Thus in general Claudius developed an imaginative provincial policy in line with Rome’s better traditions. He extended the frontiers, where he judged this advisable; he promoted good administration (a procurator like Felix in Judaea fell below the average); he suppressed disorders; and by extending citizen and municipal rights he began to raise the provinces nearer to equality with Italy.
5. THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN
Almost a century passed between Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 B.C. and the Claudian conquest in A.D. 43, and during these years the face of Britain had changed somewhat.15 The south-east had been united within the kingdom of the successors of Caesar’s opponent Cassivellaunus, who had moved his capital to Prae Wood above Verulamium (St Albans) and had reigned peacefully until c. 15 B.C. Later Cunobelinus (Cymbeline) overran the territory of the Trinovantes in Essex (whom Julius Caesar had protected against the Catuvellauni), parts of Kent and the middle Thames valley; he thus dominated the south-east. About A.D. 10 he moved his capital to Camulodunum (‘the fortress of Camulos’, the war-god, at Colchester) where it sprawled over some twelve square miles surrounded by dykes. Though essentially an agricultural community, as the corn-ear on the coinage proclaimed, the kingdom of Cunobelinus began to absorb Mediterranean influences. In art an interesting blending of Celtic and classical styles took place, while the British nobles began to demand luxury imports from the Roman world: jewellery, glass, fine pottery, metal-work and wine. These imports were paid for by exports which in the time of Augustus included, so Strabo records, wheat, cattle, hides, slaves, hunting-dogs, gold, silver and iron; of these the metals must have come from beyond the borders of Cunobelinus’ kingdom. The import of goods from Italy and Gaul helped to stimulate the growth of a trading-post on the north bank of the Thames at Londinium. On the death of Cunobelinus his realm was divided between his sons Caratacus and Togodumnus (40–3).
West of this kingdom were rival tribes. Commius, king of the Gallic Atrebates, had deserted Julius Caesar and settled with his followers in Surrey and Kent (see p. 113). Other Gauls had followed his example, settling in Dorset and Hampshire amid peoples of their own culture. Such immigrants gave the name Belgae to the tribe in Wiltshire; they defended their settlements with great ramparts and ditches. Out of these warring tribes there emerged in Surrey and Sussex the realm of a descendant of Commius, named Verica (c. A.D. 10) who maintained himself for thirty years until he was driven out by Cunobelinus and his sons: he fled to Rome to seek help from Claudius, thus following in the steps of the exiled Amminius who had appealed to Gaius two or three years before (see p. 241). The fact that Verica had used the Latin title rex on his coinage suggests that he had had some contact with Rome earlier, even if he fell short of having become a client-king.
This appeal, though not determining Claudius’ policy, will have been timely, since he was already probably contemplating action against Britain, partly in order to restore prestige after Gaius’ fiasco, but primarily no doubt because he wanted and needed military success: the Praetorian Guard had helped him to the throne, but the armies as a whole would like to see the son of the elder Drusus in the field, extending the Empire and reviving Rome’s martial traditions. Lesser motives may have contributed to his decision, as the desire to stamp out Druidism (cf. p. 255) and to acquire wealth from the island. Further, the fact that the Britons replied to Rome’s refusal to extradite some refugees by causing disturbances on the coast of Gaul will have encouraged Claudius to act at once rather than to allow a British ‘question’ to develop in the future, the more so since the thought of annexing the island had been ‘in the air’ from the time of Augustus.
