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Inventing Britain: the Roman Creation and Adaptation of an Image

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

P.C.N. Stewart
P.C.N. Stewart
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge
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Extract

‘One of the difficulties facing the archaeologist when trying to use the evidence of ancient writers is to know when that writer (historian or otherwise) is relating fact, and when he is merely involved with “topoi” – the stock literary descriptions or situations inseparable from history as rhetoric’.

In defining this problem, J.C. Mann is thinking specifically about Tacitus' references to Britain. He presents a constructive warning to those who rely too confidently on literary sources, yet in one sense his statement is also misleading, for he elevates ‘fact’, regarding references that are ‘merely’ topoi as inferior, not to say deceptive. This distinction is indeed necessary when we are compiling information for a military or political history; but in the study of Roman Britain too little attention has been paid to the historical value of sources in their own right, as evidence for Roman culture and society rather than sources as such.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 26 , November 1995 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © P.C.N. Stewart 1995. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Mann, J.C., ‘Two “topoi” in the Agricola’, Britannia xvi (1985), 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Typical are: J. Wacher, The Coming of Rome (1979); S.S. Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (rev. edn, 1978); and Mann, op. cit. (note 1).

3 See, e.g., P. Salway, Roman Britain (1981).

4 M. Millett, The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archaeological Interpretation (1990).

5 These are considered in, e.g., M. Todd, Roman Britain, 55 B.C.-A.D. 400: The Province Beyond Ocean (1981), 11–14. Early contacts are possibly reflected in the Ora Maritima of Avienus (but the ultimate sources are doubtful). Trade contacts are covered briefly by Frere, op. cit. (note 2), 30, 60f., 320ff. And see Strabo IV.5.2. On the tin trade see Diodorus V.22.

6 J.S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction (1992), 3–7.

7 For Pytheas and his work see H.J. Mette, Pytheas von Massilia (1952), 1–16, and for sources, 36–46.

8 See Strabo 1.4.3f.; II.5.8; IV.5.5; Romm, op. cit. (note 6), I96ff. on geographical criticism.

9 Strabo 11.5.8.

10 Pliny, NH II. 187; Strabo 1.4.2; II.5.8; IV.5.5.

11 Cleomedes I.4.68 (Teubner edn, ed. R.B. Todd, 1990). See also notes 26 and 76 below, and, notably, Juvenal II.61.

12 Pliny, NH IV. 102.

13 Pliny, NH II. 217.

14 Romm describes in detail, op. cit. (note 6), 12–26, 42–4, 104ff., the significance of Ocean as it is represented in classical literature.

15 ‘The island of Britain, famous in our records and those of the Greeks’, Pliny, NH IV. 102. (Except where otherwise stated, Latin and Greek quotations are drawn from texts in the Loeb Classical Library.)

16 On the genre, see Bömer, F., ‘Der Commentarius: Zur Vorgeschichte und literarischen Form der Schriften Caesars’, Hermes lxxxi (1953), esp. 210f. and 236–50. Cicero's letter: Att. IV.18.5.Google Scholar

17 Caesar, Bell. Gall. V.14.

18 On the anthropological tradition see Romm, op. cit. (note 6), 45ff. Herodotus offers a renowned precedent. But note also the account of military customs among the ‘Brittunculi’ (a hapax legomenon) from a Vindolanda tablet: A.K. Bowman and J.D. Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II) (1994), 107, letter no. 164. The mention of painted Britons by Caesar and other sources is examined in detail in F.B. Pyatt et al, ‘Non isatis sed vitrum or, the colour of Lindow Man’, Oxford Journ. Arch, x (1991), 61–73. Literary and archaeological evidence casts doubt on the supposed use of woad as the body paint.Google Scholar

19 The use of the vanquished to glorify the victor in this way receives ancient recognition in Tacitus, Ann. XII.36.

20 See Horace, Ep. II. 1.156; cf. Cicero, De Leg. II.36 and Tacitus, Ag. 12 on romanitas and associated vice.

21 Horace, Odes III.4.33.

22 Pelts are barbarous in Ovid, Trist. V.10.32 and primitive in Lucretius V.1011 and 1350ff. But ambiguity appears in Lucretius v.1418–29 when Roman clothes are associated with less civilized behaviour.

