Legions of Rome (49 page)

After hastily gathering support from subsidiary tribes, the two brothers converged on the Roman advance with their warriors, Togodumnus moving down from the north, Caratacus hurrying from the west. Caratacus was the first to make contact. The numerous sons of the late King Cunobelinus could at times be bitter rivals, and now, without waiting for his brother’s forces to join him, to win glory for himself Caratacus attacked the nearest Roman troops, most probably the men of Vespasian’s 2nd Augusta Legion.

The Britons were not equipped with armor or helmets. Most of the ordinary tribesman came armed with the simple framea, or spear, and a large, leather-covered rectangular wooden shield. Often barefoot, the Briton habitually went into battle stripped to the waist; some even went naked. The tribesmen who now confronted the Romans, before coming out for battle had sworn an oath to Camulos, their war god, that they would not yield to the weapons of the enemy nor yield to wounds they received in battle.

Despite their oaths, the tribesmen involved in this first attack by Caratacus were quickly routed by the mechanically efficient legion formations, and were soon fleeing back the way they had come. After his attack was swiftly and bloodily repulsed, Caratacus fell back toward the River Medway. As the Romans continued their advance, Togodumnus arrived from north of the Thames with his thousands of tribesmen. He too immediately attacked without giving thought to tactics, and his men were just as quickly cut down. Togodumnus himself appears to have been gravely wounded in this action. Carried away from the battlefield by his bodyguards, he was dead within a few days. In the meantime, his retreating brother Caratacus reached the Medway, where he regrouped his men and was joined by his brother’s leaderless, retreating warriors.

In the meantime, part of Caratacus’ force, a tribe called the Bodunni by Dio but probably the Dobunni from Gloucestershire, surrendered to Plautius, who had a fort built on the spot to hold them. The Bodunni, who had been subjects of the Catuvellauni
for some time, apparently decided it was better to have Roman masters than be ruled by their fellow Celts.

Before long, Plautius came to the broad River Medway. On the far bank, Caratacus had regrouped tens of thousands of tribesmen. By this time, too, chariots had belatedly joined the British force. The Britons “thought that the Romans would not be able to cross [the river] without a bridge and consequently camped in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank.” [Ibid.] But they had not reckoned on the many skills of the Roman military.

Some distance from the site of his own camp, Plautius sent the Batavian Horse swimming across the river with their horses, fully equipped and ready to go into action as soon as they succeeded in crossing. The Batavians then came downriver on the northern bank. Launching a surprise attack on the British camp, the Batavians were under orders to aim their javelins at the chariots’ horses, not their crews. “In the confusion that followed not even the enemy’s mounted warriors could save themselves.” While the Britons were fully occupied fighting the Batavians, Plautius apparently threw bridges of boats across the river. Led by Vespasian and his brother Sabinus, the 2nd Augusta and another legion crossed the Medway upriver, and “killed many of the foe.” [Ibid.]

Much or all of the Roman army camped on the northern bank of the river that night. But next day the Britons returned in strength, and it took legion commander Gnaeus Geta to lead a counter-attack, “after narrowly avoiding being captured,” that turned the tide and drove off the Britons. For his part in this action at the Medway, even though he was not yet a consul, Geta would be awarded Triumphal Decorations by the emperor.

As the Britons retired to the Thames, the Romans followed. Near the point where the Thames emptied into the sea and at flood tide formed a lake, the Britons began to cross. The tribesmen, who knew where to find firm ground and where mud would ensnare the unwary, were able to make their way across the mudflats. But when pursuing Roman auxiliary troops tried to follow they were soon in difficulties and had to withdraw. When the main Roman force arrived, Plautius set up camps along the southern bank of the Thames and built a bridge of boats upstream.

Meanwhile, the Batavians again used their swimming skills. Once on the far bank, troops that had crossed the bridge marched to link up with the Batavians. Tribesmen caught in the middle were cut to pieces. But as the Romans gave chase to the remainder,
they were led into swamps, and a number were drowned trying to maintain the pursuit. General Plautius pulled his men back and consolidated his position. Envoys were sent out to the chiefs of all the neighboring tribes, inviting them to surrender on favorable terms. With news of the British defeats at the Medway and the Thames, and with the death of Togodumnus, several chiefs quickly agreed to submit rather than face Roman steel. Once the responses had been received, Plautius sent off a dispatch to Rome, inviting his emperor to come take charge of the campaign, to accept the surrender of the chiefs, and complete the conquest of the Britons.