In A.D. 43 four legions were mustered under the command of Aulus Plautius: II Augusta, XIV Gemina and XX Valeria Victrix from the Rhine armies and IX Hispana from Pannonia. Together with their auxiliary troops they numbered some 40,000 men. Unwillingness to leave the quarters they knew led to a temporary refusal to embark, but at last they sailed in three divisions, and finally the main force landed in the safe harbour of Rutupiae (Richborough), where traces of their defensive works still survive. Their first real battle was fought against Caratacus on the Medway, where in a two-days’ engagement Vespasian, commander of the Second Legion, and Hosidius Geta contributed manfully to a decisive victory; Caratacus fled west, while the troops of his dead brother Togidumnus retreated northwards. Plautius then halted the advance at the Thames and waited until Claudius could arrive and lead his troops to a final victory north of the river. Claudius then entered Camulodunum, the old capital of Cunobelinus, established it as the capital of the new province of Britannia, and received the submission of other tribes: Cogidumnus, King of the Regni, whose capital was at Noviomagus (Chichester in Sussex), received Roman citizenship and the title of ‘rex et legatus Augusti’; Prasutagus, king of the Iceni in Norfolk, was also accorded Rome’s friendship. With its flanks thus protected by client-kings, the new province was left to the care of its first governor Plautius, and Claudius returned to Rome where he celebrated a triumph, set up a commemorative arch in the Campus Martius and named his son Britannicus.
Since Caratacus was still at large, building up his strength in Wales, Plautius decided on a threefold advance. The Ninth Legion, acting as the right wing, advanced northwards towards Lindum (Lincoln) and established peaceful relations with Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, who occupied a large part of northern England. A central column marched through the Midlands. Vespasian, who led the Second Legion westwards, reduced Vectis (the Isle of Wight), over twenty native fortresses (oppida), and ‘two powerful tribes’, who will be the Durotriges and Belgae in Dorset and Wiltshire. Archaeological evidence has revealed the grimness of the struggle when the Romans stormed the great fortress of Maiden Castle and has shown how after capturing another fort on Hod Hill (near Blandford) they established a camp of their own on it for legionary detachments and cavalry. Soon the Severn estuary and the Wash had been reached, and it was perhaps Plautius rather than his successor P. Ostorius Scapula (47–52) who created a military frontier line (limes) based on the Fosse Way from Exeter to Lincoln with supporting forts, thus protecting S.E. England. Disturbances among the Silures of S. Wales and the Brigantes, however convinced Ostorius that to hold the lowlands required further advance. He therefore decided to disarm all tribes south of the Fosse Way and to advance beyond it into the gap between the headwaters of the Severn and Trent. He intervened against the Brigantes, and attacked the Deceangli of Flintshire (49), tribes that were perhaps acting together; he probably advanced his Midland troops to Uriconium (Wroxeter) for this campaign. He then turned to the Silures, with whom Caratacus had taken refuge, and established a legionary base at Glevum (Gloucester). But Caratacus, who had no intention of being caught like a rat in a trap, moved to the district of the Ordovices in N. Wales. Here, however, he was defeated in a pitched battle (perhaps near Caersws), and although he escaped to Cartimandua, the Brigantian queen handed him over to the Romans (51). Claudius, however, treated him well and kept him in honourable confinement in Rome. Thus Ostorius had done much to advance and strengthen the new province. He also established a colony of veterans at Camulodunum, where the city was being developed on Roman lines as a worthy capital, with a temple of Claudius as the centre of the imperial-cult. This was the first colony in the province; it is uncertain whether Claudius gave the charter of a municipium to Verulamium. Thus Rome had gained firm control of S.E. England, with legions at Gloucester and (soon) at Lincoln to cover the Trent-Severn frontier, within which the autonomous client-kingdoms of the Regni and Iceni were allowed to exist. The whole area was now opened up to the peaceful penetration of Roman influences.16
6. COURT HISTORY UNDER CLAUDIUS
These various achievements of Claudius are of far greater importance than the palace intrigues to which Tacitus and lesser writers devote much attention. Yet his domestic background, even if he was not dominated by it as a hostile tradition suggests, was not without influence in the shaping of events. Th
e extent to which his freedmen and wives influenced imperial policy may be doubtful, but they certainly wielded great power. Freedmen like Pallas and Callistus started as paupers and ended as millionaires, and Roman dignity was seriously affronted when Claudius could send an ex-slave Narcissus to try to quell an incipient mutiny among the legions that were mustering for the invasion of Britain: not thus had Julius Caesar dealt with mutineers. But however offensive the freedmen may have been, at least they rendered much good service to emperor and State. This could scarcely be said of Claudius’ last two wives. Messalina, his wife at the time of his accession, bore him a daughter Octavia and a son whom he surnamed Britannicus (born A.D. 41). A woman of unbridled licentiousness and cruelty, she may well have played on Claudius’ fears of conspiracy which will have been sharpened by the plot of Scribonianus in 42 (see p. 245) and other lesser threats. He ignored her infidelities until in 48 she had the audacity to go through a form of marriage in public with her lover, the handsome consul-designate C. Silius. Behind this strange affair there probably lurked treason and a serious senatorial conspiracy: Silius may well have been plotting to replace Claudius and he appears to have won over the Prefect of the Vigiles and the head of the imperial gladiatorial school. While Claudius remained confused at this revelation, Narcissus acted and persuaded him to order the deaths of Messalina and Silius.
