by Daisy Dunn
Who were the original inhabitants of Britain, whether they were indigenous or foreign, is, as usual among barbarians, little known. Their physical characteristics are various, and from these conclusions may be drawn. The red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia point clearly to a German origin. The dark complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are an evidence that Iberians of a former date crossed over and occupied these parts. Those who are nearest to the Gauls are also like them, either from the permanent influence of original descent, or, because in countries which run out so far to meet each other, climate has produced similar physical qualities. But a general survey inclines me to believe that the Gauls established themselves in an island so near to them. Their religious belief may be traced in the strongly-marked British superstition. The language differs but little; there is the same boldness in challenging danger, and, when it is near, the same timidity in shrinking from it. The Britons, however, exhibit more spirit, as being a people whom a long peace has not yet enervated. Indeed we have understood that even the Gauls were once renowned in war; but, after a while, sloth following on ease crept over them, and they lost their courage along with their freedom. This too has happened to the long-conquered tribes of Britain; the rest are still what the Gauls once were.
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Their strength is in infantry. Some tribes fight also with the chariot. The higher in rank is the charioteer; the dependants fight. They were once ruled by kings, but are now divided under chieftains into factions and parties. Our greatest advantage in coping with tribes so powerful is that they do not act in concert. Seldom is it that two or three states meet together to ward off a common danger. Thus, while they fight singly, all are conquered.
Their sky is obscured by continual rain and cloud. Severity of cold is unknown. The days exceed in length those of our part of the world; the nights are bright, and in the extreme north so short that between sunlight and dawn you can perceive but a slight distinction. It is said that, if there are no clouds in the way, the splendour of the sun can be seen throughout the night, and that he does not rise and set, but only crosses the heavens. The truth is, that the low shadow thrown from the flat extremities of the earth’s surface does not raise the darkness to any height, and the night thus fails to reach the sky and stars.
With the exception of the olive and vine, and plants which usually grow in warmer climates, the soil will yield, and even abundantly, all ordinary produce. It ripens indeed slowly, but is of rapid growth, the cause in each case being the same, namely, the excessive moisture of the soil and of the atmosphere. Britain contains gold and silver and other metals, as the prize of conquest. The ocean, too, produces pearls, but of a dusky and bluish hue. Some think that those who collect them have not the requisite skill, as in the Red Sea the living and breathing pearl is torn from the rocks, while in Britain they are gathered just as they are thrown up. I could myself more readily believe that the natural properties of the pearls are in fault than our keenness for gain.
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The Britons themselves bear cheerfully the conscription, the taxes, and the other burdens imposed on them by the Empire, if there be no oppression. Of this they are impatient; they are reduced to subjection, not as yet to slavery. The deified Julius, the very first Roman who entered Britain with an army, though by a successful engagement he struck terror into the inhabitants and gained possession of the coast, must be regarded as having indicated rather than transmitted the acquisition to future generations. Then came the civil wars, and the arms of our leaders were turned against their country, and even when there was peace, there was a long neglect of Britain. This Augustus spoke of as policy, Tiberius as an inherited maxim. That Caius Caesar meditated an invasion of Britain is perfectly clear, but his purposes, rapidly formed, were easily changed, and his vast attempts on Germany had failed. Claudius was the first to renew the attempt, and conveyed over into the island some legions and auxiliaries, choosing Vespasian to share with him the campaign, whose approaching elevation had this beginning. Several tribes were subdued and kings made prisoners, and destiny learnt to know its favourite.
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Aulus Plautius was the first governor of consular rank, and Ostorius Scapula the next. Both were famous soldiers, and by degrees the nearest portions of Britain were brought into the condition of a province, and a colony of veterans was also introduced. Some of the states were given to king Cogidumnus, who lived down to our day a most faithful ally. So was maintained the ancient and long-recognised practice of the Roman people, which seeks to secure among the instruments of dominion even kings themselves. Soon after, Didius Gallus consolidated the conquests of his predecessors, and advanced a very few positions into parts more remote, to gain the credit of having enlarged the sphere of government. Didius was succeeded by Veranius, who died within the year. Then Suetonius Paullinus enjoyed success for two years; he subdued several tribes and strengthened our military posts. Thus encouraged, he made an attempt on the island of Mona, as a place from which the rebels drew reinforcements; but in doing this he left his rear open to attack.
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Relieved from apprehension by the legate’s absence, the Britons dwelt much among themselves on the miseries of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion. “All we get by patience,” they said, “is that heavier demands are exacted from us, as from men who will readily submit. A single king once ruled us; now two are set over us; a legate to tyrannise over our lives, a procurator to tyrannise over our property. Their quarrels and their harmony are alike ruinous to their subjects. The centurions of the one, the slaves of the other, combine violence with insult. Nothing is now safe from their avarice, nothing from their lust. In war it is the strong who plunders; now, it is for the most part by cowards and poltroons that our homes are rifled, our children torn from us, the conscription enforced, as though it were for our country alone that we could not die. For, after all, what a mere handful of soldiers has crossed over, if we Britons look at our own numbers. Germany did thus actually shake off the yoke, and yet its defence was a river, not the ocean. With us, fatherland, wives, parents, are the motives to war; with them, only greed and profligacy. They will surely fly, as did the now deified Julius, if once we emulate the valour of our sires. Let us not be panic-stricken at the result of one or two engagements. The miserable have more fury and greater resolution. Now even the gods are beginning to pity us, for they are keeping away the Roman general, and detaining his army far from us in another island. We have already taken the hardest step; we are deliberating. And indeed, in all such designs, to dare is less perilous than to be detected.”