Clearly, Claudius had instructed Plautius to do just this once he was in a position to do so, and was expecting the message. Within weeks, Claudius set out for Britain with a massive entourage, leaving the consul Lucius Vitellius in charge at the capital. Several thousand men of the Praetorian Guard and Praetorian Cavalry, under their prefect Rufrius Pollio, provided the imperial escort, along with cohorts of the emperor’s imposing German Guard personal bodyguard. Scores of sycophantic senators were in the emperor’s party.

As Claudius’ guardsmen marched along the Tiber to the port of Ostia, the imperial party was conveyed down the river aboard a fleet of barges. At Ostia, the emperor, his troops and entourage boarded warships from the Misene Fleet, and coasted the short distance to southern Gaul. The storm-tossed and seasick imperial party landed at Masillia (Marseilles), from where it traveled up through Gaul to Germany. From Mogontiacum on the Rhine the imperial progress continued on to Bononia, from where the new Britannic Fleet conveyed the expedition to Britain.

As the emperor made his leisurely way north from Italy to the French coast, taking many weeks to travel the distance that could be covered by the galloping couriers of the Cursus Publicus Velox in a matter of days, Plautius had been busy tying up loose ends. While tribes to the north had sued for peace, and Caratacus had retreated west to Wales, taking his wife, daughter and at least two of his three surviving brothers with him, the tribes of the west stubbornly refused to submit. Plautius therefore ordered Vespasian and the 2nd Augusta Legion to expand the front to the southwest. The 2nd Augusta was still driving along the south coast when the emperor landed in Kent. According to Suetonius, in this sweep along the coast Vespasian’s legion fought thirty battles, took more than twenty towns and the entire Isle of Wight, and accepted the surrender of two tribes. [Suet.,
X
, 4]

The remains of some of the fortified hill towns overwhelmed by the 2nd Augusta are still to be found on hilltops through the region today; others were converted into castles by the Normans 1,000 years later. One of the first towns to fall was latter-day Chichester, capital of the Regni tribe of young chief Cogidubnus, who would help convince other tribes to submit to the invaders and continued to be a valued ally of Rome for another fifty years. Downtown Chichester today still retains the layout of the Roman town which grew on the site, Noviomagus Regensium, situated beside a vast, sheltered anchorage.

At a fort of the Durotrige tribe at Spettisbury Rings, near Blandford, over ninety skeletons were found in a mass grave in 1957, many bearing the evidence of sword and javelin wounds. Part of the fort’s wall had been pulled down on top of the grave to complete the burial. At the Hod Hill fort, 18 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Maiden Castle, a number of Roman ballista bolts were found, evidence of the 2nd Augusta’s assault. [W&D, 4,
II
]

The 2nd Augusta was still pushing along the coast, through today’s Dorset and Somerset, when the emperor and the members of his expedition joined Plautius at the Thames. Palatium propaganda would have it that Plautius’ legions crossed the Thames under Claudius’ command, met and defeated a large army of British tribesmen, then took the surrender of British kings and their disarmed warriors. In reality, with the fighting at the Thames almost certainly over by the time Claudius arrived, Plautius
had the kings that were submitting to Roman rule gather at Camulodunum to submit officially to his emperor.

At Camulodunum, the men of three legions, their supporting auxiliaries and the cohorts of the Praetorian Guard would have formed up in full parade dress to awe the locals, standards glittering, decorations shining and helmet plumes blowing in the breeze. Troops of the German Guard would have flanked their emperor as Claudius sat on a raised tribunal. There, in the words of the dedicatory inscription on the Arch of Claudius at Orange in France, “he received the formal submission of eleven kings of the Britons.” [
CIL
,
VI
, 920] Sixteen days later, Claudius left Britain for a meandering return to Rome. He walked back into the Palatium the following year after an absence of six months, although he had only spent a little over two weeks in his new province of Britannia.

