Roman Conquests and What We Can Learn From Them

The Invasion of Britain

If the Romans had stayed abroad, nobody would ever have heard of them. But they didn’t. Julius Hitler took two day-trips to Britain, way back in 55 and 54BC, to see whether it would be worth invading. Besides bringing back some duty-free woad he didn’t really get much done. He did interview some of the local chiefs to see how they would feel about sending tribute to Rome. They said they would like it very much, asked for his autograph, then promptly forgot about it as soon as Julius left.

A few other Romans had a go at Britain. Caligula took a pop at it in the year 40. Many Roman emperors were two Christians short of a lion’s dinner, but Caligula was mad as a spoon. He had his troops face England from the other side of the Channel and attack the sea. This caused Britain to be conquered, although nobody but Caligula knew how. Historians have been trying to work it out ever since.

Santa Claudius, who took over when Caligula was assassinated, realised that time was running out. It was already year 43, all the BC had been used up, and if they were going to get anything done before the fall of the Empire they’d better get a move on. Aulus Plautius was chosen to command the invasion forces because he had the most cultural name. He gathered up Caligula’s old troops, who were still collecting seashells, put them in some boats and set sail for Kent or Southampton. It was all the same to them, it was just more abroad. How wrong they were! They were sailing to the one place in the world that isn’t abroad.

Once on land they did a bit of fighting, as Romans will, and made for Colchester to meet the legendary Essex Girls. In their quaint but loveable foreign way they pronounced it Camulodunum, which caused a lot of amusement to the locals, who liked to imitate them. “I’m going to Camulodunum for my holidayums,” they gasped, bent double with laughter. It could be why they didn’t take the Romans very seriously. When all the fighting was over, Claudius turned up with some troops of his own to take credit for the victory. “Didn’t I do well?” he cried out in amazement, “and not a single one of my men lost! This will be written on my triumphal arch, you mark my words.”

When Claudius had gone home the Romans started fighting again. You just couldn’t stop them. Most of the battles were against people nobody has ever heard of, which did nothing for their reputation, but finally their manager organised a fight with somebody famous: Boudica. She was the queen formerly known as Boadicea, except in Wales where she was known as Buddug, but who can explain the Welsh? The fact that they’d even heard of her, when she was a Norfolk girl and they were on the opposite side of the country, showed just how famous she was.

Boudica was so important that she has some history all of her own, which historians call Boadiceas and What We Can Learn From Them. For the time being I’ll just say that she gave the Romans a hard time for a while. Boudica led her valiant troops to Camulodunum, which people who didn’t speak proper Latin called Colchester, much to the amusement of the Romans. “I’m going to Colchest-ah for an oyst-ah,” they gasped, bent double with laughter. Maybe that was why they didn’t take Boudica very seriously. By the time she’d knocked down London and St. Albans too, they decided something had to be done about her and conquered her to death in the Battle of Watling Street, which historians think was probably a battle that happened in Watling Street.

After that, the Romans pretty well had everything their own way until they got to Scotland. On the way they fought the Welsh, several times, the Grand Old Duke of York, and the Silures, a nest of reptile people from Betelgeuse. All this fighting doesn’t take long to write but it took the Romans ages to do. By the time Agricola became governor in year 78 they’d been at it for thirty-five years.

Agricola was the father-in-law of Tacitus, the famous Roman historian, so we can already guess that Agricola will perform some mighty deeds. How right we are! With his burnished armour, handsome features, manly demeanour and flaming sword, he re-conquered Wales, forgetting it had already been done, then went North to see what the Scots were getting up to. He re-did bits of Scotland too, colouring in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay on his Romans map. Eventually he ran out of bits that had been conquered already and had to do somewhere new.

Agricola faced a problem the Romans had been having all along. When they turned up to do some fighting, the locals didn’t want any of it. They just hid until the Romans had gone away, then got on with their lives as if history wasn’t happening. Agricola got around this by attacking the Caledonians’ granaries. “Fight or starve,” he will say when Will Smith plays him. “Eat it or wear it.” All three Caledonians were forced to fight and Agricola, with 30,000 troops and air support, finished them off in less than a day in the Battle of Mons Graupius.

Agricola claimed that the whole of Britain had now been conquered. Other Romans who went north to see what was what disagreed. Some historians have accused Tacitus of inventing the whole thing (true!) but most recognise that he went to the Right School and should therefore be taken at his word. He is only guilty of giving the battle a silly name. Since nobody else fancied fighting the Caledonians, this was as far as the Roman Conquest went.

Things we can learn from the Roman Conquest include not living in the Iron Age if you can help it, avoiding Watling Street, and having a famous historian in the family if you want your deeds bigged up.