nm0051: er last week i was dealing with the invasions of Julius Caesar and from 
the point of view of the reasons that he gives for the fifty-five and fifty-
four invasions i hope that the main message came across was that he actually 
does give us some form of reasoning and motivation for his fifty-five invasion 
even if we have to read between the lines to establish it whereas for the fifty-
four invasion there is very little concrete evidence within his commentaries 
and the reason for this i think is fairly clear that if he had actually stated 
when he came to write his commentaries years later if he'd actually stated a 
motive in coming to Britain that year he could well have found himself in 
difficulties with a charge of not having achieved that particular aim after all 
if conquest was his aim then he singularly failed to 
achieve it if economic gain was his aim as it was and certainably was certainly 
for some of his er companions those extra five ships that went along with him 
then that too was not forthcoming there was no profit to be made from the fifty-
four invasion hence the silence about motivation the relative failure of the 
fifty-four invasion from the point of view of propaganda and real achievement 
can also be seen in the reaction that it produced within Rome itself there was 
no great thanksgiving celebration such as had greeted the fifty-five invasion 
when there was a twenty day er period of thanksgiving and what evidence we have 
of the way that the fifty-four invasion was looked at suggests that it was 
something of er a fiasco in the Roman eyes er we look for instance in the 
source book on page thirty-four for the verdict of somebody like Cicero 
somebody at the heart of senatorial government and you 
can hear the irony in what the ap-, absolute sarcasm in the words that he puts 
in his letters to Atticus his friend he says it's also become clear that there 
isn't an ounce of silver in the island nor any prospect of booty except slaves 
i don't suppose you're expecting any of them to be accomplished in literature 
or music in other words pretty poor quality material and then later on he says 
the campaign in Britain is complete hostages have been received there's no 
booty tribute has however been imposed and they're bringing back the arm from 
Britain as i said last time Caesar's involvement with Britain after his return 
from the fifty-four er invasion simply ceased so far as we can tell he had his 
hands full in Gaul with the great uprising of Vercingetorix and thereafter 
never had the opportunity to renew any plans he may have had for a third 
expedition the terms though that 
he'd imposed upon people like Cassivellaunus at the end of the fifty-four 
campaign do suggest however that Caesar saw that campaign as a preliminary to 
an eventual Roman takeover the very fact that he imposed tribute is one of the 
first stages in a Roman takeover of an area but it was to be something like 
ninety years before the Romans actually got round to a third and this time 
successhful successful invasion or conquest now what i want to start doing 
today is to look at what happened in those ninety years we have to admit that 
our sources of information are pretty poor if you read one of the handbooks 
like that by Salway you will get established there a history for the period 
that is based upon such information as does exist but that information comes 
from two sources neither of them p-, particularly er overflowing with detail or 
ostensible accuracy there's the literary record that i'll be looking at soon 
and there is 
the coin evidence of developments in coinage within Britain itself because we 
have to look at this process not only from the point of view of what was 
happening in Rome that prevented a third invasion until ninety years later and 
the reign of the emperor Claudius but we have to look at what was going on in 
Britain as well because in neither case was the situation static certainly from 
the point of view of the native tribes of south-east Britain immediately after 
the departure of Caesar there was every er incentive on the part of some of 
them to maintain close and friendly relations with Rome Mandubracius for 
instance of the Trinovantes had a vested interest in that connection because it 
was upon the protection of Caesar that he owed his very existence as King of 
the Trinovantes down in Essex and yet even people like Cassivellaunus shows no 
signs of having broken the agreement that he made with Caesar but the one thing 
to bear in mind about such agreements is 
that they are not interstate agreements they're not like present day treaties 
between one country and another they're agreements between one individual 
commander and another and any of such an agreement undergoes a radical change 
when one of those two people dies in other words the treaty the agreement dies 
with them and this is one of the reasons no doubt that changes didn't come 
about perhaps the first event that happened which has a bearing upon Romano-
British relations is the history of Commius Commius the Atrebate who was so 