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Rousing each other by this and like language, under the leadership of Boudicea, a woman of kingly descent (for they admit no distinction of sex in their royal successions), they all rose in arms. They fell upon our troops, which were scattered on garrison duty, stormed the forts, and burst into the colony itself, the head-quarters, as they thought, of tyranny. In their rage and their triumph, they spared no variety of a barbarian’s cruelty. Had not Paullinus on hearing of the outbreak in the province rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost. By one successful engagement, he brought it back to its former obedience, though many, troubled by the conscious guilt of rebellion and by particular dread of the legate, still clung to their arms. Excellent as he was in other respects, his policy to the conquered was arrogant, and exhibited the cruelty of one who was avenging private wrongs. Accordingly Petronius Turpilianus was sent out to initiate a milder rule. A stranger to the enemy’s misdeeds and so more accessible to their penitence, he put an end to old troubles, and, attempting nothing more, handed the province over to Trebellius Maximus. Trebellius, who was somewhat indolent, and never ventured on a campaign, controlled the province by a certain courtesy in his administration. Even the barbarians now learnt to excuse many attractive vices, and the occurrence of the civil war gave a good pretext f
or inaction. But we were sorely troubled with mutiny, as troops habituated to service grew demoralised by idleness. Trebellius, who had escaped the soldiers’ fury by flying and hiding himself, governed henceforth on sufferance, a disgraced and humbled man. It was a kind of bargain; the soldiers had their licence, the general had his life; and so the mutiny cost no bloodshed. Nor did Vettius Bolanus, during the continuance of the civil wars, trouble Britain with discipline. There was the same inaction with respect to the enemy, and similar unruliness in the camp, only Bolanus, an upright man, whom no misdeeds made odious, had secured affection in default of the power of control.
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When however Vespasian had restored to unity Britain as well as the rest of the world, in the presence of great generals and renowned armies the enemy’s hopes were crushed. They were at once panic-stricken by the attack of Petilius Cerialis on the state of the Brigantes, said to be the most prosperous in the entire province. There were many battles, some by no means bloodless, and his conquests, or at least his wars, embraced a large part of the territory of the Brigantes. Indeed he would have altogether thrown into the shade the activity and renown of any other successor; but Julius Frontinus was equal to the burden, a great man as far as greatness was then possible, who subdued by his arms the powerful and warlike tribe of the Silures, surmounting the difficulties of the country as well as the valour of the enemy.
THE GREAT FIRE OF ROME
Annals
Tacitus
Translated by J. C. Yardley, 2008
Every schoolchild knows that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. But did he? The historian Tacitus records that the emperor was away from the city when the fire actually broke out in AD 64. He also notes the ease with which rumours of Nero’s behaviour spread after the conflagration had taken hold. Tacitus’ younger contemporary Suetonius (see Story 70) suggested that Nero so despised Rome’s old buildings and narrow streets that he decided to burn them down. To deflect blame for the disaster from himself, said Tacitus, Nero pointed his finger at the Christians, whom he proceeded to persecute. Despite writing over half a century after the events, Tacitus captured perfectly in his description the sense of panic and displacement that the fire must have inspired in the people of Rome.
It started in the part of the Circus adjacent to the Palatine and Caelian hills. There, amidst shops containing merchandise of a combustible nature, the fire immediately gained strength as soon as it broke out and, whipped up by the wind, engulfed the entire length of the Circus. For there were no dwellings with solid enclosures, no temples ringed with walls, and no other obstacle of any kind in its way. The blaze spread wildly, overrunning the flat areas first, and then climbing to the heights before once again ravaging the lower sections. It outstripped all defensive measures because of the speed of its deadly advance and the vulnerability of the city, with its narrow streets twisting this way and that, and with its irregular blocks of buildings, which was the nature of old Rome.
In addition, there was the wailing of panic-stricken women; there were people, very old and very young; there were those trying to save themselves and those trying to save others, dragging invalids along or waiting for them; and these people, some hanging back, some rushing along, hindered all relief efforts. And often, as they looked back, they found themselves under attack from the flames at their sides or in front; or if they got away to a neighbouring district, that also caught fire, and even those areas they had believed far distant they found to be in the same plight. Eventually, unsure what to avoid and what to head for, they crowded the roads or scattered over the fields. Even though escape lay open to them, some chose death because they had lost all their property, even their daily livelihood; others did so from love of family members whom they had been unable to rescue. And nobody dared fight the fire: there were repeated threats from numerous people opposing efforts to extinguish it, and others openly hurled in firebrands and yelled that they ‘had their instructions’. This was to give them more freedom to loot, or else they were in fact under orders.
