coast subject to a continental chief, Divitiacus, King of the Belgic tribes of the Suessones (B.C. 57): and the aid they gave to the Veneti (the people about the modern Vannes) attests at once their maritime habits and their intercourse with that part of Gaul to which they afterwards gave the name of Brittany (B.C. 56). We have seen that Cæsar effected no permanent conquest in Britain; but it would seem that the experience which the natives had of the power of Rome disposed them to friendly relations with the empire. The fragmentary notice of Britain on the "Monumentum Ancyranum," is supposed to confirm the statement of Dion Cassius, that Augustus received an embassy from certain British chieftains, with presents and professions, that could be construed into tribute and submission. Under Tiberius, we have further evidence of friendly relations, in the statement that some Roman soldiers, who were cast upon the shores of Britain, were sent back to Germanicus by the chieftains. But the period to which these scanty and doubtful testimonies relate is enlightened by an invaluable piece of contemporary evidence, in the shape of gold British coins, bearing the names of TASCIOVANUS and CUNOBELINUS. It seems probable that these princes of the Trinobantes were father and son; and the name of their capital appears on the coins in the same form in which it became celebrated as a Roman colony, CAMULODUNUM.* Besides assuring us that the CYMBELINE of our great poet was a real British prince, these coins prove, by their Latin inscriptions and their high style of art, that the Roman civilization, now thoroughly established on the opposite shores of the Channel and of the German Ocean, had already made no little progress in Britain before the victories of Claudius, and that Cymbeline's greater son was no mere "painted savage," when he stood in chains before the emperor. It seems even probable that Roman traders had begun to form settlements in Britain, and Londinium (London), though not named by Cæsar, was already a considerable mart. The tribes already known to the Romans were the Cantii (in Kent), the Regni (in Sussex), the Trinobantes (in Hertfordshire and Essex), and the Iceni (in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk). The last appear to have been in antagonism to the general supremacy exercised over the southeastern tribes by the warlike kings of the Trinobantes. Of these

* Camulodunum is almost universally held to be the same as Colonia, and identified with Colchester. But Dr. Latham inclines to the opinion that, while the Roman colony was no doubt at Colchester, the British capital of Camulodunum was at Maldon. (Dict. of Greek & Rom. Geog. s. v.)

we have already seen Cassivelaunus heading the resistance to Cæsar. But in Britain, as in Germany, the neighbourhood of the great empire offered to every malcontent a refuge and an appeal; and the internal dissensions of the chieftains gave a never-failing pretext for Roman interference. Such an appeal from Adminius, the son of Cunobelin, was claimed by Caligula as the cession of all Britain; and it is said to have been at the solicitation of an expatriated chief, named Bericus, that Claudius undertook the subjugation of the island.

There were, however, reasons for the enterprize in the character and position of the emperor himself. By birth a Gaul, he gave special attention to the welfare and security of his native province, to which he extended the Roman citizenship. But there was in Gaul one element of constant resistance to the principles of Roman civilization, which might at any moment become the rallying point of Celtic nationality. This was the influence of the Druids, which had its roots in Britain. In that island were the most sacred seats of the mysterious religion; and thither the young Gallic nobles were sent to learn its tenets in all their purity. The general tolerance of Rome for the religions of the conquered peoples had its exceptions; and while rites abominable for their cruelty, or dangerous from their mystery and from the unbounded submission of the votaries to their priests, were discountenanced by a sound policy, the germs of a purer faith provoked a fanatic hatred, which was thinly disguised under the contempt of the philosophers, and which broke forth into persecution most conspicuously when the emperor was himself a man of philosophic culture. All these provocations to intolerance were united in Druidism, with the unbounded influence of its priests, who were the sole educators as well as the religious ministers of the people; —with the occult mysteries of their impenetrable groves, and their cruel human sacrifices; and, above all, with their doctrine of another life beyond this. "Amidst the importunate doubts and fears regarding the future, or rather in the despair of immortality which Paganism now generally acknowledged, the Roman was exasperated at the Druid's proud assertion of the transmigration of souls" (Merivale). Under Augustus and Tiberius, the rites of Druidism were proscribed at Rome more sternly even than the "superstitions" of Egypt and Judæa; and Claudius enforced the

It deserves notice that the capital had been transferred from Verulamium to Camulodunum in the interval between Cassivelaunus and Cunobelinus.

prohibition by capital punishment.* The revolt of the Eduans under the Druid Sacrovir must have given a most powerful impulse to the animosity of the studious emperor against a system which could thus prove itself dangerous as well as hateful; and that the desire to extirpate Druidism in its chief seats -in the temples of Abury and Stonehenge, and the distant islands of Anglesey and Man ‡—was among the motives of his British expedition, may be inferred from the zeal with which successive generals persecuted the Druids. At all events it is clear that, as Gaul became more and more Romanized, the remains of Celtic nationality found in Britain their sole refuge; and for this reason the tribes beyond the channel were viewed as more dangerous than those beyond the Rhine.

It was almost exactly a century since Cæsar had retired from Britain, that four legions crossed the channel under AULUS PLAUTIUS, the legate of Claudius in Gaul, and the future emperor TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS, who, says Tacitus, was then first "shown to the Fates." Amidst the meagre details of the campaign, we learn that their opponents were CARACTACUS (Caradoc) and Togodumnus, the sons of Cunobelin. After a first defeat the Britons appear to have made a stand behind the Thames; the Romans owed their victory to the boldness of the Batavian cavalry in swimming the broad tidal river; Togodumnus was slain; and Caractacus seems to have retired to the west. § The emperor, who was waiting in Gaul till the first difficulties of the war should be smoothed before him, now crossed the channel to reap its honours. The Trinobantes, who had made their last stand at Camulodunum, were defeated in front of their fortifications. Their submission was followed by that of several other tribes; and after spending only

*

Pliny tells us that a Gaulish chief, who had obtained the distinction of Roman knighthood, was delivered to the executioner, because on his coming to Rome on some private business, the Druid's talisman called the serpent's egg was discovered upon his person.

