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Further Observations on the Expedition of the Emperor Augustus Into Britain

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Further Observations on the Expedition of the Emperor Augustus Into Britain VI.—Further Observations on the Expedition of the Emperor Augustus into Britain. By WILLIAM HENRY BLACK, Esq., F.8.A. Read March 16th, 1871. THE evidence of an important fact which. I have lately made known to the Society of Antiquaries, bridging over (as it does) a whole century of our unwritten history, consists principally in the direct and positive assertion of it by the ancient commentator and critic, Servius; and the only objection that I have heard, publicly or privately, against the veracity of his statement, and the consequent view that I have taken of those passages in the Augustan Poets which relate to Britain, amounts to this, that we are required thereby to impugn or reject the opinions of two respectable historians more ancient than the com- mentator, namely, Cornelius Tacitus and Suetonius Tranquillus. I have thought proper therefore to vindicate in this second paper the authority of SERVIUS, against the negative opinions of those other Roman writers, and their numerous followers. First then, with respect to Cornelius Tacitus, I have already shown, by the constant and emphatic evidence of the Augustan Poets, that his idea of " a long oblivion of Britain" between the Emperors Julius and Claudius was a mistake. But this is not his only error, for he has erred in other material respects concern- ing Britain, so that his opinions may be impugned, without calling in question any of his statements of facts, which were strictly within the compass of his knowledge or the scope of his narrative, in dealing with the life of his father-in- law, Julius Agricola, whose daughter was married to the biographer (then a young man) just before her father's appointment to the command of military affairs in Britain in the reign of Nero." After the mention of this autobiographic fact, the biographer proceeds briefly to describe Britain, not in derogation of those authors whose care and abilities had been employed in writing of it, but (as he says) because " then first it was perdomita, fully subdued," he intended to make a credible relation " rerum fide tradentur." Having described the shape of Britain, which Livius and Fabius Rusticus had compared to "an oblong shield (scutula) or to a two-edged a Vita Agricolce, c. 9. VOL. XLIV. M 82 Expedition of the Emperor Augustus into Britain. axe-head," a he says that the northern shore or coast of Caledonia was sailed around by the Roman fleet, which none would be disposed to deny; but he adds an opinion. The exact words are, " Hanc oram novissimi maris tune primum Romana classis circumvecta insulam esse Britanniam adfirmavit." This shore of the last-mentioned sea (which he had called the vasto atque aperto mari bounding the northern parts of Britain,) the Roman fleet, having then first been carried around, affirmed Britain to be an island." Thus he ascribes the first ascertaining of this geographical fact to the time of the administration of Agri- cola, whereas Aristotle and all classic antiquity had well known that Britain was an island long before. Strabo and the writers quoted by him in the reign of Augustus had largely treated of its insular nature. Julius Osesar had described our island in exact and very ample terms, of which the principal are these: " The island is by nature three-sided (triquetra), of which one side is against Gaul. Of this side the one angle which is toward Cantium, whither almost all ships from Gaul go, is toward the rising sun: the lower [angle] looks to the south. This side contains about 500 miles. The other trends toward Spain and the setting sun : its length, in the opinion of certain persons, is 700 miles. * * * * The third is against the north, to which no land is opposite, but the angle of that side looks most toward Germany, and it is thought to be 800 miles in length. So all the island is in circuit 2,000 miles."b In the same breath the biographer of Agricola makes a second mistake by adding that the Roman fleet " likewise found and subdued the islands unknown to that time, which they call the Orcades." But Eutropius, Orosius, Eusebius, Cassiodorus, Nennius, Beda, and others declare that the Emperor Claudius conquered the Orkneys soon after his own expedition and triumph, but long before the time of Agricola.0 The biographer goes on to make a third and most glaring blunder when he says, " Dispecta est et Thule, quam hactenus nix et Menus abdebat. Thule was looked at (or discovered), which hitherto snow and winter had hidden." He says also that the sea was slow and difficult for rowers, and there were no winds to carry them, and the want of wind he ascribes to the rarity of land and of mountains in those parts. Hence it is probable that some of the flat and sandy parts of the Shetland isles may have been seen beyond the Orkneys, and mistaken a See the explanation of bipennis, by Servius, p. 677. b Caesar de Bell. Gall. lib. v. c. 13. c See the authorities referred to in Sir Thomas Hardy's Chronological Abstract, prefixed to the Monu- menta, p. 135. Expedition of the Emperor Augustus into Britain. 