helpful to Caesar in the invasions because during the great Gallic uprising 
Commius changed sides took the sides of the Gauls and was eventually forced to 
quit Gaul and become a refugee within Britain where he seems to have set 
himself up as king among the Atrebates of the Hampshire region and that's one 
of the tribes that's important for the next ninety years this is where the coin 
record comes in in those ninety 
years we have a succession of coin issues being produced by a number of dynasts 
or kings within Britain in no case does that coin actually signify which tribe 
it came from we're reliant upon that kind of information from looking at the 
concentration of find spots so this particular series of coins is Atrebatic 
that particular series of coins belongs to the Catuvellauni that particular 
series of coins belongs to the Trinovantes and so on but there is a 
complication in this that has arisen in recent years in fact there are two 
complications one is that one of the prime characters of the period seems to 
have changed his name the successor to Commius of the Atrebate has for a long 
time been known in the handbooks and you'll find it in Salway as Tincommius 
this was a a restoration of his name based upon what was extant in two sources 
one of those sources is a copy of the achievements of the emperor Augustus that 
he himself wrote and which is extant as a monumental 
piece of er epigraphy in Ankara within Turkey but unfortunately the only 
letters available are tin or tim and er putting that together with what else 
was found at the last of the at the end of the last century suggested that here 
we will have we have evidence of a ruler called Tincommius the similarity with 
the name of Commius provided an obvious dynastic link with all the coins 
themselves of this ruler we get as far as Tincom and that actually seemed to be 
very good in so far as it took us one stage further but it didn't supply the 
end of the name in nineteen-ninety-six in Hampshire was found a hoard of coins 
produced by Tincommius but unfortunately or fortunately rather the name was 
complete and we now know this character is Tincommarus which basically 
translates as big fish an important man obviously so that is one of the 
problems presented by the coin record sometimes names change 
another problem comes from interpretation of the coin record if you read Salway 
you'll see the coin record being used for the establishment of a period of 
aggrandisement on the part of the Catuvellauni of Hertfordshire and the 
surrounding counties against their eastern neighbours the Trinovantes against 
their southern neighbours the Cantiaci of Kent and the Atrebates of Hampshire 
this has recently been put into question by er a numismatist based actually in 
New York called Van Arsdell and if you read the various sections of his book on 
Celtic coinage you'll see that he in fact he postulates not conflict between 
the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes but an actual coming together of those two 
peoples into a single unit to explain why we find coins which seem to have been 
produced by the king of one tribe produced at the capital of the other tribe 
all this is nicely set out if at some great length by a book by David Braund 
which i'll put back into the library 
after this lecture it's called Ruling Roman Britain and has a good section on 
the coinage and on this particular period in particular er my complaint about 
Braund and about Van Arsdell though is that they tend to be totally literal for 
instance as we saw last time Cassivellaunus er the main linchpin of the 
resistance to the fifty-four invasion by Caesar is usually made the king of the 
Catuvellauni that fact is nowhere mentioned in any of the ancient evidence of 
the fifty-four invasion and people like er Braund and Van Arsdell would 
question whether it's valid they pooh-pooh the similarity of the name 
Catuvellauni as the tribe and Cassivellaunus as the individual it's that kind 
of literalism if it isn't stated in the ancient authorities it can't be true 
which cre-, er causes these people to go too far and really to prevent any 
meaningful establishment of the history of the period but what i want to give 
you though is first of all the traditional view of what was 
happening within Britain and then we can have a look at the problems created by 
the new evidence so we go back to Commius who establishes himself in the t-, 
the territory of the Atrebates round about fifty-two B-C he's eventually 
succeeded by Tincommarus and it's at this point that we get some evidence 
within the sources for relations with Rome according to our main source who is 
really Strabo a Greek writer who completed his geographical work and i stress 
that it is a geographical work er round about A-D twenty we find that from the 
Roman point of view intervention in Britain was something to be put on hold 
Strabo says that taxing the exports from the Roman empire into Britain before 
they left the continent brought in more money than theoretically er an outright 