Nero was at Antium at the time, and he did not return to the city until the fire was approaching that building of his by which he had connected the Palatium with the gardens of Maecenas. But stopping the fire from consuming the Palatium, Nero’s house, and everything in the vicinity proved impossible. However, to relieve the homeless and fugitive population Nero opened up the Campus Martius, the monuments of Agrippa, and even his own gardens, and he erected makeshift buildings to house the destitute crowds. Vital supplies were shipped up from Ostia and neighbouring municipalities, and the price of grain was dropped to three sesterces. These were measures with popular appeal, but they proved a dismal failure. For the rumour had spread that, at the very time that the city was ablaze, Nero had appeared on his private stage and sung about the destruction of Troy, drawing a comparison between the sorrows of the present and the disasters of old.
Finally, after five days, the blaze was brought to a halt at the foot of the Esquiline. Buildings had been demolished over a vast area so that the fire’s unremitting violence would be faced only with open ground and bare sky. But before the panic had abated, or the plebs’ hopes had revived, the fire resumed its furious onslaught, though in more open areas of the city. As a result, there were fewer human casualties, but the destruction of temples and porticoes designed as public amenities was more widespread. And that particular conflagration caused a greater scandal because it had broken out on Tigellinus’ Aemilian estates; and it looked as if Nero was seeking the glory of founding a new city, one that was to be named after him. In fact, of the fourteen districts into which Rome is divided, four were still intact, three had been levelled to the ground, and in the other seven a few ruined and charred vestiges of buildings were all that remained.
To put a figure on the houses, tenement buildings, and temples that were lost would be no easy matter. But religious buildings of the most time-honoured sanctity were burned down: the temple that Servius Tullius had consecrated to Luna; the Ara Maxima and sanctuary that the Arcadian Evander had consecrated to Hercules Praesens; the temple of Jupiter Stator promised in a vow by Romulus; the palace of Numa; and the shrine of Vesta holding the Penates of the Roman people. Other casualties were rich spoils taken through our many victories; fine specimens of Greek art; and antique and authentic works of literary genius. As a result, though surrounded by the great beauty of the city as it grew again, older people still remember many things that could not be replaced. There were those who observed that this fire started on 19 July, which was the date on which the Senones captured and burned the city. Others have taken their interest so far as to compute equal numbers of years, months, and days between the two fires.
In fact, Nero took advantage of the homeland’s destruction to build a palace. It was intended to inspire awe, not so much with precious stones and gold (long familiar and commonplace in the life of luxury) as with its fields, lakes, and woods that replicated the open countryside on one side, and open spaces and views on the other. The architects and engineers were Severus and Celer, who had the ingenuity and audacity to attempt to create by artifice what nature had denied, and to amuse themselves with the emperor’s resources. For they had undertaken to dig a navigable channel from Lake Avernus all the way to the mouths of the Tiber, taking it along the desolate shoreline or through the barrier of the hills. In fact, one comes across no aquifer here to provide a water supply. There are only the Pomptine marshes, all else being cliffs or arid ground—and even if forcing a way through this were possible, it would have involved an extreme and unjustifiable effort. But Nero was ever one to seek after the incredible. He attempted to dig out the heights next to Avernus, and traces of his futile hopes remain to this day.
As for space that remained in the city after Nero’s house-building, it was not built up in a random and haphazard manner, as after the burning by the Gauls. Instead, there were rows of streets properly surveyed, spacious thoroughfares, buildings with height limits and open areas. Porticoe
s were added, too, to protect the façade of the tenement buildings. These porticoes Nero undertook to erect from his own pocket, and he also undertook to return to their owners the building lots, cleared of debris. He added grants, pro-rated according to a person’s rank and domestic property, and established time limits within which houses or tenement buildings were to be completed for claimants to acquire the money.
He earmarked the Ostian marshes as the dumping ground for the debris, and ordered ships that had ferried grain up the Tiber to return downstream loaded with debris. The actual edifices were, for a specific portion of their structure, to be free of wooden beams and reinforced with rock from Gabii or Alba, since such stone is fireproof. In addition, because individuals had had the effrontery to siphon off water, watchmen would be employed to ensure a fuller public supply, and at more points. Everyone was also to have appliances accessible for fighting fires, and houses were not to have party walls but each be enclosed by its own. These measures were welcomed for their practicality, and they also enhanced the aesthetics of the new city. There were, however, those who believed that the old configuration was more conducive to health, inasmuch as the narrowness of the streets and the height of the buildings meant they were less easily penetrated by the torrid sunlight. Now, they claimed, the broad open spaces, with no shade to protect them, were baking in a more oppressive heat.
Such were the precautions taken as a result of human reasoning. The next step was to find ways of appeasing the gods, and the Sibylline Books were consulted. Under their guidance, supplicatory prayers were offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpina, and there were propitiatory ceremonies performed for Juno by married women, first on the Capitol, and then on the closest part of the shoreline. (From there, water was drawn, and the temple and statue of the goddess were sprinkled with it.) Women who had husbands also held ritual feasts and all-night festivals.