CLAUDIUS' INVASION. ?

31

sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; so, in all inferior instances, the wicked are still made to work out the purposes of GOD; who could say of Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee. Thus were strife and ambition rendered instrumental in bringing hither the Roman arms, to complete the conquest which GOD would have them make; and an emperor, half an ideot, effected, in GoD's chosen time, what had foiled the valour and sagacity of Julius Cæsar.

43.

A British chieftain, whom domestic feuds had A.D. driven from his native country, travelled to Rome to seek revenge; and succeeded in alluring the Romans to invade again his native country. Aulus Plautius, an experienced general, was selected by Claudius, the reigning Roman emperor, to conduct an army into Britain; and, assisted and guided by the traitor who had solicited this invasion, he proceeded on his expedition, with more knowledge of the country, and of the hostile feelings which divided its inhabitants, than Cæsar had possessed. Hence he soon obtained a victory over Caractacus, the successor of Cassibelan, and formed alliances with other petty sovereigns, his rivals or

enemies.

For a short time Claudius joined his forces in person; and Vespasian, and his son Titus, who were employed in reducing Sussex and Hampshire, made themselves so conspicuous as brave and prudent officers, that the character they here gained gradually opened the way to the father's being chosen emperor of Rome, and to their becoming fit instruments for the purposes of God's just wrath. When the appointed time was come that the Son of man should manifest his power by the fulfilment of his dreadful sentence against Jerusalem, these were the persons under whose command the Roman eagles were gathered together against Judæa; by the edge

of their unrelenting sword her self-blinded children fell, or were led away captive into all nations; Jerusalem was trodden down under their Gentile feet; and the abomination of desolation waved over the ruins of the Holy of holies.

The Romans, however, made but slow advances towards the conquest of Britain; from the difficulty of securing the continued submission of a people whom it was easy to defeat, whenever they could be met with, but who, retiring into the woods or morasses to the right and left on the approach of an army, could emerge again, and occupy their former pastures or hunting grounds in its rear, if it pushed forward; and who would make any promises of future obedience which a Roman commander, at the head of a large force, might insist on, if concession was likely to lead to his marching off his troops to some other district; but would keep no more of their promises than they chose, on his departure; because they possessed very little of that fixed property, the dread of forfeiting which is almost the only tie that can bind those people to their agreements, over whom religion exerts no salutary influence.

A. D.

51.

At the end of seven years, when Plautius had resigned his command, and returned home to receive the honours decreed to him for his services in Britain, we find his successor, Ostorius Scapula, employed in fortifying military positions along the banks of the Warwickshire Avon, and the Severn; that the submission of the large and fertile district, within those rivers, might not be disturbed by the inroads of the independent tribes to the north and west of them. But after quelling a revolt of the Iceni, and planting a colony of Roman veterans at Maldon, he pushed his conquests beyond these limits; and, at Caer-Caradoc, in Shropshire, defeated

• Inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, and part of Cambridgeshire.

Caractacus at the head of the Silures. This determined opponent of the Roman arms sought next to induce the Brigantes to revenge the loss of his country, and the destruction of his friends: but their queen, Cartismandua, treacherously delivered him up, in chains, to Ostorius. The military pride of the Romans had always found a disgraceful in dulgence, after any important success, in making an unfeeling display of the misery of their captives, whom they used to lead in triumph, amidst the spoils of their country, through the streets of Rome; and the insulting scene was ordinarily closed by the mur der of the dethroned sovereign of the conquered nation; or by that of the bravest general, amongst those whose duty it had been to defend their native land against the aggressions of the Roman people. Caractacus, though but the petty chieftain of a barbarous tribe, had gained such a reputation by the persevering courage with which, for nine years, undaunted by repeated defeats, he had placed himself foremost in every effort made by the Britons to maintain their desperate struggle against the disproportioned power of the mightiest nation on the face of the earth, that he was sent by Ostorius to Rome; as an enemy, the possession of whose person, however obtained, was considered a sufficient victory to entitle the emperor to gratify himself with the parade of receiving his prisoner in public. When Caractacus passed through the streets of Rome, he expressed his surprise that the masters of those lofty palaces, which he there saw, should have thought it worth their while to fight about the wretched huts of the Britons. As an ambitious man, who did not forget that he too had been a king, he must have envied the sovereign who could command the implicit obedience of such wealthy subjects as the possessors of those sumptuous abodes, and of such brave soldiers as had driven him from his home; and, when ushered into the presence of Claudius, he

could not but have been forcibly impressed, though he exhibited no unseemly fears, at sight of the arrangements which added unusual dignity to the imperial court.

The contrast was, apparently, that between the extreme of wretchedness, and the height of human felicity. The emperor, seated on a lofty throne, saw a favourite wife raised to the same unwonted elevation; around him were the nobles of the celebrated Roman senate, in obsequious attendance; whilst the disciplined number and military pomp of the prætorian guards, formed a still more magnificent accompaniment in the eye of his martial prisoner. On the other hand, that prisoner, Caractacus, deprived of all that had once flattered his pride, galled by his fetters, and stung by the insulting gaze of the populace, saw the ensigns of his former rank eyed as a barbarian's rude imitation of royal state; heard the bitter lamentations of his family, of his wife, whom his arm could no longer protect; and beheld them crouching before his haughty enemies for mercy.

But if worldly greatness has very seldom much connection with real happiness, least of all can the pomp and power of a despotic sovereign secure it. Of Caractacus' subsequent fortune, all that we know is, that, by what, to the disgrace of the Roman character, is spoken of as remarkable clemency, his life was spared, and his family restored to liberty; and their late fears, probably, made them find happiness in their reprieve from their expected sufferings. But the magnificence which surrounded Claudius scarcely concealed the contempt with which his subjects viewed the feeble intellects of him, whom the capricious choice of the army had made their emperor; and the unhappiness of his domestic life was betrayed by crimes which shocked even that degraded people. The wife whose ambition his fondness had indulged with unprecedented honours, soon

after poisoned him, that she might the easier rob his son of the inheritance of the vast Roman empire, and seat on its blood-stained throne her own son, the infamous Nero. And that monster, after getting rid, by similar means, of the unhappy youth whose rights he had usurped, murdered the wicked mother, whose guilt had purchased for her son the power which he thus dreadfully turned against her.

The Romans had now got rid of their most active opponent in Britain; and for some time after they were principally employed in securing, and improving the value of the country they had already conquered. Verulam*, like Maldon, became a Roman colony; that is, a number of veteran soldiers were placed there, and allowed to take possession of as much land as they chose; whilst the town was governed on the model of the cities in their native country, and possessed the same privileges. At this time also London is first spoken of in history, as a town inferior in rank and privileges to the D two above mentioned, but already a great place of resort for traders.

61.

In the mean while the druids, whose authority over their countrymen must have been exceedingly thwarted, if not quite set aside, where the Roman power and laws prevailed, had concentrated all their old superstitions in the Isle of Anglesea. There the altars still reeked with the blood of human victims; probably now slain in greater numbers, to propitiate their false gods, from the notion that their anger occasioned the continued losses of the Britons. But the same holy and just GOD, who declared, that even the stranger who offered the cruel sacrifices of Moloch should die, brought upon these ministers of equally barbarous rites the sword of a fierce enemy, made implacable by the sight of their disgusting superstitions. When Suetonius Paullinus

Now called St. Alban's.