takeover of Britain would realize and therefore it just simply wasn't working 
on economic grounds we also hear of dedications by British kings made to the r-,
to Rome and its gods on the Capitol hill within Rome itself 
an indication of close and friendly contacts so in this period there were from 
time to time contacts they were friendly there was obviously something to be 
gained one way or another for both sides but nevertheless the threat of a Roman 
invasion of Britain could be a very valuable diplomatic tool and this is why i 
think we hear of projected expeditions to Britain by Julius Caesar's successor 
the first emperor Augustus on a number of occasions we hear for instance of a 
projected invasion in thirty-four B-C from Dio Cassius we hear of another one 
in twenty-seven B-C another one in twenty-six B-C in each case Dio Cassius 
alleges that there was something more important happening that diverted 
Augustus' attention away from Britain a rebellion for instance elsewhere within 
the empire there's also the idea of a Roman takeover of Britain being kept 
alive through the non-historical literature of the period poets like Tibullus 
and Propertius and Horace 
all mention from time to time within their writings the possibilities of a 
Roman intervention within Britain we hear about it shortly before twenty-seven 
B-C from Tibullus actually in twenty-seven B-C from Propertius the same in the 
case of Horace Horace mentions it again in the context of twenty-six B-C and 
again in the context of twenty-three B-C now why would Augustus sanction such 
overt references within literature people like Horace were court poets what 
they wrote was sanctioned wasn't a free agent well as i've said there is a 
diplomatic element here the very threat of a Roman takeover presented to 
Britain the suggestion that a friendly relationship with Rome was better than a 
hostile one which would provide the pretext for intervention there was also 
something for Augustus to gain from such a possible intervention especially in 
in the early years of Augustus' reign by associating himself with the 
achievements of Julius Caesar through the fifty-five 
and fifty-four invasions Augustus may well have thought that he was 
strengthening his own position as the legitimate successor to one of the major 
figures of the first century er B-C and so from the Roman point of view that 
kind of thing was something to be kept on the back burner if not on the front 
burner with time though things did shift it's likely that at some period before 
A-D seven and we can't put it better than that er Tincommius was forced to 
leave Britain and to take refuge in Rome or rather let's call him Tincommarus 
we know this from the evidence of Augustus himself in that monument in Ankara 
he lists for the period well the last date that we can actually be certain 
about on the list is er twenty-five B-C but he gives us the list of the of 
ruling princes and kings who sought refuge with him in Rome and he gives us two 
British rulers one Dubnovellaunus and the other this Tincommarus figure that 
we've dealt with i give the the the date A-D seven because that's the 
date that you'll find in the handbooks if you read Van Arsdell he seems to 
limit Tincommarus' reign er between thirty B-C and ten B-C though Van Arsdell's 
record for dating within his book has been er a matter of some concern to the 
viewers now what might have caused Tincommarus to leave the territory of the 
Atrebates and seek refuge with Augustus well there are two possibilities either 
an external invasion or a palace coup and the fact that he seems to be replaced 
not by somebody from outside but by another Atrebate this case this case 
Eppillus suggests that it was a palace coup that er produced the change just as 
Eppillus seems to have been replaced in time by another figure called Verica 
now each of these on some of their coins describes himself as son of Commius it 
has the Latin er tag com F com filius whether this is actually a dynastic link 
or whether it's a little bit of fiction in order to establish the legitimacy of 
their rule nobody knows but it is there and 
it's also significant that the language that starts appearing upon these coins 
is Latin it's rare that one is getting anything Celtic the only Celtic term 
that we find on the coins is that term which seems to be Celtic for king Celtic 
equivalent of the Latin rex when in fact a number of these er kings especially 
people like Verica do put the Latin title rex king upon their kings and the 
very fact that they choose to do it in Latin suggests a a recognition by Rome 
of their position within Britain in other words that they are in a state of 
some kind of an agreement with the central Rome authorities of all the 
Catuvellauni to the north of the Atrebates we know that Cassivellaunus was 
succeeded at some stage the traditional date is round about twenty B-C by a 
ruler called Tasciovanus and he's producing coins from a new capital of 
Verulamium which is now Saint Albans we know this because he puts V-E-R on 
his coins a shortened form of the name er Verulamium is simply a Latinized form 
