In Search of the Dark Ages Read online

  THE ROMAN INVASION

  Into this Celtic-speaking, essentially backward country, the Romans came with their legions in AD 43. We do not know why they invaded Britain: perhaps for its precious metals, its corn, wool, and other natural resources: maybe just ‘because it was there’ as a young British imperialist said of another kind of conquest. Most likely the reason was simply la gloire; an imperial triumph for Emperor Claudius, who needed all the martial publicity he could get. He proclaimed himself ‘first to bring the barbarian peoples across the ocean under the sway of the Roman people’ and he was, in effect, extending the empire to the western limits of the known world.

  Many tribes, especially those with strong trading contacts, welcomed the Romans, or at least submitted without a fight. These included many enemies of the overking Cunobelinus. Others fought and were defeated. The Iceni of Norfolk were among those who submitted quietly, and the Romans were able to celebrate their triumph within a matter of months while their armies fanned out northwards and westwards. As we shall often see in these stories, conquerors always make a grand show to demonstrate their supremacy and their ideology, and none were better at this than the Romans. As soon as the military situation in the south-east was safe, the Emperor Claudius himself hastened to Britain and held a great ceremony at Camulodunum. The Britons were overawed with a display of Roman dazzle and majesty and they formally submitted to the invaders. These events were recorded on a triumphal arch in Rome and the inscription can still be seen in the Palazzo Barberini:

  To Tiberius Caesar Germanicus … Father of the State and the People of Rome, because without any mishap he received in unconditional surrender eleven conquered British kings, and for the first time reduced the barbarians beyond the sea under the power of the Roman people.

  It was, for the Romans, a great day, that day at Camulodunum: the emperor and his retinue on their dais with the commander-in-chief, the high-ranking officers and the praetorian guard, pennons flapping, watching Roman might parade past with elephants (a nice touch to impress the vanquished, most of whom would never have even heard of such an animal).

  Then Claudius supervised the formal surrender in which the British kings placed themselves under the protection of the Roman people. Among those kings was Prasutagus of the Iceni, and in the circumstances of Prasutagus’ deal with the Romans lies the origin of the great revolt of AD 60–61. For Prasutagus’ wife was Boudica.

  ICENI

  Prasutagus’ people, the Iceni, were isolated, cut off behind the forests of Suffolk and Norfolk from the Romanised tribes of Essex and the south-east. As yet very little is known about their tribal organisation. In his Commentaries Caesar speaks of the Ceni Magni, implying that there was a ‘lesser’ as well as a ‘greater’ Icenian tribe, and small clues from chance archaeological finds do indeed seem to indicate that the group did not have one nucleus. In fact a threefold division is suggested by the finds of coins and metalwork, and it may be that there were three different royal clans to go with them, with three distinct royal centres. At present we can only guess where they might have been.

  However, there must have been a centre near Norwich, close to the later Roman town which bore the tribal name, Venta Icenorum, ‘market of the Iceni’, whose ruins still remain at Caistor-by-Norwich. It stands to reason that the Roman town was close to an important native site which preceded it, although as yet no trace of earthwork or crop mark has been observed. Somewhere in the line of bluffs above Caistor, it is likely that there is a pre-Roman settlement awaiting the archaeologist’s spade. On the northern coastal plain another concentration of coin and metalwork finds could point to a second subdivision of the Iceni settled by the sea, perhaps at the well-preserved earthwork at Warham St Mary. In the south-west of Norfolk major finds in the Brecklands are also localised, especially in the valley of the Little Ouse where four coin hoards have been found. Even more significantly, a large occupation area (with, as yet, no traces of defence works) has been identified near Saham Toney, south-west of Norwich. This place seems to be the most productive Iceni site yet. Not only have there been domestic finds of coins, rings, pins and fine decorated brooches for cloaks and dresses but coin moulds reveal that coins were actually minted there, suggesting a site of considerable importance, if our limited ideas about Iceni culture are not misleading. Fascinating as the prospects are from Saham Toney, our information is as yet dependent on chance finds. Only when the hilltop there is dug will hard answers begin to emerge about the state of Iceni civilisation on the eve of its eclipse.