In choosing another wife Claudius followed the advice, so it is said, of the freedman Pallas who supported the claims of the younger Agrippina, though she was Claudius’ own niece. Daughter of Germanicus and greatgranddaughter of Augustus, this dominating woman had already had two husbands; by the first of these she had a son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero). She married Claudius in 48, was greeted as Augusta, and began to play the role of empress in the grand manner. In 50 she persuaded Claudius to adopt her son Nero and began to intrigue for his succession in place of Claudius’ own son Britannicus who was five years younger. Ambitious and unscrupulous, Agrippina struck down a series of victims: no man or woman was safe if she suspected rivalry or desired their wealth. Her weapons were poison or a trumped-up charge, often of magic; delation and treason-trials revived, but the trials were held in the privacy of the palace. Though Narcissus remained loyal to the claims of Britannicus, she secured the support of Pallas, and of Seneca who was recalled from banishment to become young Nero’s tutor; in 51 Afranius Burrus, on whom she could rely, was made Praetorian Prefect. Nero was quickly advanced. Adopted by Claudius ostensibly to act as the guardian of Britannicus, at the age of thirteen in 51 he assumed the toga virilis (i.e. ‘came of age’) and received the title of Princeps Iuventutis, together with a grant of proconsular imperium outside Rome. Two years later he made his first speech in the Senate and married Claudius’ daughter Octavia. In 54 Claudius suddenly died after eating a dish of mushrooms: it is not difficult to credit the belief that he had been poisoned by Agrippina. Even if she felt that the ultimate succession of her son Nero was secure, she may have wished to see him on the throne while he was still young enough to follow her advice and will.
With all his faults, and they may have increased during the last few years of his reign, Claudius had served his country well. This was publicly recognized when he was accorded divine honours after his death. Seneca might give pleasure to some of the senatorial aristocracy through the parody that he wrote on Divus Claudius, which he called the Pumpkinification instead of the Deification of the emperor, but Claudius was the first emperor to be thus consecrated since Augustus, and the provinces had not been slow to honour a man that had worked for their well-being. But both his drive for efficiency at home and abroad and his attempt to raise the provinces closer to the level of Italy had potentially dangerous consequences: they involved the further undermining of the old governing class and the greater centralization of power in the hands of one man. Though Claudius revered Augustus, the effect of his well-intentioned principate was to disturb further the delicate balance of the Augustan settlement.