of Verulam the Celtic term in effect Tasciovanus was the first king of this 
tribe to produce inscribed coins there's a mystery here though because some 
coins produced by Tasciovanus have another set of letters on the reverse C- A- 
M which can only stand for Camulodunum modern Colchester Camulodunum was the 
capital of the Trinovantes so according to the traditional interpretation this 
particular issue of coins bearing the letters C-A-M which is a rare ed-, er 
edition of coins it's a rare edition suggesting that not very many were 
produced which itself suggests a short period of issue the traditional 
interpretation is that at some stage the Catuvellauni under Tasciovanus overran 
the Trinovantes took over their capital and as a sign of the takeover 
Tasciovanus began minting coins 
from the Trinovantine capital when might this have happened well at what stage 
in Romano-British relations could a takeover have happened that was immediately 
abandoned because of some threat from Rome and again the traditional date for 
this is round about sixteen B-C when A Rome was diverted in its er attention by 
difference elsewhere in the empire and then the presence of the emperor 
Augustus personally in Gaul shortly afterwards other evidence that has usually 
been brought out as sign of p-, a sign of power struggle is the dichotomy the 
change between rex on some coins and rico or rigo on others does the use of a 
Celtic title for king suggest a more British oriented and therefore anti-Roman 
view of things whereas rex emphasized the Roman connection we don't know later 
on we find coins issued by Verica and i've got a few slides that might show 
this later on which have as their motif on them a vine leaf now the vine is not 
a native plant to this country and at 
this particular period of ancient history it is very unlikely that there were 
any vines whatsoever within Britain at all so why does Verica choose to put a 
vine leaf and the title rex on his coins is there anything that one can say 
from the fact that the coins of the Catuvellauni their neighbours to the north 
who were traditionally regarded as imperialistic and pressurizing the er 
Atrebates put an ear of barley on their er coins is this again an element of 
emphasizing the British aspect as opposed to the Mediterranean motif of the 
Atrebates we can't really say we note what is there but the interpretation is 
something of a mystery at some stage Tasciovanus of the Catuvellauni was 
himself replaced succeeded by a new character Cunobelinus the Cymbeline of 
Shakespeare an important figure one of our sources Suetonius for instance calls 
him King of the Britons which suggests that he has control of a number of 
tribal areas he too begins issuing coins 
with those letters C-A-M on them Camulodunum and this is a long period of issue 
so do we take it that there has been takeover a military takeover once again of 
Trinovantine territory if this is the case is there a date that one can use to 
pinpoint it at what stage might Roman attention be diverted away from Britain 
the traditionally suggested date is A-D nine when Rome suffered a tremendous 
disaster on the Rhine in an attempt to shorten the overall frontier of of the 
empire Augustus had sought to push eastwards from the Rhine to a new line at 
the Elbe this would cut out in fact a rather troublesome kink in the northern 
frontier of the Roman empire caused by the almost confluence of the sources of 
the Rhine and the Danube it was a failure as a policy in the great German er 
forest of Teutoburger Wald Varus at the head of three legions was pretty well 
annihilated and it was a tremendous shock to Roman 
morale in fact you've probably heard about the story of Augustus wandering in a 
state of dismay round his palace for years afterwards saying Varus Varus give 
me back my legions the thought of the the loss of over eighteen-thousand men 
and that could well have been the signal for any er Catuvellaunian takeover of 
Trinovantine territory if it happened and if what we're seeing is not simply a 
merging together of two tribes on the level of interstate relations then we 
have a number of possible scenarios to look at on an economic level relations 
between the continent the Roman empire that is and Britain were going from good 
to better there is plenty of evidence of massive imports of gold luxury goods 
into Britain throughout this period we hear of some of them we find others in 
archaeological contexts the number of wine amphoras that are found either in a 
broken state or intact because they'd been preserved within high status graves 
suggests a large scale import of 
things like wine in order to quench the thirst of the upper echelons of native 
British society the same is true of fine pieces of pottery and silverware again 
these come out of native graves of the period and are well preserved what 
Britain gave to the continent gave to the Roman empire is best exemplified from 
people like Strabo who lists items like corn cattle gold silver these would be 
the normal things that you would exchange for the er luxury goods of the empire 
