They landed at Richborough and pushed towards the River Medway, where they met with stiff resistance. In AD 43, he sent four legions across the sea to invade Britain. Into this situation came Verica, successor to Commius, complaining that the new chief of the Catuvellauni, Caratacus, had deprived him of his throne. He needed the prestige of military conquest to consolidate his hold on power. Claudius had recently been made emperor in a palace coup. He was to use an identical excuse to Caesar for very similar reasons. Yet he returned to Gaul disgruntled and empty-handed, complaining in a letter to Cicero that there was no silver or booty to be found in Britain after all.Ĭaesar's military adventurism set the scene for the second exploitation of Britain - by the Emperor Claudius. In 54 BC, he tried again, this time with five legions, and succeeded in re-establishing Commius on the Atrebatic throne. With just two legions, he failed to do much more than force his way ashore at Deal and win a token victory that impressed the senate in Rome more than it did the tribesmen of Britain. His first expedition, however, was ill-conceived and too hastily organised. #Tiny token empires healing full#He wanted to gain the glory of a victory beyond the Great Ocean, and believed that Britain was full of silver and booty to be plundered. Caesar seized the opportunity to mount an expedition on behalf of Commius. Britain afforded him one, in 55 BC, when Commius, king of the Atrebates, was ousted by Cunobelin, king of the Catuvellauni, and fled to Gaul. This great republican general had conquered Gaul and was looking for an excuse to avoid returning to Rome. Rome invaded Britain because it suited the careers of two men. Each was trying to regain the glory of that long-lost age when Britannia was part of a grand civilisation, which shaped the whole of Europe and was one unified island. Yet perhaps Rome's most important legacy was not its roads, nor its agriculture, nor its cities, nor even its language, but the bald and simple fact that every generation of British inhabitant that followed them - be they Saxon, Norman, Renaissance English or Victorian - were striving to be Roman. This defined them as something different from those people who came after them, colouring their national mythology, so that the Welsh could see themselves as the true heirs of Britain, whilst the Scots and Irish were proud of the fact that they had never been conquered by Rome. In the wake of the Roman occupation, every 'Briton' was aware of their 'Britishness'. Prior to the Romans, Britain was a disparate set of peoples with no sense of national identity beyond that of their local tribe. For 400 years, Rome brought a unity and order to Britain that it had never had before.
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