Celtic History

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Caratacus and the Resistance in Roman Britain

The British prince who led the resistance to the Roman invasion of Wales for nearly a decade, his final defeat, his famous speech to the Roman senate, and his pardon by the emperor Claudius.

The name of Caratacus, the British prince who led the resistance to the Roman invasion of Wales for nearly a decade after the Claudian conquest of 43 CE, famous in the early history of Roman Britain. The son of the powerful Catuvellaunian king Cunobelinus, and the brother or half-brother of the client king Adminius, Caratacus was the principal leader of the British resistance in the years that followed the establishment of Roman rule in the southeast. His story, drawn from the Roman historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius, is the story of a long and difficult guerrilla war, a decisive battle in the Welsh borderlands, and a famous speech to the Roman senate that has become one of the great set pieces of Roman historical writing. Caratacus is one of the central figures of the Celtic encounter with Rome and of the gallery of famous Celtic warriors and leaders whose deeds defined the military tradition of the British Celts.

The Background of the Claudian Invasion

The Claudian invasion of 43 CE was launched in response to the exile of the British prince Verica of the Atrebates, who had appealed to the emperor Claudius for help in recovering his kingdom. The pretext for the invasion was the restoration of Verica, but the underlying motive was the incorporation of the rich agricultural lands of southeastern Britain into the Roman empire. The invasion was a major military operation, with four legions under the command of Aulus Plautius, and it met with substantial British resistance.

The principal British leader at the time of the invasion was Cunobelinus, the powerful king of the Catuvellauni whose capital at Camulodunum (Colchester) was the centre of the southeastern British world. Cunobelinus, however, had died shortly before the Roman invasion, and his two sons, Togodumnus and Caratacus, took over the leadership of the British resistance. The two brothers fought the Romans in a series of engagements along the rivers Medway and Thames, and Togodumnus was killed in the early stages of the campaign. The death of Togodumnus left Caratacus as the principal British leader, and the surviving accounts of the campaign suggest that the British resistance was reorganised under his command.

The Establishment of Roman Rule

The Roman conquest of southeastern Britain was completed within a few years of the invasion. The establishment of the Roman provincial capital at Camulodunum, the foundation of the colonia of veterans at Gloucester and Lincoln, and the construction of the Roman road network, all marked the consolidation of Roman rule in the southeast. Caratacus, however, was not prepared to accept the Roman conquest, and he withdrew from the southeast to the western territories of the Silures of south Wales and the Ordovices of north Wales, where he began to organise a new resistance.

The Roman sources represent Caratacus as the principal instigator of the British resistance, and they suggest that his authority extended across much of Wales and into the northern British territories. The picture is probably exaggerated, but it captures the importance of Caratacus as a unifying figure for the British tribes of the west. The Roman governor Publius Ostorius Scapula, who took over the governorship of Britain in 47 CE, was determined to crush the resistance, and he launched a campaign into the territory of the Silures with the aim of capturing Caratacus.

The Campaign Against the Silures

The campaign against the Silures was one of the most difficult of the early Roman campaigns in Britain. The Silures, a tribe of south Wales whose territory included the upland areas of the Brecon Beacons and the valleys of the Usk and the Wye, were a formidable enemy. They were well accustomed to mountain warfare, and the difficult terrain of their territory gave them considerable advantages against Roman forces trained to fight on open ground. Caratacus, who had married a woman of the Silurian royal family, had strong connections with the tribe, and he was able to organise the resistance with considerable success.

The Roman campaign against the Silures was a long and frustrating affair. The Roman forces, under Scapula and his successors, made progress in pacifying the lowland areas of south Wales, but the upland areas remained outside Roman control, and Caratacus and his forces were able to move through the difficult terrain with a freedom that the Roman forces could not match. The Roman sources record a number of engagements in which the British forces, fighting from prepared positions on hilltops, inflicted serious losses on the Roman columns, and the campaign became a war of attrition in which the Romans slowly extended their control of the lowlands while the Britons retained control of the uplands.

The Decisive Battle

The decisive battle of the campaign, fought around 50 CE, is described by Tacitus in the Annals with a vividness that has preserved the episode for two thousand years. Caratacus, having assembled a great force of Britons from many tribes, chose a position on the Welsh border where the terrain was favourable to the British style of fighting. The position, on a hillside with a rampart of stones in front and a forest behind, allowed the Britons to deploy in their traditional style, with the infantry in the centre, the cavalry and the war chariots on the wings, and the warriors of the British elite at the front.

The battle was a long and hard-fought affair. The Roman forces, under the command of the new governor, attacked the British position with their usual discipline, but the British defence was stubborn, and the battle hung in the balance for several hours. The Roman legionaries eventually broke through the British line, and the British forces, caught in the rout, suffered heavy losses. Caratacus himself, having fought with great courage, fled the field and made for the territory of the Brigantes, the large tribe of northern England, hoping to find refuge with their queen Cartimandua.

The Capture and the Speech

The decision of Cartimandua to hand Caratacus over to the Romans in chains striking episodes of Roman British history. The queen of the Brigantes, a Roman ally, did not hesitate to betray the British resistance leader to the Roman governor, and Caratacus was sent to Rome to be exhibited in the triumph of the emperor Claudius. The Roman triumph, a public celebration of the victory, was one of the great set pieces of Roman state ceremony, and the exhibition of a defeated enemy in the procession was a normal part of the ritual.

The episode that followed the triumph famous in Roman historical writing. Caratacus, brought before the Roman senate, delivered a speech in which he contrasted the simple life of the Britons with the luxury and greed of the Romans. The speech, as preserved by Tacitus, has Caratacus asking the Romans why they should want the poor lands of the Britons, and pointing out that the Britons had no great wealth to plunder, no riches to excite Roman avarice. The speech made such an impression on the Roman senate that the emperor pardoned Caratacus and allowed him to live in comfortable exile in Italy, where he and his family are said to have spent the rest of their days.

The Legacy of Caratacus

The figure of Caratacus has had a long and varied afterlife. In the medieval Welsh tradition, he was remembered as a great hero, and the Welsh genealogists traced the descent of several Welsh ruling families from him. In the early modern period, the speech before the Roman senate became a stock example of the noble savage, and the figure of Caratacus was used by English writers as a model of British resistance to tyranny. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the story of Caratacus became part of the construction of the modern Welsh national identity, and his name has been given to mountains, rivers, and public buildings across Wales.

The image of Caratacus, the unconquered British prince, the great war leader of the western tribes, the orator whose words moved the Roman senate, has remained one of the central icons of the popular imagination of the Celtic world. The contrast between the heroic resistance of Caratacus and the calculating political loyalty of Cartimandua, both of them British Celtic leaders dealing with the same Roman invader, has made the figure of Caratacus a focus for discussions of Celtic leadership and of the complex relationships between collaboration and resistance in colonial situations.

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