The Roman conquest of Britain by Claudius

The poets and historians of the Augustan age reinforced the growing belief that there was no part of the known world that Rome was not intended to rule. As the historian Livy noted, Jupiter himself had said, "it is the gods' will that my Rome shall be capital of the world [and] no human forces can resist Roman arms" (quoted by Wells 76). Livy knew, of course, that Augustus' adoptive father Julius Caesar had tried twice (55-54 B.C.) to conquer Britain. He had some success but had given up in the face of bad weather, bad luck, and pressing business on the mainland. Britain was clearly a special case and its conquest would take a special kind of leader. Augustus himself had understood this when, after defeating Pompey and further securing the northeastern frontier of Italy, he made sure that the grateful Romans knew that he planned to embark on "far reaching plans of conquest, inherited from Caesar" (Wells 23). He even wanted the Romans to believe that he was about to begin a campaign to conquer mysterious Britain. Of course Augustus

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ncials would come to Rome and would gain some power there. This, however, only increased the dislike of foreigners. Caesar himself had appointed senators from Gaul. Under Caligula (A.D. 37-41) two consuls came from Narbonese Gaul. And Claudius, in his role as censor in A.D. 48 added still more men from northern and central Gaul to the senate and he offered a justification of this increasingly necessary policy to the other senators. Tacitus' version of this speech survives. Claudius cited the policy of his great-uncle Augustus and his uncle Tiberius who, he said, "wished all the cream of the colonies and municipalities everywhere, that is good worthy men, to be members of this house [and] I believe that not even provincials can be rejected, if only they can adorn the senate house" (quoted by Grant 130). By Claudius' reign the importance of retaining Gaul was well understood and the expansion into Britain was one means of doing so. Yet Britain was, in many ways, an anomaly. The geographers of Greece and Rome stated with certainty that the world's land was surrounded by the ocean on all sides and that no lands, not even islands, lay beyond it. The exception was the British isles which, counter to reason, contained the larg
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1902
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)