Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

  Cassivellaunus knew that he had little hope of victory now, unless Julius could be forced by some diversion to retrace his steps. He sent an urgent message to his subject allies, the men of Kent, begging them to rise in force and attack Julius’s base-camp. Julius had already once been checked, shortly after landing, by the news that a storm had wrecked some of his transports, which he had neglected to draw up on the beach and had left riding at anchor. He had been forced to return all the way from the Stour and it had taken him ten days to repair the damage; which gave the Britons the opportunity of reoccupying and strengthening the positions that he had already with some difficulty captured. If the men of Kent consented to attack the base-camp, which was manned by only 2,000 men and 300 cavalry, and contrived to capture it and to seize the fleet, then Julius would be trapped and the whole island would rise against the Romans – even the Trinovants would desert their new allies. The men of Kent did make a mass attack on the base-camp but were repulsed with heavy loss. On hearing the news of this defeat all the allies of Cassivellaunus who had not already done so sent peace embassies to Julius. But he was now marching on Wheathampstead, which he stormed by a simultaneous attack on two of its fronts. This fortress was a great earthwork ring protected by woods and deep ditches and stockades and was considered impregnable. It served as a place of refuge for all members of the tribe who were too old or too young to fight. In it were captured immense quantities of cattle and hundreds of prisoners. Cassivellaunus, though his army had not yet been beaten, was forced to sue for peace. Julius gave him easy terms, because not much of the summer remained and he was anxious to get back to France; a rebellion threatened there. The Catuvellaunians were merely asked to hand over certain principal men and women as hostages, to pay an annual tribute in gold to the Roman people, and to promise not to molest the Trinovants. So Cassivellaunus paid Julius an instalment of tribute and handed over his hostages, as did the kings of all the other tribes except the Trinovants and their east-coast allies, who had voluntarily offered Julius assistance. Julius went back to France with his prisoners and as many of the cattle as he had not sold cheap to the Trinovants to save himself the trouble of getting them safely across the Channel.

  The rebellion broke out in France two years later and Julius was so busy crushing it that he could not spare men for a third expedition to Britain; though Cassivellaunus had stopped paying tribute as soon as the news of the rebellion reached him and had sent help to the insurgents in France. Soon after this the Civil Wars started and though, when these had ended, the question of an invasion of Britain was from time to time raised, there was always a good reason for postponing it, usually trouble on the Rhine frontier. Sufficient troops could never be spared. Augustus eventually decided against extending the bounds of the Empire beyond the Channel. He concentrated instead on civilizing France and the Rhine provinces and those parts of Germany across the Rhine captured by my father. When he lost Germany after Hermann’s revolt he was still less prepared to add Britain to his anxieties. He had recorded his opinion in a letter to my grandmother Livia, dated the year of my birth, that not until the French were ripe for the Roman citizenship and could be trusted not to rebel in the absence of part of the Roman army of defence, could an invasion of Britain be politically justified:

  But it is none the less my opinion, my dearest Livia, that Britain must eventually be converted into a frontier province. It is unsafe to allow an island, so near to France and manned by so fierce and so numerous a population, to remain independent. Looking into the future, I can see Britain becoming as civilized as southern France is now; and I think that the islanders, who are racially akin to us, will become far better Romans than we shall ever succeed in making of the Germans, who in spite of their apparent docility and willingness to learn our arts, I find more alien-minded even than the Moors or the Jews. I cannot explain my feeling except by saying they have been much too quick in learning: you know the proverb, ‘Quick to learn, quick to forget’. You may think me rather foolish in writing of the British as if they were already Romans, but it is interesting to speculate on the future. I don’t mean twenty years hence, or even fifty years hence, but allowing the French fifty years to be ready for the citizenship and allowing twenty years or so for the complete subjugation of Britain, perhaps in 100 years from now Italy will be knit closely with the whole British archipelago and (do not smile) British noblemen may well take their seats in the Roman Senate. Meanwhile we must continue our policy of commercial penetration. This King Cymbeline, who has now made himself overlord of the greater part of the island, gives a generous welcome to Roman-French traders and even to Greek doctors, especially oculists, for the British seem to suffer pretty severely from ophthalmia, owing to the marshiness of the country; and his Roman moneyers strike him a beautiful silver coinage – the gold coins remain barbarous – and he is in friendly touch with our governors in France. British trade has increased greatly in the past few years. I am told that at Cymbeline’s court at Colchester as much Latin as British is spoken.

  In this context I might quote the historian Strabo who, writing early in the reign of Tiberius, remarks:

  In our own days certain of the princes of Britain have secured the friendship of Caesar Augustus by their embassies and attentive courtesies: they have even sent votive-offerings to the temple of Capitoline Jove and made the whole island almost, as it were, native soil to the Romans. They pay very moderate customs-dues both on their exports to France and on their imports, the latter being for the most part ivory bracelets, necklaces, amber, glassware, and the like.

