successes by a splendid triumph, the Senate conferring upon him the title of Britannicus. A relic of these honours still remains in the fragment of an inscription, which records how "without any loss he vanquished the kings of Britain."

Whatever successes Claudius may have won, the island was far from being conquered. King Caradoc himself, though he had lost his capital, continued to resist. Vespasian was sent to do battle with him. His exploits were without question considerable, for it was now, as Tacitus puts it, that he was singled out for his destiny as Emperor of Rome; but these have

(The first occasion on which allusion is made to Britain on the coinage of Rome.)

been very briefly related, and it is impossible to recover the details. The only incident related by Dio, that on one occasion the general was surrounded by the enemy, and was rescued from them by the daring. of his son Titus, must be pronounced a fiction, as Titus could not have been more than six years old. "He fought," says Suetonius, including all his British campaigns, "thirty times with the enemy, subdued two very powerful tribes, and subjugated the Island

I This descended to his son, the unhappy lad who was thrust aside by the ambition of his step-mother, the younger Agrippina, to make room for Nero, and was afterwards poisoned by the usurper.

of Vectis (Isle of Wight)." He was therefore engaged in the south and west. As the Regni (inhabiting what is now Sussex) had made terms with the Romans, we may locate the conquests of Vespasian in Hampshire, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire. One of the two "very powerful tribes" may have been the Durotriges. Prasutagus, king of the Iceni (Norfolk and Suffolk), followed the example of Cogidumnus, and sought the friendship of Rome. He even imi. tated the flattery or precaution commonly practised by Roman nobles anxious to secure for their families at least a portion of their wealth, and named the Emperor among his legatees. We shall hear more hereafter of the outcome of his dealings with Rome.

In 47 A.D. Plautius was recalled. He was considered to have conducted his campaigns with great judgment, and received special honours from the Emperor. An "ovation," or smaller triumph, was decreed to him, and Claudius walked by his side both as he went to the Capitol and as he returned. He had the satisfaction, if the passage in Dio is genuine, of exhibiting British gladiators in the arena. Ostorius Scapula was sent to succeed him.

"Cogidumnus remained," says Tacitus, “a most faithful ally down to our times." If the historian visited Britain in company with Agricola (see p. 58), he may have seen this prince in extreme old age. Cogidumnus seems, from an inscription found at Chichester, to have assumed the Roman names of Tiberius Claudius.

V.

CARACTACUS.

OSTORIUS SCAPULA found that his predecessor's victories had left him much to do. There had been an interval of inaction between the departure of one commander and the arrival of another, and the Britons had availed themselves of it to invade the country of the tribes friendly to Rome. Though it was very late in the year, Ostorius at once set about the construction of a line of forts, which was to keep the hostile tribes in check. Tacitus, the only authority that we have to follow, is here very obscure. He speaks of the Severn as one of the limits of this line. The other is uncertain; but it has been guessed to be the Nen. Anyhow the proceedings of Ostorius seems to have offended the Iceni, a powerful people in the east of the island, which had hitherto been friendly. The Iceni were followed into rebellion by several dependent tribes. Ostorius acted with the old Roman energy. The main body of the legions. was elsewhere, but he attacked the enemy's camp. with his force of cavalry and friendly Britons, and carried it by storm. The besieged were entangled Tacitus does not give us a hint of where this took place.

in their own defences, and made a desperate resistance; but the Roman discipline could not be resisted. The last being thus reduced to submission, Ostorius at once marched to the extreme west to attack the Cangi, who are supposed to have inhabited the peninsula of Carnarvonshire. He had nearly reached the "coast which faces Ireland," when he was called north by disturbances among the Brigantes, a powerful people occupying what is now Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Brigantes quieted, he was called southward again by a movement of the Silures under King Caradoc. It is rather puzzling to be told that the Roman general, to keep them in check, founded the colony of Camalodunum (Colchester). A military station in the east could not exercise a very direct influence on a turbulent tribe in the west. Anyhow the general found it necessary to take the field and to march against the Silures. Caradoc did not await the He did not suppose that

attack in his own country.

his rude levies could be a match for the Roman troops; but he hoped much from being able to choose the field of battle, and he chose it in the territories of his neighbours on the north, the Ordovices.2

The scene of the final conflict it is impossible to

1 A Roman colony was a military settlement. Lands belonging to the conquered were assigned to soldiers who had served their time with the legions. These veterans seem to have dwelt in the town and to have cultivated; perhaps permitted the former owners to cultivate on certain conditions the farms which had been made over to them. "The colony," says Tacitus, was meant to act as a shelter in case of a rebellion, and as a way of teaching the subject people respect for Roman laws We shall see how Camalodunum fulfilled these duties.

2 The Ordovices are located in North Wales and the western part of the neighbouring English counties.

ORATION ON THE BATTLE-FIELD.

41

identify. Tacitus tells us that the British king chose a place where advance and retreat alike would be difficult for the Romans and comparatively easy for his own men, that this place was on a lofty hill, the easier slopes of which were fortified with ramparts of stone, and that a river of uncertain depth, i.e., it may be conjectured, with no regular ford, flowed in front." The chiefs of the various tribes which had furnished contingents to the army encouraged their men to make a brave struggle for freedom. The king himself hurried from line to line protesting that the result of the day would be either to set Britain free or to fasten its chains for ever. He appealed to the memory of those who a hundred years before had driven back the dictator Cæsar, and to whose valour they owed it that they were still free, and could still call their wives and their children their own. The Britons answered the appeal with wild shouts of applause, and swore by all that was most sacred to them not to give way.

So formidable was the aspect of the enthusiastic multitude of the frowning hill-tops, the rampart, and the river, that Ostorius was inclined to manœuvre. But his troops insisted upon being at once led to the attack. This was a kind of disobedience which Roman generals were not inclined to resist, and Ostorius gave the signal for advance. He had, however, surveyed the ground, and knew where the attack

' Dean Merivale gives a doubtful preference to Coxall Knoll, near Lentwardine, on the Teme, among many places for which the distinction of being the scene of the great battle has been claimed. Earthworks are still to be seen upon the hill.