23 For a distant literary parallel, cf. Vidal-Naquet's structuralist article on the Odyssey, ‘Land and Sacrifice in the Odyssey: A Study of Religious and Mythical Meanings’, in R.L. Gordon (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (1981), 80–94.

24 Diodorus Siculus V.32.3; Strabo IV.5.4.

25 Tacitus, Ag. 28.3.

26 Caesar, Bell. Gall. V.13.

27 idem.

28 See, e.g., IV.28; V.23.

29 Catullus II.IIf.

311 Cicero, Q. fr. III.I.II; 111.6(8).3; 111.7(9).6; Nos 21, 26, and 27 respectively in D.R. Shackleton Bailey (ed.), Cicero: Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem et ad Brutum (1980).

31 ‘Just give me Britain, so that I may paint it with your colours, but with my own brush’, Cicero, Q. fr. II.14 (13).2; No. 18 in Shackleton Bailey, op. cit. (note 30).

32 Vergil, Georg. I.30.

33 ‘The distant Britons’, Horace, Odes IV.14.47f.

34 ‘The untouched Briton’, Horace, Ep. VII.7.

35 ‘The Britons at the end of the world’, Horace, Odes 1.35.2f.

36 ‘Distant Britain sends dogs that are swift and suitable for hunts in our world’, Nemesianus, Cyn. 225f.

37 Valerius Maximus III.2.23 (and Florus, Epit. 1.45.16).

38 Horace, Odes IV. 14.48.

39 See Romm, op. cit. (note 6), 140ff., for examples and discussion.

40 Caesar, Bell. Gall, v.14; IV.24; IV.33.

41 ‘The green-painted Britons’, Ovid, Am. II.16.39.

42 Propertiu s II.18(b).23f.

43 ‘Blue’ and ‘painted’, Martial, Ep. XI.53.1f.; XIV.99.

44 Propertius II. 1.76; IV.3.9.

45 ‘You who have learnt to be careful on your clients’ behalf, be careful in Britain lest you be deceived by the charioteers’, Cicero, Ad fam. VII.6.2.

46 ‘I hear that there is neither gold nor silver in Britain. If that is so, I urge you to capture some chariot or other, and head back to me as soon as possible,’ Cicero, Ad fam. VII.7.1.

47 ‘But you are much more cautious in warfare than you are in your legal advice, for you have been unwilling to swim in the Ocean, although a very keen swimmer, or to watch the British charioteers, although in the past we could not even cheat you of the sight of a blindfolded gladiator’, Cicero, Ad fam. VII.10.2. (The legal joke has an interesting sequel in Juvenal XV.no-12. Note also Cicero, Ad fam. VII.11.2.)

48 ‘Was it for this, you unparalleled general, that you went to the furthest island of the West – so that that debauched prick of yours [sc. Mamurra] might consume two or three million [sesterces]?’ Catullus 29.11–14.

49 Romm, op. cit. (note 6), 140–9.

50 ibid., 123.

51 Rhet. Herr.W.31.

52 Quintilian III.8.16; Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae I; Quintilian VII.4.2.

53 The most famous representation is in Suetonius, Jul. 7; also, Aug. 18 and 50. Cf. Trajan's military progress as described by Dio (epitome) LXVIII. 29–30.

54 Romm, op. cit. (note 6), 134–40; 162-71. See C. Nicolet, L'inventaire du monde: Géographie et politique aux origines de l'empire romain (1988), for early imperial geography, ideology, and politics.

55 Horace, Odes 1.35.29f Also, Horace, Odes III.5.2–5; Vergil, Georg. 1.30; Dio XLIX.38.2; LIII.22.5; LIII.25.2; and a suggestion in Horace, Ep. vII.7.