By the time autumn ended, the 2nd Augusta Legion controlled the south coast of England. Only western Devon and Cornwall remained to be subdued. At the River Exe in Devon, Vespasian and the 2nd Augusta turned the capital of the Dumnoni tribe on the east bank of the river, with its buildings of timber and mud, into what became the substantial Roman town of Isca Dumnoniorium, today’s city of Exeter. There, the 2nd Augusta established a base which became the legion’s new permanent home, from where it guarded a frontier from Devon up to southeast Wales.

By the end of
AD
43, all four invasion legions had spread across southern England and set up permanent forward forts and rear supply bases. The 14th Gemina built its base in the West Country north of the 2nd Augusta’s new home, the 20th based itself at Camulodunum, which Plautius made his provincial headquarters, and the 9th Hispana occupied a frontier line north of Camulodunum. The legions had come to stay.

AD
54–58
XVIII. CORBULO’S FIRST ARMENIAN CAMPAIGN
Tough treatment creates victorious legions

Tiridates, a Parthian prince, had now taken the throne of Armenia. With the death of Claudius, the chief advisers to the new teenage Roman emperor, Nero, convinced him that Rome must wrest Armenia from Parthian control. Those advisers, Nero’s chief secretary, the famed philosopher Lucius Seneca, and Praetorian prefect Sextus Burrus, recommended that the man for the job in Armenia was Lucius Domitius Corbulo, one of Rome’s toughest generals.

In
AD
54, Corbulo went east to mastermind an Armenian offensive. Officially, Corbulo was the new governor of the provinces of Cappadocia and Galatia, on the Armenian border, but the Palatium had furnished him with powers superior to those of any provincial governor. When Corbulo arrived, he found the four legions stationed in Syria in a deplorable state. He chose the 6th Ferrata and 10th Fretensis legions to spearhead his planned campaign, but he would not embark on any military operation before he had knocked those units into shape. Many of their soldiers had sold their helmets and shields, most had never stood guard duty, some had become “sleek money-making traders.” [Tac.,
A
,
XIII
, 35]

Their standards might have identified these units as the 6th and 10th as legions, but they were not legions by Corbulo’s standard. Discharging those who were too old or frail, Corbulo put the rest through a rigorous training schedule. At the end of the year, he marched his legions up into the Cappadocian mountains, making them winter there under canvas in the snow. Conditions were so severe that men standing
guard suffered frostbite. Corbulo shared the freezing conditions with his men, and as they toughened up they began to show grudging respect for their uncompromising general.

Corbulo was not a man to rush anything. It was
AD
58 before he was satisfied with his men and his preparations. After adding six cohorts of the 3rd Gallica Legion from their station in Judea to the force he assembled in Cappadocia, in the spring of
AD
58 Corbulo invaded Armenia. For the operation, legate Cornelius Flaccus led the 6th Ferrata Legion and the hard-bitten Syrians of the 3rd Gallica cohorts. Corbulo himself led the 10th Fretensis supported by auxiliaries. Their opponents were the Armenian army, trained and equipped in the same manner as their allies, the Parthians.

With new Roman allies, the Moschi tribe, running wild in northern Armenia as a diversion, and with his supply lines over the mountains well guarded, Curbulo’s legions swept into western Armenia from two directions, taking Tiridates’ commanders entirely by surprise. In one day, Roman troops stormed three separate fortresses. At the fortress of Volandum, strongest in Armenia, Corbulo split his units into four groups, each using a different method of assault and in competition with the others to be the first to fight their way into the fortress. Volandum fell to Corbulo within hours, “without the loss of a [Roman] soldier and with just a very few wounded.” All the adult males found at Volandum were executed. “The non-military population were sold by auction. The rest of the booty fell to the conquerors.” [Tac.,
A
,
XIII
, 39]

Courage and success were rewarded by Corbulo, but he could not stomach cowardice. Sextus Frontinus, a successful Roman general who knew him, wrote that when two cavalry squadrons and three cohorts gave way before the enemy near the Armenian fortress of Initia, Corbulo made their men sleep outside his camp walls “until by steady work and successful raids they had atoned for their disgrace.” [Front.,
Strat
.,
IV, I
, 21] For the same crime, Corbulo stripped the clothes from the back of cavalry prefect Aemilius Rufus and made him stand naked at the praetorium until he chose to dismiss him. [Ibid., 28]