Having defeated Boudica comprehensively and shown Britain that it was unwise to awaken the wrath of Rome, Suetonius pillaged the land around, carrying out reprisals against anyone suspected of having supported, agreed with or perhaps even heard of the warrior queen, or who he just didn’t like the look of. His blood was up, and Nero decided so too was his time in Britain, the emperor removing him before he could do more harm than good, and provoke further rebellions. It was, however, a little late for that.
Rumblings in the North: the revolt of Venutius and Cartimandua
You’ll remember the second name; she was the queen of the Brigantes who delivered up poor old Caratacus to his hated enemies when he went seeking shelter from her. So why did she and her husband turn against Rome? Well, apparently it was all down to marital strife. No, I said marital, not martial, though of course that figured in the deal too.
See, apparently Cartimandua had lost interest in her husband and had abandoned Venutius to go with, of all people, his armour bearer, a guy called John. well no actually he was called Vellocatus (didn’t anyone in this age have a name without ten or twelve letters? Sounds like a very soft kitten, doesn’t it?) Hey, at least she chose someone whose name began with the same letter, so that if she and Venutius had ever carved their names on the bark of a tree (or more likely, in the skull of some enemy) the sentiment would still stand. Anyway Venutius initially went to war against the old lady because she had set Vellocatus up on the throne that was his, you know, by right. The little woman was, however, well protected by her Roman masters, but Venutius wasn’t having any of that.
History does not record their conversation but it's entirely unlikely he said "I'm not having any of that!" while she smiled sweetly and invited him "Come at me, hubby dear. I'll wipe you out," and that he responded "Oh yeah? You and what army?" and that she grinned and said "This one." Even if she had, this guy was no coward, or alternatively, thought only with his sword, and so might have snapped back “Think you can hide behind them? I’ll do you,
and your bloody Roman lapdogs!” And so he did. Or tried to.
To nobody’s surprise - and no doubt his wife’s delight - he was quickly beaten, but that was in the AD 50s, and by almost the time of the 70s he was ready again. This time the Romans weren’t so quick to come to Cartimandua’s rescue, being a trifle more concerned with matters at home. Nero had finally pissed off and died, having burned Rome almost to the ground before he went, and in that year, 69 AD, no less than four emperors came to the throne in quick succession, each gone almost before he could warm his arse on the seat. This, as you can imagine, caused great unrest and political turmoil in the empire, and Britain was not seen as a priority. Thus, when Venutius attacked his ex again, they really weren’t that interested and thought best to leave them to it, no point getting involved in petty family squabbles.
In the end, all they could do was get Cartimandua out of England, and this left Venutius possibly beating his chest and standing on some high mountain roaring “YES! I am the BEST!” and according to some sources (all right: according to me) giving Rome what was traditionally referred to in Britain as the Finger.
They weren’t going to stand for that.
And they didn’t.
Now, you see, the problem here is that the only written accounts that we have left are those made by Roman historians such as Tacitus and Dio, and invariably, and unsurprisingly, these are written with a strong Roman bias. So mostly you get a version of “the brave Roman army pushed the barbarians back” and so forth, leaving us with little hard detail - indeed, any detail - about the nuts and bolts of the battles. But from these sources and archaeological finds it appears that Venutius was relatively easily beaten, though his people, the Brigantes, made life tough for the occupiers for the next few decades. The Scots, too, rose in revolt but that’s another story, and one we’re not concerned with here, though it does deserve a short mention.
So here it is.
Suffice to say, by around 87 AD Britain was more or less completely under Roman control, and for the first time the people of Britain felt what it was like to be under the heel of an oppressor. It wouldn’t be the last time.
Mother Should I Build a Wall? Scotland Attacks
Although Britain as an island had been subdued by Rome, they certainly did not have it their own way, and rebellions and uprisings continued to break out for another eighty or so years. Much of this resistance to Roman rule came from the far north, the area they called Caledonia but which we know as Scotland. While the Scots - Picts, mostly, at the time - had no love for Britons (Englishmen) and there would be strife between the two for centuries (and even still is, to some extent) they weren’t going to sit back and let this foreign power invade their homeland, and they fought fiercely, more savage and with more abandon than Romans had ever seen, even with the English. Although this journal isn’t concerned with the history of Scotland, as such, it is impossible to imagine the eventual forced withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain without the constant attacks on them from there taking place.
This so concerned Rome that in 122 the new emperor, Hadrian, commissioned the building of a wall at the northern border, which would effectively provide a barrier between the “barbarians” and his people.
Hadrian’s Wall, as it came to be rather unoriginally known, is still there today, stretching from Wallsend on the river Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway, more or less bisecting the island from west to east and cutting off Scotland from what is now England. Of course it’s a ruin now, and a tourist attraction, but that any of it at all survived is testament to the prowess of Roman engineering and construction. The wall was, and remains, seventy-three miles long, and originally was said to have reached to twelve feet in height, though of course most of that has now fallen and it’s much lower.
Hadrian’s Wall marked the “boundary of the civilised part of Britannia” (as they came to call England) and the unconquered, barbarian, mostly unknown land of Caledonia, Scotland, though it is built entirely in England and does not form a true border between the two countries.
Of course, the wall was also a physical representation and reminder of the might of the Roman Empire in Britain. Its construction provided employment for thousands of soldiers who might otherwise have been idle and restless, and helped to control the flow of commerce, and people, through that part of the empire.
It wasn’t just a wall though, being supplemented by a number of forts and milehouses along its length, staffed by Roman soldiers. It took six years and three legions - approximately 15,000 soldiers - to build. After three more emperors had unsuccessfully attempted to subdue the Scots, the last of them, Septimius Severus, withdrew to Hadrian’s Wall around 211 and it became the northernmost border of the Roman Empire in Britain. Even so, Picts breached it in 180, killing the commanding officer. Roman soldiers and officers were beginning to resent being in Britain, and a withdrawal was on the cards as events further afield began to occupy the empire’s attention.