the glory of the Roman name, now is the time to exhibit that military discipline in which you have been perfectly trained, and which you have always perfectly maintained, in its highest perfection in this time of our utmost need. For myself, of two issues I have irrevocably chosen, either to conquer, which is glorious, or to die for our country, which is in the power of every man. Flight is only the refuge of cowards. Let those then among you who are of the same mind with myself hold up their invincible right hands, and let our enemies be astonished to find us reanimated by our repulses, and recruited by our losses."1 Having thus spoken he extended his right hand, and the whole army with loud shouts raised their hands to heaven, and thus cheering began the battle. Then it was that, the legions being skilfully disposed, the persevering obstinacy with which they fought displayed the superiority of the Roman discipline. Content to stand on their defence, while the Britons exhausted themselves by repeated attacks, the troops of Cæsar were fresh when the islanders had lost their vigour. Victory was on the side of the Romans, though not without severe loss. From thence Cæsar marched to the river Thames. A large body of the enemy had posted themselves on the further side of the river under the command of Cassibelaun, who had planted sharp stakes in the river bank and in the water where it was crossed by a ford2. The remains of these stakes are to be seen at the present day; they appear to be about the thickness of a man's thigh, and, being shod with lead, remain immovably fixed in the bed of the river. This being discovered, and avoided by the Romans, they attacked the barbarians, who, not being able to stand the shock of the legions, retired into the woods, from the shelter of which they grievously galled the Romans by repeated sallies. The strongly-fortified city of Trinovantum surrendered to Cæsar, under its governor Androgeus, delivering to him seventy hostages. 1 Being unable to discover where the Archdeacon found the record of this stirring address, we may attribute it to his own invention, in imitation of the speeches which both poets and historians have put into the mouths of their heroes on similar occasions. 2 This ford of the Thames is supposed to have been near Richmond. 3 Supposed to be London. In like manner several other towns entered into treaties with the Romans, and supplied guides by whose aid Cæsar penetrated to the capital city of Cassibelaun, covered on both sides by morasses and further protected by thick woods, while it was stored with abundant supplies. The city was taken after an obstinate defence1. Eventually, Cæsar returning into Gaul, and being distracted by the cares of wars which beset him on every side, withdrew from Britain the legions which he had placed in winter quarters, in order that they might accompany him to Rome: a fact to which Lucan refers : "The free-born Britons toss their yellow hair, No longer curb'd by stationary camps." Returning with regret to Rome, he ordered the fifth month to be called July in honour of his own name. He was afterwards treacherously assassinated in the senatehouse on the Ides of March. As we have to speak of Cæsar and his successors who ruled Briton to the time of Martian, who was the forty-fourth in succession from Julius Cæsar, we have no wish to diminish their renown. should hesitate to compare them in point of morals to our own Christian princes, while it would be a shame that the latter should be inferior. We The panegyrick of Solinus on Julius Cæsar is just: "As much as Sergius and Sisinnius, the bravest of soldiers, There seems to be little doubt that Verulam, or St. Albans, was the capital of Cassibelaun. 2 Lucan's Pharsalia, Book i. 1. 402. Henry of Huntingdon has substituted Britanni for Ruteni, without any authority, which I have been able to discover. Some have read Suëvi, considering the reading justified by the descriptive appellation, flavi; but the epithet "yellow-haired" was applied, not only to the Germans, but to all the northern nations. Lucan himself thus designates the Britons : "celsos ut Gallia currus In the passage quoted by the Archdeacon, Ruteni is evidently the true reading, for the context names various Gaulish tribes; those of the Vosges, the Lingones, about Langres, and the Isaræ, on the Isere. Then the Ruteni, a people of Narbonese Gaul, afterwards le Rovergue, are mentioned; followed by reference to the tribes on the Atar, now L'Aube, in Languedoc, and the Var in Provence. outshone all other soldiers, so much did Cæsar excel all other generals, nay, other men of all times. In the wars carried on under his command, 1,192,000 of the enemy were slain. How many were slain in the civil wars he was reluctant to record. He fought fifty-two pitched battles; being the only general who exceeded Marcus Marcellinus, who fought thirty-nine. No one wrote more rapidly, no one read with greater facility; he was able to dictate four letters at one and the same time. So great was his excellence that those whom he conquered by his arms, he conquered yet more by his clemency. Augustus, succeeding Julius Cæsar, obtained the empire of the whole world; and received tribute from Britain as well as from his other dominions, as Virgil remarks : "Embroidered Britons lift the purple screen.' "1 This he did in the forty-second year of his reign, when the true Light shone upon the world, and all kingdoms and islands, before over-shadowed with darkness, were taught that there is One only God, and saw the image of Him that created them. When Augustus had reigned fifty-five years and a half, he paid the debt of nature. Eutropius thus panegyrizes him: "Besides the civil wars, in which he was always victorious, Augustus subdued Armenia, Egypt, Galatia, Cantabria, 1 Geor. iii. 25. The sense is not very clear, and I have therefore rendered the words literally, in preference to offering any gloss upon it. Dryden thus paraphrases it : "When the proud theatres disclose the scene Which