  Strabo then lists the exports as gold, silver, iron, skins, slaves, hunting-dogs, corn, and cattle. His conclusions – inspired, I think, by Livia herself – are these:

  So the Romans have no need to garrison the island. It would take at least one infantry regiment, supported by cavalry, to force them to pay tribute; but the cost of keeping the garrison there would be at least as much as the tribute received, and the imposition of the tribute would necessitate the lowering of the customs-dues, and besides this there would be considerable military risks attendant on the policy of forcible subjection.

  This estimate ‘at least one infantry regiment’ was far too modest. ‘At least four regiments’ would have been nearer to the mark. Augustus never raised the question of the interrupted repayment of tribute as a Catuvellaunian breach of faith nor protested against Cymbeline’s subjugation of the Trinovants. This Cymbeline was a grandson of Cassivellaunus and reigned for forty years; the later years being clouded, as seems to be the fate of elderly rulers, by family troubles. His eldest son tried to seize the throne and was expelled from the kingdom, but fled to Caligula in France and asked for his help in an invasion of Britain, undertaking if he were put on his father’s throne to acknowledge the suzerainty of Rome. Caligula sent off dispatches at once to the Senate, informing them of the surrender of the island, then marched to Boulogne at the head of a huge army as if to begin the invasion without a moment’s delay. However, he was a nervous man and was afraid of being drowned in the Channel, where the tides run high, or of being killed in battle, or captured and burned in a wicker votive-image; so he announced that since Britain had yielded in the person of this prince the expedition was superfluous. Instead, he launched his attack on Neptune, ordering his troops to shoot arrows and hurl javelins and sling stones into the water, as I have described, and to gather sea-shells for spoils. He brought the prince back to Rome in chains and, after celebrating his triple triumph over Neptune, Britain, and Germany, put him to death as a punishment for the unpaid tribute and for his father’s cowardly attack on the Trinovants and for the help sent by certain British tribes to the Autun rebels in the eighth year of Tiberius’s reign.

  Cymbeline’s death occurred in the same month as that of Caligula and was followed by civil war. The eldest surviving prince, by name Bericus, was proclaimed king, but he was a man for whom neither his own tribesmen nor his subject allies had any respect. His two younger brothers
Caractacus and Togodumnus rebelled against him a year later and forced him to fly across the Channel. He came to me at Rome and asked for my help in the same way as his brother had asked help from Caligula. I made no promises, but allowed him to live in Rome with his family and a few noblemen who had come with him.

  Togodumnus, who now reigned jointly with Caractacus, had been told by merchants that I was no soldier but a cowardly old fool who wrote books. He sent me an insolent letter demanding the instant return of Bericus and the other exiles, together with the sacred regalia – thirteen magical objects – a crown, a cup, a sword, and so on – which Bericus had brought to Rome with him. If Togodumnus had written in a courteous tone I should certainly have replied courteously and at least returned the regalia, which it appears were necessary for the proper crowning of a Catuvellaunian king. As it was, I answered shortly that I was not accustomed to being addressed in this disrespectful manner, and did not, in consequence, feel obliged to do him any service. He replied, still more insolently, that I was not telling the truth: for until quite recently everyone, including my own family, had treated me with disrespect; and that since I had refused to obey him he had detained all the Roman-owned trading ships in his ports and would hold these as hostages until I gave him what he had demanded. There was nothing for it but to make war. The French would have lost all respect for me if I had hesitated. I took my decision quite independently of Herod, though his teasing letter happened to coincide with it.

  I had other reasons for making war, too. One was that the time had come which Augustus had foreseen: I was about to extend the Roman citizenship to large numbers of our more civilized French allies, but the one element in Northern France that was checking the orderly progress of civilization there was the Druidical cult, a magical religion which was still kept alive, in spite of all that we could do to discourage or suppress it, by Druidical training-colleges in Britain from where it had originally been imported. Young Frenchmen went to Britain for their magical education as naturally as young Spaniards go to Rome to study law, or young Romans to Athens to study philosophy, or young Greeks to Alexandria to study surgery. Druidism could not readily be reconciled with Greek or Roman religious worship, involving as it did human sacrifices and necromancy, and the Druids therefore, though they were not warriors themselves but only priests, were always fomenting rebellion against us. Another reason for war was that the golden reign of Cymbeline was over. Togodumnus and Caractacus were, I learned, about to be involved in a struggle with their north-eastern neighbours, the Icenians, and with two subject tribes on the south coast; so that regular trade with Britain would be interrupted for some time if I did not intervene. I could now count on the help of the Icenians and the other tribes, not to mention the cross-Channel merchants, so the opportunity seemed too good to miss.

