Notices by the Rev. T. Surridge ... of Roman Inscriptions Discovered at High Rochester, Risingham and Rudchester, in Northumberland/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
ROMAN REMAINS.
HIGH ROCHESTER, RISING HAM, AND RUDCHESTER INSCRIPTIONS.
Tacitus, in his rapid haste to the eulogy of his uncle or father-in-law and hero Agricola, passes over, with a single and not impartial glance, the second expedition of Cæsar to Britain. He says, "Julius Cæsar, instead of conquering, merely shewed the way to the future conquest of Britain." Thus transferring to the brows of Agricola the laurels which had been won by the renowned Cæsar in his second invasion of this country.
On this authority Rapin hesitates not to assert that for more than ninety years after this second invasion of Britain the Britons were free.
The Roman monumental inscriptions, for some fifteen centuries buried in the earth, are now exhumed to qualify, if not to disprove, these statements, and to effect the "restoration unto Cæsar of the things which are Cæsars." They bear irrefragible evidence that, in his second invasion of Britain, Cæsar aimed at its conquest, not as an empty name, and neither did he retire, nor was he compelled to retire, from it without first securing the conquest he had made.
It is true that subsequent events and the prudence of Augustus, which made him eschew distant wars and to defer his threatened completion of British subjugation, may have left the Britons comparatively at ease during his long reign; but they were not free. Of this, its occupation, as appears from those inscriptions, gives the most authentic evidence,—in fact, evidence too impartial to be disregarded or discredited. We shall proceed to their explanation, and, first, the
Vide Plates 1 and 2.High Rochester Altar and other inscriptions of that station claim our attention, not from their being first erected, but because they are nearest and first obtained our notice.
Vide Plate 4.The Rudchester inscriptions bear the marks of the earliest antiquity, as some of them were doubtless erected in the life time of Julius Cæsar himself.
Vide Plate 3.The Risingham Portal inscription was probably erected in the last year of the reign of Antoninus Pius, who died a.d. 161, when Marcus Aurelius and Verus were consuls. The name of Verus was designedly erased: the usual indignity to the memory of bad emperors. The top part of the stone, with the remainder of the inscription, was broken off and lost, but I think I have successfully restored the whole, as it was originally inscribed.