interwoven Britons seem to raise, And show the triumphs which their shame displays." Heyne conjectures that allusion is made to the curtain of the theatre on which were pictured, embroidered, or interwoven, the tall and gaunt forms of British captives, represented in the act of rising from the ground and lifting the curtain. However this may be, the quotation from the Georgics, which Henry of Huntingdon borrows from Nennius, fails of proving the subjection of the Britons in the time of Augustus. We find no authority for the statement, that this emperor received tribute from Britain, except a passage in the De Rebus Geticis of Jornandes, the Goth, a work of the sixth century, in which he made use of the now lost Ecclesiastical History of Cassiodorus, who was governor of Sicily in the same century-no authorities whatever against the silence of contemporary classical authors. Dion Cassius tells us, that Augustus came into Gaul with the intention of invading Britain, as the Britons refused to enter into a treaty with him, but was prevented by the revolt of some recently-subdued tribes of Gaul. Dalmatia, Pannonia, Aquitania, Illyricum, Rhetium, the Vindelici, the Salassi, Pontus, and Cappadocia. He so completely reduced the Dacians and Germans, that he transported 400,000 captives of their race into Gaul, where he settled them on the further bank of the Rhine. The Persians gave him hostages, which they had never done before, restoring the standards taken from Crassus. He was mild and gracious, affable in spirit, and handsome in person; his eyes, particularly, were beautiful. Clement to his subjects, he so treated his friends that he almost raised them to a level with himself. He engaged in war with no nation but upon just grounds, esteeming triumphs founded upon unfounded pretences, worthless. He was so loved by foreign and even barbarous peoples, that in some instances their kings spontaneously came to Rome to do him homage; others, as Juba and Herod, founded cities to his honour. He devoted some part of every day to reading, writing, and elocution. He was sparing in his diet, patient of rebuke, and placable to conspirators. He found Rome built of bricks, he left it of marble." Tiberius, the step-son of Augustus, succeeded him in the empire, which extended over Britain as well as the other kingdoms of the world'. He reigned twenty-three years. There is no authority for the statement, that Britain formed part of the Roman Empire during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. It would be a bootless task to correct all Henry of Huntingdon's errors and misstatements, in some of which he copies Bede. [See notes to the Eccles. Hist., cc. iii. iv. in the present series.] We should not have noticed the present misstatement, but on account of a popular error which attributes the conquest of Britain to Julius Cæsar, and supposes that from his time the island, or some part of it, remained in subjection to the Romans. The facts are, that in his second and most successful expedition, Cæsar was not able, after much opposition and one signal defeat, to penetrate farther into the country than about eighty miles from his place of landing, near Walmer, to Verulam, or St. Albans, following for the most part the valley of the Thames, which river he crossed near Richmond. London and St. Albans were the only towns he reduced, and these he abandoned after a few months' occupation, withdrawing his whole army from the island, to which he never returned. The Britons recovered their independence, and continued unmolested under the government of their native kings and chiefs during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, though the latter menaced them with a fresh invasion, which ended in an idle and ridiculous parade. A He was prudent and fortunate in war, and thus became worthy to be the successor of Augustus. In literature he was highly accomplished, but still more remarkable for eloquence, being happier in unpremeditated replies than in set speeches. He was charged with dissembling, inasmuch as he assumed indifference to those he really loved and courtesy to persons he disliked1. 3 Caius, surnamed Caligula, ruled the empire of the world about five years. Claudius, who succeeded him A.D. 622, and U.c. 798, visited Britain in the fourth year of his reign, and received the submission of some revolted tribes without recourse to arms. He added the Orkney Islands 3, already mentioned, to the empire, and, returning to Rome after an absence of six months, assumed for himself and his son the surname of Britannicus, which is given him by Juvenal: "And show'd, Britannicus, to all that came, The womb that bore thee." In this year that grievous famine prevailed in Syria, which is recorded by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles to have been predicted by Agabus. In the time of Claudius, Peter, the chief founder of our faith, became bishop of Rome, which see he filled for twenty-five years, i. e. to the last year of Nero. Vespasian, commissioned by Claudius, went into Gaul, and afterwards to Britain, where he had thirty-two engagements with the enemy, reduced two very period, therefore, of nearly a century elapsed before the more successful invasion under the Emperor Claudius, from which the establishment of the Roman dominion in Britain dates. 1 Aurel. Victor. 2 The real date of the expedition of Plautius, under Claudius, was A.D. 44, U.c. 796. The same year upon his general's success, the Emperor himself crossed over to Britain, but only remained in the island sixteen days. This happened ninety-seven years after Cæsar's abandonment of his enterprise. Bede says that "he was the only one either before or after Julius Cæsar, who had dared to land in the island," so that Henry of Huntingdon's story of the "revolted tribes" seems to be pure invention. 3 This also is incorrect. The Orkneys were not reduced till the conquests of Agricola under Vespasian, and his successors reduced the northern parts of Britain to subjection. 4 Juv. Sat. vi. 124. |