83 for Thule: for, if tbe Thule of the Greek geographers, through which they assert that the arctic circle passes, had been seen, what could they have perceived more remarkable than the snowy mountains and smoking volcano of Iceland ? Prom these passages I infer that the worthy and excellent Roman historian, whose general truthfulness cannot be too much commended, was deficient in historical geography, and so we may say of him "aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus." When therefore he tells us that Britain had been forgotten between Julius and Claudius, and that Claudius was "the author of the work" of mastering Britain, I answer that it had been as entirely subdued by the Romans before the time of Claudius as it had been found and known to be an island before the time of Agricola. The next author, Suetonius, it must be remembered, was a personal bio- grapher of emperors and learned men, not a regular historian. For who can make out the series of public events which constitutes regular history from his pages ? As he is silent about Britain under Augustus, so is he silent about many other great events of his reign, especially his foreign wars. Britain was diligently dragged into public notice by Claudius, whose only fame was cheaply acquired by a rapid and easy reduction of the island, such as could never have been effected without previous occupation, and the existence of Roman garrisons here, originally established by Julius Caesar himself among the Trinobantes (probably at Maldon or in London); for so I have always inferred from his own words, " Trinobantibus defensis, atque ab omni militum injuria prohibitis."a Suetonius was a contemporary and friend of Tacitus; from whom he seems to have obtained the opinion expressed in his own Life of Claudius, to which no such weight is to be ascribed as to overbalance the positive and particular testimony of historical facts to the contrary. Nevertheless, it is on the authority of the now controverted passages of these two biographers that the age of the elegant Latin geographer, Pom- ponius Mela, is commonly assigned to the reign of Claudius. Thus, by Saxius, he is placed between the years 48 and 49; by the late Mr. Petrie, and by Sir Thomas Hardy, he is said to have " flourished A.D. 45." b They and preceding critics rely on a single passage in his chapter of " Outer Spain, and the Islands of the Northern Ocean," wherein he says : " What Britain is, and what men it produceth, shall soon be told in more certain and ascertained manner. Tor, so long closed, behold! the Greatest of Princes openeth it; a Csesar de Bell. Gall. lib. v. c. 21. » Saxii Onom. Lit. i. 242—3 ; Monumenta Hist. Brit. pp. 50, vii. M 2 84s Expedition of the JEJmperor Augustas into Britain. not only the Conqueror of nations unsubdued, but also unknown, before him; the truth of -whose own actions, as he hath attempted them in war, so he, about to declare, carrieth in triumph. Quippe tamdiu clausam aperit ecce Principiim Maxvmus, nee indomitarum modo ante se, verum ignotarum quoque gentium Victor, propriarum rerum fidem ut bello affectavit, ita triumpho de- claraturus portat."* The great critic Gerard John Vossius approved the judgment of certain authors whom he names, and by whom Pomponius had been ascribed to the times of Claudius, on the credit of this passage. But Vossius also relied upon the mention of Cornelius Nepos by Pomponius, and of the citation of the latter by Pliny the Elder, in proof of that chronological position; adding that, although some thought that Pomponius alluded to the Emperor Julius, by the title of Principum Maxvmus, yet Julius never triumphed over Britain, but Claudius did. To me, however, the title " Greatest of Princes " seems utterly inapplicable to Claudius, but to be, without flattery, most applicable to Augustus, whose actual triumph over Britain is mentioned thus by Servius, " propter Britannorum triumphum." b The pageants that were in preparation when Pomponius wrote to illustrate the Emperor's conquests well agree with what Virgil mentioned and Servius his commentator afterward explained in relation to Augustus, in the passage which was unaccountably overlooked by writers and collectors on this subject, until I lately brought it to light. I have (since my former paper) care- fully reviewed the whole treatise of Pomponius, and I find his geography con- sistent with the early part of the reign of Augustus only, without allusion to any fact or mention of any name or changed name later than the year to which that Emperor's British expedition was assigned in my former paper, viz.
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