  Because no pre-Roman Iceni centre has yet been identified and excavated archaeologists are still in the dark about the royal family. For instance, when Tacitus speaks of a ‘palace’ is it a simple anachronism? If there were three different sections of the tribe, were there three kings? What was Prasutagus’ relationship to the king ‘Antedios’ named on the coins who is thought to have ruled around the time of the Roman Conquest? Was Prasutagus a puppet king set up by the Romans to further their interests in opposition to other branches of the royal family, perhaps after Antedios had been deposed or died? But most important of all, who was Boudica? We know she was Prasutagus’ wife – but what was the ancestry and royal status which (along with her charismatic personality) enabled her to command such allegiance when the revolt broke out? These are all questions which probably can never be answered, but political in-fighting between pro-Roman and anti-Roman tribes and groups should never be underestimated when dealing with these events. In the meantime only the full excavation of an undoubted Iceni royal centre could give us some answers to questions which we see at present only through Roman eyes.

  Detailed study of Iceni coinage has furnished one of two further clues. We know that before the Roman Conquest, they minted their own coins, but in a far more limited way than the rich Belgic tribes of the south-east. The circulation of the coins was extremely restricted and hence probably comparatively few coins were made (so few in fact that no two dies that have yet been found were ever alike). Initially the coinage was in gold, and carried no inscription. It is only in its final stages – just before the revolt – that the coinage bears the tribal name in the form ‘Eceni’: these pieces were apparently issued during the reigns of Prasutagus and Boudica herself and they were buried in large numbers when Boudica’s revolt was suppressed. These later coins which proudly blazon the tribal name were struck only in silver. By the time of the Roman Conquest, and probably a good while before, the Iceni gold supply (bought or traded from elsewhere in Britain) had dried up. More noticeable still, the beautiful Iceni gold metalwork, torques, bracelets and ornate chariot and horse gear, which has been found in a number of East-Anglian hoards dating from the first century BC, seems to have ceased to be manufactured even before the Claudian invasion: possibly the Iceni were being starved of precious metals by their wealthier and more powerful Belgic neighbours.

  The limited circulation of Icenian coinage, and its small-scale manufacture, could suggest that their rulers were unfamiliar with the use of coinage as a means of trade and very likely did not understand the principles of finance. This would explain much of what followed. Rather like the British administrators did in the Raj, the Romans let the Iceni retain some privileges and a token independence in return for the payment of tribute, the provision of auxiliary recruits for the Roman army, and the acceptance of ‘aid’. ‘Aid as imperialism’ is not a new concept, and like many Third World countries today the Iceni accepted loans from Roman financiers to help them become, by degrees, ‘Romanised’. This probably involved buying Roman luxury products just as it might today include, say, buying a Coca-Cola monopoly. But Prasutagus can hardly have known what he was letting himself in for. The kind of men who were behind the loans in Rome understood all too well the dictates of international finance. The emperor’s tutor, Seneca, was one; a philosopher and a poet, a clever, rich man who intended to get richer.

  THE FIRST ICENI UNREST

  Having overrun the south-east, the Romans pus
hed their armed forces towards Wales and into the south-western peninsula. Meanwhile behind the military zone the colonists, tradesmen, developers and entrepreneurs moved in to open up the new province. A new Roman colony at Colchester close to the oppidum at Gosbecks was made the capital of the province of Britain. A great trading post was also set up to which the resources of the province could be brought and where the produce of the Roman world could be bought and sold: pottery, glass, fabrics, wine, olives, corn. This place was to become London.

  As the armies advanced north and west a military frontier was established running in a line from Lincoln via Gloucester to Exeter. A military road linked by a string of forts – the Fosse Way – enabled forces to be moved from point to point along this line. Perhaps the conquest was originally intended to end at this barrier, much as it had ended on a similar line in Germany. After all, beyond it were only recalcitrant tribes in mountainous regions like Wales which seemed unlikely to yield much profit. But troubles beyond it – including violent resistance by a British leader known to history as Caractacus – gradually pushed the Romans further forward into the Welsh mountains. These troubles also altered the Roman attitude to the tribes behind them.

