- Chapter Thirty-Two -
There remained strong anti-Roman elements, mainly in those tribes which had
suffered in their encounters with the army. The Durotriges and southern Dobunni
still nursed their grievances, which were kept alive by the druids, who saw their only
hope of survival in forcing the Romans to give up Britain and, as will be seen, almost
succeeding. They had retired to their sacred site on Anglesey (where they may have
been responsible for the great ritual offerings of Llyn Cerrig Bach (see Chapter 25))
and now placed their hopes in the Trinovantian prince Caratacus, who had taken his
warriors west into Wales. Here, through the influence of the druids, he was accepted
by the Celtic chiefs there and started to recruit warriors for the battles ahead.
His first strike was in the winter of 48 when the governors were changing over.
Plautius had left and was being replaced by the new governor, Ostorius Scapula.
Caratacus led his men across the lower Severn to link up with the Durotriges and
their allies. The word turbidae used by Tacitus (Annales XII. 3 I) had for him the
meaning of internal dissension. Scapula ordered his troops out of their winter quar-
ters and drove the Celts back over the Severn. He then realized that he was faced
with a serious problem. He had no authority to invade Wales, but Caratacus posed
a serious threat to the long frontier and could not be allowed the freedom to strike
again. The governor was forced into a decision, which was to have most unfortunate
consequences for Rome, in sowing the seed of the revolt of AD 60. In a corrupt
sentence of the text, he appears to have attempted to disarm all the tribes within the
province whose loyalty was suspect. This was designed to strike terror into the
Britons, so that they would be too cowed to follow the call of the druids to rise.
Only a section of the Iceni, hitherto loyal, revolted but having dealt with this
incident, Scapula collected as many troops as he could for a search-and-destroy
operation. This left some eastern areas very short of troops and he was obliged to
create, with imperial authority, two client kings to be responsible for law and order
in their kingdoms. They were Prasutagus of the Iceni and Cogidubnus of the
Atrebatesl Regni. The latter is even credited by Tacitus as having been given an
extended territory (quaedam civitates: Agricola 14) and his loyalty to Rome remained
unstinting.
The subsequent battle and fate of Caratacus are also well recorded by Tacitus
(Annales.xIII.B, 38; Webster 1993c: 28-)2). Scapula was now faced with the prob-
lem of a frontier along the river Severn along the eastern border of the hill country.
The basic concept was to block all the valleys to prevent the Celts from invading the
province. They rejoiced at the sudden death of Scapula (probably resulting from
stress) and had become so strong that a legion was defeated in the field (Annales
XII.40). Didius Gallus, the new governor, managed to stabilize the situation, but a
new trouble arose in the north because of the hostility of Venutius and the need to
protect his wife, the client-queen Cartimandua.
Britain was now much on the agenda in Rome and the youthful Nero's elderly
advisers, Seneca and Burrus, urged him to give up Britannia altogether, as it had
become too expensive with heavy military losses and its mineral wealth was not as
great as had been expected. This is based on an interpretation of a brief statement of
Suetonius (Nero 18: etiam ex Britannia deducere exercitum cogitavit). Nero, how-
ever, refused to give up a province so dearly won by his distinguished forebear,
thinking, of course, of Julius Caesar.