the gold and silver in the form of coins and it's surprising how much er 
reliance native British society placed upon gold coinage but also things like 
slaves and slaves itself suggests a an intertribal element of strife because 
where would the slaves come from except prisoners of war and hunting dogs for 
which the Romans always had an element of admiration British hunting dogs er 
were almost as good as the famed Molossians from the Balkans 
nm0051: now if the Catuvellauni did take 
over the Trinovantes by an armed intervention this brought no reaction from 
Rome so far as we can tell the evidence all the evidence suggests a long term 
involvement by that tribe within Trinovantine territory and if it if it wasn't 
er an armed invasion then we can say that Cunobelinus was able by diplomacy to 
prevent a Roman invasion to restore Trinovantes and a way perhaps of doing this 
was to show that although they'd taken over the the basic situation in Britain 
was in fact no worse no better no different that even then Britain posed no 
threat to the continental empire but things were not to stay like that for ever 
in A-D thirty-seven Augustus' successor Tiberius who had always had a policy of 
non-involvement beyond the established confines of Augustus' empire Tiberius 
died and was succeeded by Gaius Caligula of ill repute now Gaius Caligula has 
come down to us through the writings of people like Suetonius as an insane 
monster there is nothing good that 
ancient writers have to say about him if you remember back to the depiction 
that you got in I Claudius you can see why in A-D thirty-nine Caligula was 
engaged in a campaign in Germany when he was visited by another refugee from 
Britain a young er prince called Adminius and we're told that he was driven out 
of Britain by his father Cunobelinus now there is a small issue of coins er 
from northern Kent that were produced by somebody called Aminius and it's 
tempting to equate these two people for there's only a one letter difference 
and to see Adminius or Aminius established in northern Kent by Cunobelinus but 
then falling out with his father and being forced from Britain altogether onto 
the continent this was enough to persuade Caligula that an expedition to 
Britain was something that warranted his special attention after all there was 
a lot of er kudos to be gained from such an expedition at this point though the 
account that is left to us by Suetonius and later by Dio Cassius 
who was obviously sitting embroidering upon er Suetonius er comes to the fore 
various attempts have been made to try to rationalize and explain the utter 
fiasco that took place on the shore of Gaul prior to what turned out to be an 
aborted expedition but i think any attempt to produce a rational explanation 
really founders upon the fact that there was there is no evidence for any 
support of such rationality Suetonius tells us that er he arrived at the camp 
where all the troops were gathered didn't like what he found went on the 
rampage sacked people left right and centre then ordered that his artillery his 
bal-, ballistas be drawn up into position all his men should be ready to embark 
and then suddenly he ordered them to fill their helmets and the folds of their 
tunics with seashells calling them spoils from ocean owed to the Capitol and 
Palatine and then as a monument to his victory over ocean that is 
he erected a very high tower from which fires were to shine out at night to 
guide the passage of ships in other words a er a pharos like the one at ank-, 
er Alexandria a lighthouse Dio Cassius makes the story even more ridiculous he 
has Caligula embark on a trireme putting out to sea a little bit then he sailed 
back then he took his position on a high platform gave the soldiers a signal as 
if for battle and urged them on by means of trumpeters then suddenly he ordered 
them to gather seashells and having got these spoils for it was clear he needed 
booty for his triumphal procession he became very excited as though he'd 
enslaved ocean itself well how does one rationalize this one could say it's not 
to be rationalized Caligula was mad and there are various other bits of 
evidence which suggest that Caligula was mad for instance er according to 
Suetonius he was standing beside the great statue of Jupiter in the temple of 
Capitoline Jupiter and asked people who was the greater and of course you 
always gave 
the right answer there's that scandalous story which will probably have some of 
you fainting of him having got his sister pregnant er and then conducted a 
Caesarean abortion and ate the foetus er because he thought that he was a god 
and this is what Cronos one of the pre-Zeus gods actually did so all the 
evidence that comes out of this suggests er an insane monster and this is the 
kind of behaviour you would expect from somebody who was not quite firing on 
all four cylinders others though have suggested that the troops gathered at the 
coast of northern Gaul principally at Boulogne didn't want to go across the 