7. NERO’S FIRST YEARS17
A remark attributed to the emperor Trajan has often been interpreted as recording his belief that a ‘quinquennium Neronis’ was a period in which Nero’s rule excelled the government of all other emperors. Trajan, however, if he ever made the observation, may in fact have been referring only to Nero’s building activities in the later part of his reign and not to the general administration of his first five years. But whatever the application of the remark, it at least accords with the undoubted fact that his reign commenced well.18
Agrippina with unscrupulous skill had so prepared the way for her sixteen-year-old son that the transference of power from Claudius to Nero was smooth: the great-great-grandson of Augustus was generally acceptable. He had the support of the Praetorian Prefect, Burrus, and confirmed the loyalty of the Guard by a donative of 15,000 sesterces a man. He was also welcomed by the Senate which he addressed in a speech composed for him by his tutor Seneca: he promised to follow the Augustan model in his principate, to end all secret trials intra cubiculum, to have done with the corruption of court favourites and freedmen, and above all to respect the privileges of the Senate and individual senators. The evils of the last years of Claudius were thus renounced, though Claudius was deified, and Nero, now divi filius, pronounced the oration at the state funeral. Clementia, a word that Seneca chose as the title of a work that he dedicated to Nero in 55, was to be the ruling quality of the new administration, and at first Nero responded. He modestly refused the title pater patriae, he opposed the first charge of maiestas, he exempted his fellow-consul in 55 from swearing the usual oath in acta principis, he avoided using imperator as a praenomen, he employed as a coin type the civic crown of oak which was a symbol of liberty, and he restored to the Senate the right to issue gold and silver coinage which now was issued ‘EX S.C.’ This good start and the hopes for a happier age were mirrored in the Bucolics of the poet Calpurnius Siculus and in the first book of Lucan’s Pharsalia.
Agrippina now meant to rule through her son. She murdered or drove to suicide potential foes: Domitia Lepida, Nero’s aunt; M. Iunius Silanus, proconsul of Asia and a great-grandson of Augustus; and the freedman Narcissus. Her power was advertised on the coinage which bore confronting busts of herself and Nero on the obverse, with the legend ‘Agripp(ina) Aug(usta) divi Claud(ii uxor) Neronis Caes(aris) mater’; Nero’s name and titles were banished to the reverse. Seneca and Burrus, however, although they owed their positions to her, had little love for petticoat government, while Nero himself would be glad to free himself from the role of puppet-king, if only to have time for indulging his artistic fancies and sensual passions. First they struck at her supporter, the financial secretary Pallas, who was deprived of his office and fortune; he was replaced by another freedman, probably Phaon, who would be more amenable to their direction (55). Agrippina, who received a public rebuff when she tried to sit alongside Nero at a reception of some Armenian ambassadors, then began to show affection for Britannicus. This could not be endured and Britannicus was poisoned (55): Nero clearly was guilty, though the extent of the complicity of Seneca and Burrus in the crime remains uncertain. Agrippina then showed interest in Britannicus’ sister Octavia, Nero’s wife, whom he was neglecting for a freedwoman named Acte. This new move by Agrippina was less dangerous politically, but it was equally obnoxious to Nero and led to her fall. Nero ordered her to leave the palace, and her influence was broken. The struggle for the regency was over: Seneca and Burrus had won.19
Nero continued to fear and hate his mother even in her retirement though on one occasion she boldly disproved a charge of treason. His hatred was encouraged by his new mistress Poppaea Sabina, whose husband, his friend Otho (the future emperor), was sent off to Lusitania as governor. Finally Nero decided to murder his mother. First he devised a collapsible boat which might crush or drown her when after dining with him at Baiae he put her on board to go home, but the attempt miscarried and Agrippina swam to shore. Having gone so far, Nero now must go further; alleging that her
messenger who came to report her ‘escape from an accident’, had tried to murder him, he ordered Anicetus, the freedman prefect of the fleet at Misenum, to assassinate her: some sailors then battered her to death. Whether or nor Seneca and Burrus had knowledge of the crime beforehand, they helped to smooth over Nero’s return to Rome six months later: the crime had shocked the world, but his explanation was officially accepted, if not believed, and the Senate passed extravagant votes of gratitude for the ‘deliverance’ of the matricide. According to the popular account Nero, like Orestes pursued by the Furies, was haunted by his mother’s ghost: whether his conscience was in fact stirred we do not know. At any rate he was free from her dominance.
From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 Page 41