Free The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall by Timothy H. Parsons Page B

resistance forced the
    Roman proconsul to withdraw in 55 b.c.23
    Caesar tried again the following year with a much larger force of
    fi ve legions and two thousand cavalrymen. The leader of the antiRoman resistance, Cassivellaunus, was a Catuvelluanian noble rather
    than a tribal king in his own right. He seems to have been a competent general, but his war chariots were ineffective against the massed
    formations of heavily armored Roman legionaries. Cassivellaunus
    therefore came to terms with Caesar by turning over hostages, paying tribute, and acknowledging Caesar’s client Mandubracius as the
    ruler of the Trinovantes. Distracted by the threat of a mass uprising
    led by the Gallic leader Vercingetorix, Caesar declared victory and
    withdrew. Strabo later claimed he did not need to garrison Britain
    because the submission of Cassivellaunus and his allied chiefs made
    “the whole of the island Roman property.”24
    Caesar’s military adventures were a speculative attempt to add to
    the Roman Empire on the cheap. Protracted British resistance, more
    pressing continental concerns, and his political ambitions led him to
    realize that it was easier and less expensive to exploit Britain through
    informal means than to annex it directly. Augustus came to a similar
    conclusion when he canceled another invasion of the island in favor of
    continuing Caesar’s policy of using diplomacy, threats, subsidies, and
    commerce to control the British. Cassivellaunus and the other rulers
    who submitted to Rome may well have become client kings. It is by no
    means certain that British tribes recognized kings before Caesar’s invasion, but after his retreat, powerful elites began to refer to themselves
    as “rex” on their coins. They also appear to have acquired a taste for
    44 THE RULE OF EMPIRES
    Italian wine, and their graves contain impressive inventories of silver
    kitchenware, Mediterranean ceramics, and other high-value imports.
    Frustratingly, almost none of the tribal groups and kings that Caesar mentioned appear in the historical accounts of the fi nal Roman
    conquest in a.d. 43. Nevertheless, the main political developments in
    southeastern England during this period are relatively clear. Backed by
    the Romans, the Trinovantes monopolized much of the cross-channel
    trade and became a dominant power north of the lower Thames River.
    Caesar’s intervention drove the Catuvellauni further inland, where
    they established themselves as a major force northwest of modern
    London. A new power emerged south of the Thames when Caesar’s
    onetime ally Commius became king of the Atrebates. Having provoked the Romans by backing Vercingetorix’s rebellion, Commius
    fl ed to Britain, where Gallic support probably helped consolidate his
    power among the Atrebates. Excavations at his oppidum at Calleva
    reveal quantities of imported Roman goods and coins referring to
    him as rex.25
    Although these new tribal groupings grew increasingly infl uential by the early fi rst century a.d., they remained under Roman
    sway. Many southern British leaders continued to pay tribute to the
    empire and dedicated religious offerings in the city of Rome. Moreover, the steady volume of slave exports to the continent suggests
    that the Roman appetite for captive labor may have infl amed tensions
    in southern Britain by inspiring the petty kings to buy their imports
    with captives.
    Rome also continued to beckon the losers of dynastic and intertribal struggles. Refugee British princelings inspired both Augustus
    and Caligula to consider annexing Britain, and an appeal for help
    from a displaced Atrebatian king named Verica, whom the resurgent
    Catuvellauni had overthrown, provided Claudius with the pretext for
    a decisive cross-channel invasion. Under Cunobelinus, who may have
    been Cassivellaunus’s grandson or great-grandson, and his sons Caratacus and Togodumnus, the Catuvellauni were suffi ciently powerful
    to displace Rome’s key clients and threaten the