends by saying, well, you know, you've been given a bloody nose. We've got to get on and get revenge for that. And the 9th and all the other legions go cheer and say, yeah, let's go there. Let's get to the ends of the world. And...

According to Tacitus, this is how Agricola gets his men to share in the dream of conquering the whole of Britain. So, you know, it's a challenge. There's no question about it. But Agricola has his instructions. And so the building of infrastructure, roads, forts, it's worked in Wales. There's no obvious reason why it wouldn't work in Scotland. And there's also an additional factor, which is that Agricola has got a fleet.

And this is central to his whole plan because it means that his army can be supplied by sea and also that the fleet can be used to kind of ferry small groups of soldiers up and down to wherever they're needed. So if there's a stronghold on an isolated promontory or something like that.

the soldiers can be taken there. Of course, for the Romans who were essentially used to much calmer seas, the North Sea off the Scottish coast can be very, very frightening. And Tacitus describes how soldiers and the sailors, when they meet up, they kind of compete by saying, you know, which is more dangerous, the Caledonians or the breakers and the rocks of the sea. And

Tacitus also reports that the Britons themselves, so the people in Caledonia, are much more intimidated by the fleet than they are by the army. So he writes, So by 88...

Agricola is ready for what he hopes will be the final push by both land and sea. So shall I read you what I wrote? I think everybody would really love that. I think they would. So repeatedly confronted by Roman steel, the Caledonians had melted away into bogs and woods as insubstantial. So it seemed to the frustrated invaders as the cloud that veiled the highland peaks.

But now at last they were brought to battle. And this Dominic is Mount Graupius. Don't know where it is exactly, but probably in the vicinity of Aberdeen, perhaps. And this is where Calgarcus supposedly gives his great talk. Did he even exist? Don't know. I mean, there is a theory that the name is derived from the armour, the sword man, the armour keeper, Venutius, the Brigantian chief.

So that's, I don't know, who knows. But what we do know is that at last Agricola has managed to encourage the Caledonians to form a kind of coherent army with chariots and everything. And he's done this essentially by kind of raiding the length of the coastline so that the Caledonians feel they've got no choice but to try and see the invader off in pitch battle. And

They assemble on the foothills of Mount Graupius. There's lots of yelling, chanting, cheering, kind of shenanigans with chariots zipping up and down. And then the next day, the battle is joined and it's actually the Batavians, you know, these German auxiliaries who've been a feature of the conquest right from the very beginning, who take the lead against the enemy. And then it's the cavalry that finished them off after the legions have essentially kind of cut them to pieces. And the next day,

at dawn, Agricola sends horsemen out to reconnoiter the vicinity to see if there's any fighting that needs to be done. There isn't. So Tacitus writes in kind of chilling terms, the silence of desolation reigned on all sides. The hills were abandoned. Distant homesteads put to the torch. Not a soul was to be seen by our scouts. And the estimate of casualties about 10,000. I mean, a real massacre again. And so

Agricola assumes this is it. This is the great battle he's been looking for. He takes hostages. He goes back south for the winter, but he leaves his men in situ north of the Firth of Forth for the first time. They are commissioned to build more forts, to construct more roads, to absolutely nail down the occupation. And at the foot of a glen beside the River Tay,

A place that's now called Inchtut Hill. They build the most northerly legionary base ever constructed. You know, so large enough to host 5,000 men. There's nothing really there to see now except for ridges because it's all covered over in grass. But it is actually the best preserved legionary fortress anywhere to be seen in the Roman Empire. It's an amazing place to go and wander around. You really feel the kind of the ghosts there. It's built to be the headquarters of a permanent occupation force. So...

an amazing place. Meanwhile, by sea, the Roman fleet is heading northwards and the aim is to demonstrate that Britain is indeed an island. So there's a sense you've conquered the land, now you conquer the ocean, which has always been seen by the Romans as a dimension of the supernatural. But now Agricola is all out. So they head northwards

north of Scotland. They see Orkney. They land there. They subdue it. They even glimpse Shetland, which Agricola said, don't go and attack that. In his reports back, he says, we have glimpsed Thule, Ultima Thule. You know, I mean, amazing.

