Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/454

436 BKITANNICAE mSULAE. i count of his giving orders that the shells of the sea- shore should be picked up, and a conqnest over the sea itself be announced (c. 25). The stoiy appears in Suetonius also : as do the detuls concerning Ad- minius, the son of Cjnobelin. Expelled from Britain by his father, he crossed the channel with a few followers, and placed himself under the power of Caligula, who magnified the event into a cession of the whole island. (Suet. Cal, 44.) > It is ssS^^UiM^ that ttift hnn^ fi^. xfiduction of Bnliun begins no earlier than the reigii of Claudius; I4ie Liibute'that was paid to Augustus being wholly 'unhistorical, and the authority of Tiberius a mere inference from a notice of it In simple truth, the reign of Cynobelin, coinciding with that of the last-named emperor, gives jjb the measure of the early British civilisation — civilisation which was of native, of Gallic, of Gallo-Roman, of Phoenician, and Ibero- Phoenician origin. The reign of Cynobelin is illustrated by corns. Whether these were struck in Gaul or Britain is uncertain. Neither is the question important Wherever the mint may have been, the legend is in Boman letters; whilst numerous elements of the classical mythology find place on both sides of the coins ; e. g. a Pegasus, a Head of Ammon, a Hercules, a Centaur, &c. : on the other hand, the names are British; tasciovanus, with sego-; ibidf with VER- ; ilndf with cynobelin ; cynobelin alone; cynobelin with camvl-; ibid, with so- UDV-; ibid, with a . ., or v . .; ibidj with ve- xultjmum. Of course, the interpretations of these legends have been various; the notion, however, that Tasciovanus, sometimes alone, and sometimes conjointly with a colleague, was the predecessor of Cynobelin, and that Cynobelm, sometimes alone and sometunes with a colleague, was the successor of Tasciovanus, seems reasonable. The reduction of Britain by the Romans begins with the reign of Claudius : on coins we find the name of that emperor, and on inscriptions those of his generals Plautius and Suetonius. The next earliest coins to those of Claudius bear the name of Hadrian. Wales westwards and Yorkshire northwards (the SilureSj Ordovices, and BriganUt) were more or less completely reduced before the accession of Nero. By Nero, Suetonius Paulinus is sent into Britain, and under him Agricola takes his first lessons in soldiership. A single inscription preserves the name of Paulinus. The next in point of date belongs to tiie reign of Nerva. The Agricola, however, of Tacitus has the historical value of contemporary evidence. From this we learn that the work (^ Nero's general was the recovery and consolidation of the conquests made under Claudius rather than the achievement of new additions. The famous que^n of the loeni (Norfolk and Sufiblk) is the centre of the groupe here. Subordinate to her are the Druids and Bards of the Isle of Anglesey, their chief stronghold, where tiiey are reduced by Pau- linus. Lastly comes the usurious philosopher Seneca, who, having lent a lai^ sum in Britain, sud- denly calls it in. The distress thus created is the cause of the revolt — a measure of the extent to which Roman habits (dther directly finom Italy, or indirectly from Romanised Gaul) had ratablished themselves. Reduction and consolidation, raUier than aoqui' sition, seems to liave been the rule during the short , reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and the first ten years of the reign of Vespasian. I BRITANNICAE INSULAE. These objects employed Agricola during hhs first two campaigns. In the third, however (a. d. 80), he advanced from the northern boundaries of the Brigantes to the Firth of Tay; and the five next years were spent in the exploration of parts before unknown, in new conquests more or less imperfect, in the formation ik ambitious designs (including the reduction of Ireland), and in the dr- cnnmavigatioD of Great Britain. A lin e of forts between the Firths of Forth and Oiyde~was the limit of the Roman Empire in Britain, as left by Agricola. What had been done beyond this had B%n~~i3onc imperfectly. The battle on the Grampian Range, against the Caledonians of Galgacus, had ended in the Horesti giving hostages. The reduction of the Orkneys is mentioned by Tacitus in a general and somewhat lax manner — not as a specific his- torical fact, in its proper place, and in connection with other events, but as an chiter dictum arising out of the notice of the circumnavigation of the Island, — "incognitas, ad id tempus,insulas, Orcadas invenit db- muitque. Despecta est et Thule." A revolt under Arviragns is incidentally mentioned as an event of the reign of Domitian. For the reign of Trajan we have inscriptions; for that of Hadrian inscriptions and coins as well : coins, too, for the reigns of the two Antonines, and Commodus, — but no contemporary historian. It is the evidence of Spartianus (^Hadr. 11) upon which the belief that "a wall eighty miles in length, dividing the Romans from the barbarians, was first built by Hadrian" is grounded. Dion, as he ap- pears in the compendium of Xiphilinus, merely mentions a " wall between the Roman stations and certain nations of the island." (Ixxii. 8.) This ^ raises a doubt The better historian, Dion, may as easily mean the wall of Agricola as aught else: the inferior one, Spartianus, is evidently wrong in/^^^ his expression ^^ primus duxit" and may easily be^ ^ wrong in his account altogether. The share that difiercnt individuals took in the raising of the British walls and ramparts is less certain than is usually believed. We have more buil ders tha n structures. That Antoninus(Fius) ^prived the Brigantes of a portion of theii* land because they had begun to overrun the country of the Genuini, allied to Rome, is a statement of Pausanias (viii. 43. § 4.) No one else mentions these GenuinL Neither is it easy to imagine who they could have been. Genuini, inde- pendent enough to be allies rather than subjects, and Brigantes, who could be free to conquer them, are strange phenomena for the reign of Antoninus. The possibility of German or Scandinavian settlers, thus early and thus independent, is the only clue to the difficulty. The evidence, however, to the fact is only of third-rate value. T ^e Vfr lli^m A"t^"i*M TifTmi to bars hnrn n r ffility. Its true basis is the following inscription : IMP. C. T. AELIO. HADR lANO ANTONINO AUG. P. P. VEX. LEG. VL VICTRICS P * F. OPVS VALLI P. MMM CCXL P. {Monummta Britannica, No. 48.) Others give the name of his Lieutenant l^mo^ UjJUcu^; but tliis alone mentions the OPUS VALLI. The author nearest the date of the event commemorated is Capitolinus. By him we are told that the rampart was of tur/, and that it was a f V