56 ‘Preserve Caesar, about to go against the Britons at the end of the world,’ Horace, Odes 1.35.29f.

57 ‘Would that you might forge again on a new anvil our blunt sword, to use against the Massagetes and the Arabs’, Horace, Odes 1.35.38–40.

58 Horace, Odes 1.21.13–16.

59 See Erim, K.T., ‘A new relief showing Claudius and Britannia from Aphrodisias’, Britannia xiii (1982), 277–81, pls 27–8. For more artistic representations of Britannia see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologicae Classicae 3.1 (1986), 167–9 and 3.2, 140–2 (figs 1–15).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 ‘For [Britain] was at that time unknown’, Quintilian VII.4.2.

61 Mattingly, H., Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum I (1923), 168, 169, 171; pls 31.20, 31.23, 32.5; Nos 29, 35, 49. And for the didrachm, 198, pl. 34.6; No. 237.Google Scholar

62 For a history of the inscription and its study, and a discussion, see Barrett, A.A., ‘Claudius’ British Victory Arch in Rome’, Britannia xxii (1991), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 ‘…he received in surrender eleven kings of Britain, overcome without loss, and he was the first to bring/he first brought the barbarian peoples acro ss the Ocean under the authority of the Roman people’, CIL VI.920.

64 ‘Who first subjugated the Britons and covered unknown straits with enormous fleets’, ‘Seneca’, Octavia 39 and 41f.

65 ‘Seneca’, Apocol. 12.

66 Anth. Lat. 419–26.

67 ‘Britain, remote and separated by the desolate/vast sea, bristling and surrounded with inaccessible shores, which father Nereus had hidden in unconquered waves’, Quotations from Anth. Lat. 419.1, 420.1, 422.If., and 426.1–3, respectively.

68 But cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 273b: Ἰούλιοσ δέ καîσαρ ὁ πρῶτοσ πάντων ἀνθρώπων πɛραιωθɛισ ἐπί τὰσ βρɛττίανδασ νήσονσ – Caesar was the first to cross over…

69 CIL VI.921–3. See Barrett, op. cit. (note 62), for detailed references and discussion.

70 D.E.E. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (1992), 129–35, esP.131.

71 ‘The arches of the Aqua Virgo destroyed by C. Caesar’, CIL VI.1252.

72 Suetonius, Cal. (44 and) 46; Dio LIX.25.1–3. I avoid the debate concerning what really happened (for references see A.A. Barrett, Caligula: The Corruption of Power (1989), 136f.; all explanations are, at best, conjectural). It is, however, interesting to note the appearance of Ocean in the story – the supposed conquest is represented by the ‘spolia Oceani’ (Suetonius, Cal. 46). Perhaps it is too fanciful to suggest a symbolic connection of some kind between the word used for ‘shells’ – conchae/κογχùλια – and Britain. Conchae denotes pearls or mother-of-pearl in, e.g., Tibullus II.4.30, Propertius 1.8.39, III.13.6, Man. V.404, Martial V.37.3, Pliny, NH XXXII.147, and Suetonius, Nero 31. Pearls are particularly associated with Britain and Caesar in Pliny, NH IX.116 and Tacitus, Ag. 12.

73 Dio LIX.25.5. ‘Britannicus’ may only be a joke (Barrett, op. cit. (note 72), 138), but the title ‘Germanicus’, which is also mentioned, is not.

74 ‘[Britain] is an island set in the northern Ocean, and poets call it another world,’ Servius, Ecl. 1.66.

75 ‘The position of Britain, and its peoples, which have been recorded by many writers, I shall mention not to compete with those writers in accuracy or talent, but because it was then thoroughly subdued for the first time; thus, where earlier writers embellished with rhetoric a subject still unfamiliar, it will be related here in a faithful account’, Tacitus, Ag. 10.

76 Tacitus, Ag. io, 12, 21.