They then complete their circumnavigation of Caledonia and they demonstrate that Britain is indeed an island. And back in Rome, you know, this is kind of space race stuff again. This is moon landing stuff. It's greeted with even more enthusiasm than the news of the victory at Mons Grappius. And

Poets are all over it. The furthest limits of the world have surrendered around which the ebbing flood tide roars. Great stuff. Well, they're not wrong. I mean, these are people whose frontier is on the Euphrates or in the Sahara. To go as far as they've gone northwards is an extraordinary feat. Yeah. So Agricola can now write to Domitian and say, you know, mission completed.

The entire island is now peaceful. It's now secure. It's now conquered. And so Domitian takes him at his word and calls him back. And Grickley goes back to Rome. He's given signal honours. He's given a statue in the Forum of Augustus where all the statues are of the greatest heroes from the city's history. So, I mean, this is an amazing honour, right?

And in Britain itself, the completion of the conquest of the island is commemorated by the construction of an enormous four-sided triumphal arch at Richborough, which is where Aulus Plautius and his legions had originally landed and is still seen as the kind of the gateway to Britain. So rather like the gateway of India in Bombay, again, the British are conscious of this as kind of a precedent.

And Virgil, who'd written Empire Without Limits, Imperium, Sine Fine, you know, it's looked like this is true. It's happened. The Romans have done it. I said that Inchtoot Hill, this great legionary fortress, is the best preserved, and that's because it only lasts for three years.

And so it's then abandoned and it's like a kind of ghost town. And the reason for this is that there is a massive crisis in the Balkans. People called the Dacians, who are a very menacing military presence beyond the Danube, have crossed into the Balkans.

Domitian needs to staunch this gap in the frontier so he summons one of the four legions from Britain. Caledonia you know is a great trophy but it's not as important as preserving the Roman presence in the Balkans that might be fatal to the entire fabric of the empire and so Caledonia the whole of Caledonia is abandoned and if you go to the National Museum of Scotland

There's this incredible kind of tangle of metal nails that the Romans buried to ensure that the locals wouldn't be able to get hold of it and melt it down and turn it into swords or spearheads or whatever. I mean, it's really amazing. Massive tribute to the scale of the occupation. And also, I'm sure, you know, the sense of disappointment that everybody who'd been involved in the conquest of Caledonia must have felt. So Tacitus is...

I mean, he's absolutely merciless about this. He laments that Britain had no sooner been conquered than it had immediately been given up. He blames Domitian for this. He says that Domitian is jealous of Agricola. You know, he'd rather abandon Caledonia than allow Agricola to enjoy his glory. This is incredibly unfair. Just because strategically...

What is in Caledonia that would make you want to commit? I mean, I don't want to offend our Scottish listeners, but what is there in the first century AD that would mean you would want to commit so many military and financial resources when you have such pressing problems on the Danubian frontier or something which is much more important to you? I mean, Domitian took the only possible decision, didn't he? Tacitus is a great hater. And of course, Dominic, as a historian yourself, that's not something that you would ever...

surrender to. I mean, you love everybody. But Tacitus really hates Domitian and always thinking the worst of him and entirely interprets the withdrawal from Caledonia through the prism of Domitian's personal envy of Agricola. But he also interprets it in another way. And this comes to how Tacitus understands the Roman conquest of Britain and more generally, the whole project of Roman imperialism. Because

As well as blaming Domitian for the abandonment of Caledonia, he also blamed something profounder, which is his notion that the Romans themselves have been sapped

by their very greatness, that they've become soft, that they've become flabby. And this is why he gives this speech to Calgarcus. It's why he admires the Caledonians, actually for the same reason that most Romans despise them, for their very lack of civilization, because this has prevented them from going soft. You know, they remain hard men. That's what Caledonians are.

And this reminds Tacitus very clearly of the traditional Roman values that he is a huge admirer of and which he feels have been lost. And when he describes how Tacitus sponsors the civilizing of the Britons down in the lowlands,

He sees this as essentially being the same process of corruption that has affected the Romans in the capital and across the heartlands of the empire. So the dissipating effects of luxury, Tom. Yeah. And so, again, there's a very, very famous passage where he describes this, you know, the process of wearing togas and having central heating and all that.

So he writes, so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as civilization, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.

And this essentially is the wilderness of which Calgarcus is talking. It's not just the idea of, you know, a battlefield covered in bodies cut to pieces by Roman swords. It's also this idea that everything that makes the Britons hardy and tough is being corroded and destroyed by what the Romans are bringing in to the island.