  It would be as well to give here in brief an account of the main features of Druidism, a religion which seems to be a fusion of Celtic and aboriginal beliefs. I cannot guarantee that the details are true, for reports are conflicting. No Druidical lore is allowed to be consigned to writing and a terrible fate is threatened to those who reveal even the less important mysteries. My account is based on the statements of prominent apostates from the religion, but these include no Druidical priests. No consecrated Druid has ever been persuaded to reveal the inner mysteries even under torture. The word ‘Druid’ means ‘Oak-man’, because that is their sacred tree. Their sacred year begins with the budding of the oak and ends with the falling of its leaves. There is a god called Tanarus whose symbol is the oak. It is he who with a flash of lightning generates the mistletoe on the oak-tree branch, which is the sovereign remedy against witchcraft and all diseases. There is also a sun-god called Mabon whose symbol is a white bull. And then there is Lug, a god of medicine, poetry, and the arts, whose symbol is the snake. These are all, however, the same person, a God of Life-in-Death, worshipped in different aspects, like Osiris in Egypt. As Osiris is yearly drowned by a god of waste waters, so this triple deity is yearly killed by the God of Darkness and Water, his uncle Nodons, and restored to life by the power of his sister Sulis, the Goddess of Healing who corresponds to Isis. Nodons manifests himself by a monstrous wave of water, twelve feet high, that at regular intervals comes running up the mouth of the Severn, chief of the western rivers, causing great destruction to crops and huts as far as thirty miles inland. The Druidical religion is not practised by the tribes as such, for they are fighting units commanded by kings and noblemen, but by thirteen secret societies, named after various sacred animals, the members of any one of which belong to a variety of tribes; because it is the month in which one is born – they have a thirteen-month year – which decides the society to which one is to belong. There are the Beavers, and the Mice, and the Wolves, and the Rabbits, and the Wild Cats, and the Owls, and so on, and each society has a particular lore of its own and is presided over by a Druid. The Arch-Druid rules over the whole cult. The Druids take no part in fighting, and members of the same society who meet in tribal battles on opposite sides are pledged to run to each other’s rescue.

  The mysteries of the Druidical religion are concerned with a belief in the immortality of the human soul, in support of which many natural analogies are offered. One of these is the daily death and daily rebirth of the sun, another is the yearly death and yearly rebirth of the leaves of the oak, another is the yearly cutting of the corn and the yearly springing up of the seed. They say that man when he dies goes westward, like the setting sun, to live in certain sacred islands in the Atlantic ocean, until the time shall come for him to be born again. All over the island there are sacred altars known as ‘dolmens’, one flat stone laid on two or more uprights. These are used in the initiation ceremonies of the societies. The initiation is at once a death and a rebirth. The candidate lies on the lintel stone and a mock-sacrifice is then performed. By some magical means the Druid who performs it seems to cut off the man’s head, which is exhibited bleeding to the crowd. The head is then joined to the trunk again and the supposed corpse is placed underneath the dolmen, as in a grave, with mistletoe between its lips; from which, after many prayers and charms, the new man comes forth as if he were a child emerging from the womb and is instructed in his new life by god-parents. Besides these dolmens there are upright stone altars, devoted to phallic rites; for the Celtic Osiris resembles the Egyptian one in this respect too.

  Rank in the societies is decided by the number of sacrifices a man makes to the Gods, standing on the lintel stone of his ancestral dolmen, by the number of enemies he kills in battle and by the honours he wins in the annual religious games as charioteer, juggler, wrestler, poet, or harper. Rank is shown by the masks and head-dresses which are worn during the ceremonies and by the blue designs executed in woad (a marsh plant) with which their whole bodies are painted. The Druid priesthood is recruited from young men who have attained high rank in their secret societies and to whom certain marks of divine favour have been given. But twenty years of hard study at the Druidical college are first called for and it is by no means every candidate who succeeds in passing through the necessary thirty-two degrees. The first twelve years are spent in being initiated in turn into all the other secret societies, in learning by heart enormous sagas of mythological poetry and in the study of law, music, and astronomy. The next three years are spent in the study of medicine. The next three are spent in the study of omens and magic. The tests put upon candidates for the priesthood are immensely severe. For example, there is a test of poetical composition. The candidates must lie naked all night in a coffin-like box, only his nostrils protruding above the icy water with which it is filled, and with heavy stones laid on his chest. In this position he must compose a poem of considerable length in the most difficult of the many difficult bardic metres, on a subject which is given him as he is placed in the box. On his emergence next morning he must be able to chant this poem to a melody which he has been simultaneously composing, and accompany himself on the harp. Another test is to stand bef
ore the whole body of Druids and be asked verse-questions in riddling form which must be answered in further riddles, also in verse. These riddles all refer to obscure incidents in the sacred poems with which the candidate is supposed to be familiar. Besides all this he must be able to raise magic mists and winds and perform all sorts of conjuring tricks.