  In AD 50 the Roman governor decided to ‘disarm suspects on this (the Roman) side of the rivers Trent and Severn’. Hence it became forbidden under Roman law to carry arms, except hunting weapons. Not only the tribes hostile to Roman rule were included, but even client kingdoms like the Iceni who had no Roman troops occupying their land and who expected the Romans to be on their side. Units were sent in to search out and confiscate all Iceni arms, and especially their great iron swords which were finely welded and decorated by skilled Celtic smiths and were prized as heirlooms and marks of aristocratic status. Uproar followed. The Iceni were the first people to rebel and they immediately sought help from their neighbours the Coritani and the Catuvellauni. They attacked one of the Roman auxiliary units sent to them but were then swiftly forced on the defensive in ‘an enclosure surrounded by a crude and rustic bank with a narrow entrance’ (Tacitus Annals ). This obviously refers to an Iron Age hillfort. There they were easily overcome. (There are no known hillforts along the southern and southwestern border of the Iceni kingdom except Wandlebury near Cambridge, and though excavation in the fifties did not prove this, it is perhaps the likeliest spot for the incident.)

  The revolt of 50 was a minor affair. Prasutagus himself retained his position as client king of the Iceni, so it may have been another section of the tribe under another leader who revolted, with Prasutagus remaining, as we suspected, pro-Roman. But the incident is interesting because it shows how quickly the tribe were to react to Roman terror tactics. Sown in Iceni minds was the fear that the Romans might not be their friends for long. The Romans were also alerted, for soon after 50 the governor set up a permanent colony for army veterans at Camulodunum, giving them lands appropriated from the estates of the Trinovantian house.

  Establishing a colonia in conquered territory was a tried and tested Roman practice. It was a good way of pensioning off old hands who wanted to settle down after their sixteen-year term of service; it provided a reserve of trained and experienced troops in an emergency (an important factor here with the front line 150 miles to the west); it was also a means of spreading Roman civilisation to the natives; a town laid out on the Roman model to show locals what a high standard of living Rome could bring. A model town, then, but the veterans did not prove to be model citizens.

  COLCHESTER: ‘BLATANT SYMBOL OF ALIEN IMPERIALISM’

  Camulodunum, or Colchester as we shall call it, was chosen for obvious reasons. It was next to the great tribal capital at the Gosbecks, centre of the ‘King of the Britons’. It was strategically placed between the client kingdoms of the Iceni and Trinovantes, with good communications by sea and land. Here Roman veterans settled, put their savings into businesses and married local girls, as soldiers of all times have done. They built little villas in the surrounding countryside, brought in Roman farming methods and ran their estates with British slaves; they constructed small houses like modern Mediterranean town houses and opened shops in Colchester itself, importing the staples of Mediterranean life by road from the warehouses of London, or by sea up the river Colne.

  They were not expecting trouble. The turf bank of the legionary fortress built here in 43 was levelled and buildings erected over it, most in timber and wattle but including a stone forum on the site of the present town hall (the site has been the administrative centre of the town ever since), a theatre, and most striking of all, the Temple of Claudius. This was the biggest Roman temple in Britain (105 feet by 80 feet) standing on a plinth in a precinct 400 feet by 500 feet and surrounded by a wall of finely faced stone. The building was decorated with alabaster and red, green and black marble expensively imported from as far away as Italy, Greece, Asia Minor and North Africa. In front of the entrance steps stood a great altar flanked by statues, one of which was a bronze mounted statue of Claudius himself. The temple would have had a college of priests to conduct the services, and it appears that the large income needed to support them came more from local taxes than from gifts from worshippers. No wonder then that this ‘blatant symbol of alien rule’, as Tacitus calls it, created such resentment among the Britons.