"The silence of the Roman authorities on Stonehenge and the other presumed Druidical monuments of Britain is no doubt remarkable; yet it seems extravagant to suppose, with some modern theorists, that they are posterior to the Roman period. They are first referred to by Henry of Huntingdon, early in the twelfth century, as then of unfathomed antiquity, and they form unquestionably part of a single system of monumental structures, scattered from Carnac in Brittany through a great part of northern and central Europe."-Merivale.

The ancient name of Mona, common to these two islands, causes a frequent confusion.

§ The account which represents Plautius as advancing as far as the Severn, which was again crossed by his Batavian horsemen, appears very improbable.

sixteen days in the island, Claudius returned to Rome to enjoy not only a triumph (A.D. 44), but the honour, only claimed before him by Sulla and Augustus, of enlarging the sacred pomarium of the city, in token of his having extended the limits of the empire.* The work of completing the conquest thus vaunted was left to Plautius and Vespasian. The latter led the second legion against the Belgae and Damnonii, who inhabited the peninsula west of the Solent and the Severn, defeating them in thirty-two battles, in one of which the young Titus gave the earnest of his future fame by saving his father's life. The Regni in the south not only submitted, but became the zealous allies of Rome; and the Iceni in the east were led to take the same course through jealousy of the Trinobantes. Their heroic king, Caractacus, still held out at the head of the Silures (in South Wales), when Aulus Plautius was succeeded by OSTORIUS SCAPULA (A.D. 47). The first act of the new commander was to establish a line of posts along the course of the Severn and the Avon. After subduing a revolt of the Iceni, and making successful attacks upon the Brigantes, in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and other tribes whose localities are less certain,† Ostorius founded a colony of veterans at Camulodunum, which became the great military base of the Roman power in the island; and here the worship of Claudius was set up. "In the colony of Camulodunum the Britons beheld an image, rude indeed and distorted, of the camp on the Rhine or Danube, combined with the city on the Tiber" (A.D. 50).

The Roman general now devoted all his energy to finishing the war, which Caractacus had prolonged for nine years by deeds which were doubtless sung by the native bards, but of which the record of his enemies is silent. He had now transferred the war to the mountains of the Ordovices in North Wales; but it seems impossible to identify with certainty the hill and river where his camp (Caer Caradoc) was at last stormed by the sheer hard-fighting of the legionaries. His wife and daughter were among the captives, and Caractacus himself was betrayed by his step-mother, Cartismandua, the queen of the Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge. Claudius, who had already celebrated his triumph, prepared another spectacle, in which to exhibit the first British prince who had been brought a captive to Rome. Caractacus, led in chains with his family and clients before the tribunal, where * This ceremony took place in A.D. 49.

The Cangi, for example, are placed by the geographers in the peninsula of Caernarvonshire.

the emperor was seated with Agrippina at his side, at the gate of the prætorian camp, pleaded for his life with a sublime boldness worthy of the first of British heroes. While reminding the emperor that his resistance enhanced the glory of his conquest, he invited him to earn a nobler title to fame by his clemency. The voice of history has ever since ratified the truth of the appeal; and the response of Claudius places him in honourable contrast to the murderers of Pontius, of Perseus, of Jugurtha, and of Vercingetorix. Meanwhile the capture of Caractacus had not ended the resistance of the Britons, and Ostorius Scapula died in the midst of his efforts to subdue them. A great victory was gained by the Silures over Valens and a Roman legion, and the Brigantes regained their independence, after expelling the traitress Cartismandua. The new legate, Aulus Didius, inactive alike from age and caution, was content to secure the ground already won, and to press forward slowly in the subjugation of Wales. When the reign of Claudius ended in the year 54, the south of Britain, from the Exe and the Severn to the Stour, had begun to assume the aspect of a settled Roman province, with Camulodunum for its capital, and London scarcely second to it as a seat of traffic. "Swept east and west by the tidal stream, and traversed north and south by the continuous British roads, Londinium supplied the whole island with the luxuries of another zone, just as Massilia had supplied Gaul." The readiness of the southern Britons to accept the civilization of the Romans inspired the latter with a confidence which was shown by the absence of any new works for the fortification of the Colony; and neither of the four legions which formed

* True as is the remark already quoted, that Arminius has equal claims to rank as one of the first heroes of the English nation, nothing but the mere pedantry of ethnical science would depose Caractacus from his place in our popular traditions. Not to insist at present on the arguments for a greater continuity of the Celtic element in our nation than is commonly admitted, nor on the honour which the whole people owes to the greatness of each of its races, the popular sentiment is amply justified by the principle of local association. Just as in the battles of chivalry the victor took the armorial bearings of the vanquished-our own heir-apparent, for example, deriving his title from the conquered Cymry, and his heraldic insignia from the King of Bohemia, who was slain at Crecy-so the English are not wrong in claiming the whole traditional inheritance which is included under the name of Britons.

+ The family of Caractacus would naturally be enrolled among the clients of the Claudian house; and it has been conjectured that the accomplished lady celebrated by Martial as "Claudia sprung from the blue-eyed Britons” (Epig. IV. 13), was the same person as the Claudia, wife of Pudens, whose Christian greeting Paul sends to Timothy (2 Tim. iv. 21). An inscription, however, found at Chichester, has given ground for the belief that St. Paul's Claudia was the daughter of a British king, Cogidubnus, an ally of Rome (see Smith's Dict. of the Bible, s..v.). We shall have again to speak of the early indications of Christianity among the Britons,