And so this is why Tacitus is suspicious of empire. It's not for reasons I think that we would recognize today. So, you know, if people are opposed to imperialism, it's not because empires have brought the good life to distant reaches of the world.

It's because empire is seen as being murderous in and of itself. But Tacitus is not lamenting that. You know, he's not condemning the Roman Empire for the reasons that we might. So the 40,000 killed in Boudicca's last battle, the 10,000 killed at Mons Graupius, there may be 250,000. You know, this is the upper limit of David Mattingly's estimate of how many are killed over the 40 years that we've been covering in this series. Probably an equal number enslaved. And if you think that probably the population of Britain in this period

has been estimated at about 2 million. I mean, that's a quarter of people either killed or enslaved in this period. I mean, that is, to us,

a terrifying record of conquest and yet no Roman, including Tacitus, ever expresses regret for that. I mean, quite the opposite. They celebrate it. They're building massive triumphal arches about it. You said that Tacitus' reasons for criticising the empire are not ones where you'd recognise, but they are ones that people would have recognised in the 18th or 19th centuries during the time of the British Empire.

that empire brings wealth, corruption, that you actually lose the very virtues that made you great by achieving greatness, that you become Warren Hastings or you become so rich you're no longer like a big game hunter on the veldt or something. That's very familiar, isn't it? That's in all empires. The fear that empire brings a kind of moral corruption because you're too rich and successful.

I think that there is a definite Tacitian influence on this. Every British imperial administrator would have been familiar with the Agricola, but there's an even more sinister manifestation of this, which is that Tacitus also writes a book about the Germans, who, of course, do not get conquered. They have held the Romans off, unlike the Britons. And in this book, Tacitus pursues the same theme, that the Germans are...

heroic, noble, they have resisted the sapping effects of civilization. And it's this that in the long run will enable them to overcome the Romans. And this is hugely influential on the way that the Nazis understand the patterns of history and the sapping effects of empire. So the thing that's fascinating, I think, about

Roman history, I mean, there's so much that's fascinating about Roman history. One of the sources of fascination is that it is so influential on how subsequent generations in more recent European history come to see the past and therefore the future. So much to think about here. And actually, I think

Let's do a bonus episode, maybe next week, for our Restless History Club members exploring these issues about Roman imperialism and how it has affected the way that subsequent empires have thought about their own project. Because, I mean, you've got loads to say about it. That's a great idea, Dominic. Wonderful. Well, it's actually your idea. That's right, it's a great idea. I'm not going to take any credit for it. But, Tom, just to finish up for our regular listeners...

So this brings to an end our little series about the making of Roman Britain. So just to throw ahead, with the end of Agricola's mission and the withdrawal to what becomes the line of Hadrian's Wall, would it be fair to say, I know this is a ridiculous, oversimplistic generalisation, that to some extent the story is now over for the next 300 years. Of course, things happen in Britain. There are mutinies or there are uprisings or whatever, but by and large...

the story is now settled until, what, the beginning of the 5th century. Would that be fair? Well, we're very lucky that we have as many sources as we do for this period. And it's evident from throwaway lines or from archaeological evidence that there are actually great convulsions continue to happen.

So the Ninth Legion, for instance, which has been repeatedly mauled throughout this story, it vanishes and that inspires the famous story Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe. And there's much debate as to what actually happened to the Ninth Legion, but the fact that we don't really know what happened to it.

is evidence of how many gaps in the record there are. And over the course of the centuries that follow, right the way up to the end of Roman Britain, Britain politically is very significant. It has about a tenth of the entire armed forces in the empire as a garrison. And in the long run, this means that it becomes, Saint Jerome describes it in the fourth century as the womb of tyrants, by which he means people

It's a place that fosters would-be Caesars who are endlessly kind of launching attempts to establish themselves as empires throughout the third and fourth centuries. And actually, I don't think it brings the history of Roman Britain to an end. So maybe a story to pursue in some later episode. Certainly we should look at Hadrian's Wall. Definitely. And of course, Britain plays a part in the rise of Constantine the Great, doesn't it? He does, yes. Yeah.

And Helena, of course, comes from St. Helena. His mother, of course, comes from Essex, as everyone knows. An Essex girl. And, of course, the end of Roman Britain is a great story. So, brilliant. We'll be back in Roman Britain for our club members with a discussion about Roman imperialism and its effect on later empires. But for now, Tom, a tour de force as always. Thank you very much, and we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye. Au revoir. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girl, four for a boy.

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