The Historians' History of the World 06

It was in the time of Vespasian and Titus that the famous Agricola campaigned in Britain. In his first summer there (78), he led his forces into the country of the Ordovices, in whose mountain passes the war of independence still lingered, drove the Britons across the Menai straits, and pursued them into Anglesea, as Suetonius had done before him, by boldly crossing the boiling current in the face of the enemy. The summer of 79 saw him advance northward into the territory of the Brigantes, and complete the organisation of the district, lately reduced, between the Humber and Tyne. Struck perhaps with the natural defences of the line from the Tyne to the Solway, where the island seems to have been broken, as it were, in the middle and soldered unevenly together, he drew a chain of forts from sea to sea, to protect the reclaimed subjects of the southern valleys from the untamed barbarians who roamed the Cheviots and the Pentlands.

To penetrate the stormy wilds of Caledonia, and track to their fastnesses the hordes of savages, the Ottadini, Horesti, and Mæatæ, who flitted among them, was an enterprise which promised no plunder and little glory. The legions of Rome, with their expensive equipments, could not hope even to support themselves on the bleak mountain sides, unclaimed by men and abandoned by nature. His camps on the Tyne and Irthing were the magazines from which Agricola’s supplies must wholly be drawn; the ordinary term of a provincial prefecture was inadequate to a long, a distant, and an aimless adventure. But Vespasian had yielded to the ardour of his favourite lieutenant; ample means were furnished, and ample time was allowed. In the third year of his command (80) Agricola pushed forward along the eastern coast, and making good with roads and fortresses every inch of his progress, reached, perhaps, the Firth of Forth. He had here reached the point where the two seas are divided by an isthmus less than forty miles in breadth. Here he repeated the operations of the preceding winter, planting his camps and stations from hill to hill, and securing a new belt of territory, ninety miles across, for Roman occupation. The natives, scared at his presence and fleeing before him, were thus thrust, in the language of Tacitus, as it were into another island. For a moment the empire seemed to have found its northern limit. Agricola rested through the next summer, occupied in the organisation of his conquests, and employed his fifth year (82) also in strengthening his position between the two isthmuses, and reducing the furthest corners of the province, whence the existence of a new realm was betrayed to him. The grassy plains of teeming Hibernia offered a fairer prey than the gray mountains which frowned upon his fresh entrenchments, and all their wealth, he was assured, might be secured by the valour of a single legion. But other counsels prevailed; Agricola turned from the Mull of Galloway, and Ireland was left to her fogs and feuds for eleven more centuries.k

THE DEATH OF TITUS

[79-81 A.D.]

Meanwhile [says Suetonius], Titus was taken off by an untimely death, more to the loss of mankind than himself. At the close of the public diversions with which he entertained the people, he wept bitterly before them all, and then went away for the country of the Sabines, very melancholy, because a victim, when about to be sacrificed, had made its escape, and loud thunder had been heard during a serene state of the atmosphere. At the first stage on the road, he was seized with a fever, and being carried thence in a sedan, they say that he put by the curtains, and looked up to heaven, complaining heavily, that his life was taken from him, though he had done nothing to deserve it; for there was no action of his that he had occasion to repent of, but one. What that was, he neither intimated himself, nor is it easy for any to conjecture. Some imagine that he alluded to the unlawful familiarity which he had formerly had with his brother’s wife. But Domitia solemnly denied it with an oath; which she would never have done, had there been any truth in the report; nay, she would certainly have boasted of it, as she was forward enough to do in regard to all her shameful intrigues.

Arch of Titus, Rome

He died in the same villa where his father had done before him, upon the ides of September; two years, two months, and twenty days after he had succeeded his father; and in the one and fortieth year of his age. As soon as the news of his death was published, all people mourned for him, as for the loss of some near relation. The senate, before they could be summoned by proclamation, drew together, and locking the doors of their house at first, but afterwards opening them, gave him such thanks, and heaped upon him such praises now he was dead, as they never had done whilst he was alive and present amongst them.c