channel it but Britain was still regarded as a place of mystery of unknown 
dangers and potential of all the stories filtered down for the best part of 
eighty to ninety years from the time of Julius Caesar why go on was there a 
mutiny and was the victory over ocean exemplified by picking up seashells his 
way of er shaming them others have 
suggested that seashells doesn't mean seashells in Latin it means sappers' huts 
that he simply abandoned the expedition and told them to dismantle the huts on 
the shore and went off we don't know all we have is the evidence of people like 
Suetonius and er Dio Cassius in A-D forty-one Rome tired of Caligula four years 
of him was quite enough and er if don't mind the pun he had a very bad attack 
of iron poisoning caused by a lot of swords stuck in all at once and that was 
the end of him thank goodness the Rome that Rome was able to heave a sigh of 
relief but this er unplanned change in succession created its own problem who 
was to succeed the suddenness had some people suggesting that the republic 
should be restored but the republic was now a vague memory the whole system of 
imperial government had shifted away from it those who were historians and 
remembered the republic remembered an age of er civil war the imperial family 
had not been 
particularly fortunate in producing a lot of surviving offspring and this is 
where a collateral branch comes on the scene the famous episode of poor old 
Uncle Claudius being found hiding behind a curtain by members of the Praetorian 
Guard the imperial bodyguard of him being taken off to their camp outside Rome 
and hailed as emperor thereafter foisted upon the senate who without forces of 
their own had no choice but to accede that change of government the accession 
of Claudius was in fact to bring in one of the major changes of policy as well 
it seems to have coincided give or take a year or two with the arrival within 
Rome of another refugee a man that our sources writing in Greek give the name 
of Berikos who i've given up here and that name is usually interpreted as the 
Greek form of Verica Verica King of the Atrebates of Hampshire we're also told 
that Britain at this period was in tumult as a result of Roman failure to 
return to the island a number of refugees and 
undoubtedly Verica or Berikos would have been one of these you'll find this on 
page forty-five of the source book er Aulus Plautius who was er to be Claudius' 
general of the expedition made a campaign to Britain since a certain Berikos 
who had been driven out of the island as a result of an up-, uprising had 
persuaded Claudius to send a force there so Berikos ostensibly according to our 
sources and it's Dio Cassius who's fairly late but perhaps to be believed was 
one element suggesting that Claudius might invade Britain there were other 
things coming together at this same time which would lead to that expedition 
into Britain and what were these well first of all i've already mentioned that 
there's a shortage of dynastic links essentially the Julian line the Julian 
family as rulers of Rome established by Julius Caesar died with Gaius Caligula 
Claudius was related to the royal family but not di-, directly through a blood 
link his line goes back in fact to the empress 
Livia Augustus' wife by children that she had had as a result of a previous 
marriage so there's a collateral line so Claudius doesn't have the immediate 
kudos of being of the Julian line direct descendance even if that's a bit of a 
fiction of er Julius Caesar himself secondly there was the personality of 
Claudius himself from birth Claudius had been something of a physical wreck he 
limped probably as the result of a of a type of infantile polio he stammered 
very badly especially when he was nervous he had a nervous tic which caused his 
head to flick every now and again and he had a tongue which we're told was too 
large for his mouth protruded and caused him to dribble he was given to 
epileptic fits on occasion and he had a head perched on the top of a very long 
neck so he was something akin to an ostrich and if the representations of him 
especially the bronze representation that was fished out of from the British 
rivers is anything to go by he had er jug 
handle ears very protruding ears so he's not the Hollywood picture of a great 
Roman emperor as a result of this he'd spent virtually the whole of his life in 
seclusion as an imperial joke and an embarrassment you can well understand why 
the few times according to Suetonius that he was trundled out in order to make 
a public appearance and to be installed even theoretically in some kind of 
official capacity the whole thing fell to pieces because he'd either have an 
epileptic fit or he couldn't manage the words so he was an an unprepossessing 
figure as emperor because he'd been kept in seclusion he'd never had any 
experience of military life and Roman emperors were not simply figurehead civil 
quasi-kings each one who had sat upon the throne had felt it incumbent upon 
himself to establish a military prowess now this was easy enough for Julius 