  The colonists needed land to grow crops, and this was taken from the natives who lived around Colchester. The same was done with the Catuvellauni at St Albans, though there the colony itself was mainly populated with locals who were encouraged to ‘go Roman’ and live in the town. Towns were an innovation in British life in the 50s – urban life here was unknown before the Roman conquest – but because they were all destroyed in Boudica’s revolt in 60–61, archaeologists have been able to date these early developments securely and give us a fantastically vivid picture of life before the holocaust.

  High Street Colchester was the main shopping centre then as now. On the north side, for instance, there was a timber-framed seedsman’s warehouse with wattle and daub walls and painted plaster. Further along was a pottery shop stocked with hundreds of Samian bowls – mass-produced household ware – and jars, glasses and lamps (there was a local lamp industry in the town). Amazingly these shops were found to have been on the same footing as the modern shops: property boundaries in this part of Colchester have remained unchanged for 2000 years! On the other side of the street, next to the Red Lion hotel, another pottery shop was found which sold decorated bowls for the upper-class end of the market; over seventy of these were found still packaged in the crates in which they were imported from factories in central Gaul. Here too were found quantities of coriander for seasoning food, dill, anise, pine cones, opium poppy, lentils, and figs – not dried but fresh. (Was the Colne valley temperate enough in the first century to grow figs?) The impression all this gives is of a high-class delicatessen for Romans of wealth and good taste. Southwards along Lion Walk, where a mass of timber-framed houses and shops was found, this impression was confirmed in 1974 when a fruit shop was found with plums, olives and a pile of calcined dates in a remarkable state of preservation. These kinds of products, along with wine and fish paste, would have been imported in amphorae, or storage jars, from the Mediterranean; to a shop like this the Roman veterans and their British wives would have sent their slaves to buy all the products which gave the Romans a sense of well-being in a foreign land. The colonial life here, it seems, was a good life.

  THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLT: TACITUS’ STORY

  In AD 60 during the reign of the vicious and unpredictable Emperor Nero, Prasutagus died ‘after a life of long and renowned prosperity’, says Tacitus. At this point the Iceni were still a client state of the Romans, nominally allies rather than an occupied, conquered race. Prasutagus clearly hoped that he might be able to preserve this precarious independence after his death by a show of loyalty to Nero, and he made the emperor his co-heir with his two daughters. But this only invited the appropriation that followed. After he died Roman agents moved into Iceni
country and plundered the royal household; Iceni chiefs were deprived of their hereditary lands and Prasutagus’ widow Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped by Roman slaves. The Romans thought they could reduce the Iceni to provincial status and dispense with their traditional royal family by such offhand and brutal treatment. Seeing the way the wind was blowing, the Roman investors in Rome, men like Seneca, called in their loans. Unbowed, the Iceni decided to revolt, and with them the Trinovantes and other tribes, ‘having secretly plotted together to become free again,’ adds Tacitus, indicating that the rebellion was to some extent planned in its opening stages. Their leader was Boudica.

  Our only accounts of the revolt are Roman, and our only reliable one is Cornelius Tacitus’ Annals. Tacitus was a highly-educated upper-class Roman, but one with a wide and sympathetic interest in the Celtic and Germanic peoples in the north and west of the empire. Although he was only a boy at the time of the revolt, Tacitus’ story has particular value because his father-in-law, Julius Agricola, later a famous governor of Britain, fought in the campaign of 60–61 as a junior officer. It is surely reasonable to think that in later years the young Tacitus must have heard his in-laws talking about these events, and must have read Agricola’s memoirs, which are not now extant. Tacitus also commands our respect as a narrator because, although he gives us, inevitably, a one-sided account of Boudica, he was, as he says himself, ‘dedicated to writing history without anger or bias’, and it is quite clear that he was antipathetic to many aspects of Roman imperialism. Thus, though we cannot be sure he is not simply imputing motives to Boudica for dramatic effect, and without good evidence, time and again he suggests that the Britons had genuine grievances against colonists who in their turn are portrayed as incredibly insensitive to a different culture. In short, it would be impossible to tell this story without Tacitus, and impossible to interpret much of the archaeological material now coming to light.