Caesar because by the time he became dictator of Rome he had a long history of 
military 
activity behind him his successor Octavian and then there was Augustus did the 
same not only did he come out victorious against his rival from imperial 
honours er Mark Antony but he was also engaged in a number of campaigns his 
successor Tiberius was in his youth a prominent military figure a prominent 
general and a successful one Gaius Caligula er well Gaius Caligula had to rely 
upon the fact that his father was an extremely successful Roman general his 
father Germanicus brother to Tiberius none of that was applicable to Claudius 
yet Roman emperors were equated with military success Claudius was the choice 
of the Praetorian Guard they made him Claudius probably realized that they 
could just as easily unmake him and probably more quickly via well a well aimed 
knife so from the point of view of sheer survival Claudius really had to prove 
himself a worthy 
successor to the great military figures who had gone before him and what better 
way to do that than to go beyond the achievements of the founder of the dynasty 
Julius Caesar himself who had invaded Britain on two occasions but had not 
conquered it if Claudius could now invade Britain and conquer it that would 
link him directly with somebody like Julius Caesar and would take him into an 
altogether different echelon from the point of of er standing within Rome there 
were other things that suggested an expedition to Britain would make sense 
Gaius Caligula's expeditions onto the Rhine frontier had produced two new 
legions which were stationed there this meant that the Rhine frontier was now 
the most heavily defended frontier of the whole empire and that Claudius 
probably realized that where there was a concentration of troops there was also 
a concentration of power all emperors realized that the true source of their 
power was not with the senate but arc-, actually 
with the Roman army this is why they were all very careful to keep the army 
happy and employed idle hands start hatching plots so the Rhine army is 
overmanned what can you do about it he couldn't simply dissolve those two extra 
legions that Gaius ci-, Caligula had er had created that dissolving a legion 
cashiering it was a mark of disgrace wouldn't do that but move legions into 
Britain as a an occupying force did make sense they would be cut off by the 
channel they would have quite enough on their hands to keep them busy and out 
of any thoughts of creating trouble additionally Britain who had been made to 
pay for that occupying power leave them on the continent and the empire as it 
is currently er established has to pay expand the empire slightly and the new 
opened areas themselves have to pay there was also the fact that Gaius Caligula 
had been very very profligate in spending money and the treasury was somewhat 
bare Britain offered by the time that we get to the forties A-D a 
better prospect of producing a profit for the Roman empire than had been the 
case in Julius Caesar's day Britain also of course offered the potential of a 
pool of manpower Rome was always on the lookout for new sources of manpower 
especially for providing auxiliary troops in the army so there were a lot of 
things within Britain that made sense for anybody looking around for military 
activity there was also one other factor that i want to bring out before we end 
today and that is a a religious factor and also a sociological factor and this 
comes down to the Druids we know from our sources that Britain was the centre 
of well Druidism in inverted comma because what Druidism was we really don't 
know we know that there were Druids well let's say that there was the Druid 
problem now the Druids were a pagan priesthood which would normally have been 
perfectly easily accommodated within the pantheon of Rome the one thing that 
the Druids did that the Romans didn't 
particularly like was human sacrifice and we'll come back to this when i talk 
about religion because human sacrifice was tantamount to murder it was murder 
in Roman law and was therefore illegal er Roman emperors in the past had tried 
to er mitigate the worst effects the worst behaviour of the Druids in their 
continental of all the Celts in Gaul for instance but Claudius seems to have 
set his sights upon getting rid of human sacrifice altogether and the only way 
that he could do this was to overcome the problem in its s-, at its centre 
within Britain itself so the message today is that though we have problems in 
establishing some kind of viable er 
history for the period between the departure of s-, Julius Caesar and the 
advent of the Claudian invasion but our evidence is thin on the ground and the 
recent interpretation or reinterpretation of that ed-, for that evidence 
creates problems for us in seeing movements and developments within Britain 
when we come to Claudius we see the convergence of a number of factors which 
all point to the advantage for the emperor of physical military intervention by 
Rome into Britain and what form that military intervention took we'll deal with 
tomorrow