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even more so. Tacitus reckons 70,000 were killed on both sides during the revolt itself, and 80,000
during its suppression. Nero, who had succeeded Claudius as Emperor, seriously considered
abandoning Britannia as a colony altogether.
After Boudicca’s revolt had been put down, Roman control recovered. The crippling taxation
was relaxed a little and those parts of Britain that had been conquered began the long process of
assimilation into the Empire. But the stability of the northern frontier was beginning to crumble.
Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes and the woman who had handed over the fugitive Caratacus,
lost control of the loose federation of northern tribes. Agricola responded to this instability by
pushing the frontier back to the very edge of the Scottish Highlands. He took his army even further
north in his campaign against the Picts, inflicting a crushing defeat at the battle of Mons Graupius in
AD 83. The location of Mons Graupius has eluded historians and archaeologists alike. The best
guess is at Bennachie, near Inverurie on the banks of the River Don, 15 miles north-west of
Aberdeen.
For the Romans it was a long way from home – ‘the place where the world and nature end’,
according to Tacitus. But even with this defeat, the Highland Picts avoided being forced to submit
to Rome in the way the Welsh did not, although the intention to complete the invasion of Scotland
was there. At Inchtuthil, near Blairgowrie, a huge legionary fortress began to take shape, the equal
of Chester or of Caerleon on the Welsh frontier. But reverses on the continent forced the Emperor
Domitian to withdraw his troops from Scotland. The fortress was carefully dismantled and the
materials taken south. It had been a lucky escape for the Picts.
By AD 120 the frontier had moved south to the line between the Solway Firth in the west and
the mouth of the Tyne in the east. At first only a turf rampart, the frontier was turned into the
impenetrable stone barrier of Hadrian’s Wall, on the orders of the Emperor. Under Hadrian’s
successor, Antoninus Pius, the frontier moved north again. This time it was defined by the
eponymous Antonine Wall, a barrier of rock and turf 20 feet high running between the Firths of
Clyde and Forth. This was a much shorter boundary and many military historians think Hadrian
should have built his wall here in the first place. But more trouble with the Picts convinced the next
Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to bring the frontier back down to Hadrian’s Wall in 163. Even that
great barrier was not impermeable and there were repeated raids across the wall as far as York.
Further south the fighting was less intense and the native population became drawn into the
seductive and deliberate process of civilization. Towns were planned and built. Urban life,
unknown in the whole history of the Isles, was born. People began to learn Latin and Roman dress
became popular. As Tacitus shrewdly observed, ‘Little by little there was a slide towards the
allurements of degeneracy; assembly rooms, bathing establishments and smart dinner parties. In
their inexperience the Britons called it civilisation when it was really all part of their servitude.’
In the south, cities like Lincoln, Colchester and Gloucester grew up explicitly to accommodate
army veterans on their retirement. Britons joined the army as auxiliaries and retired as citizens. In
the towns, administrators mixed with craftsmen and artisans. Slaves were freed and were set up in
business by their former masters. In the countryside, undefended villas of sumptuous magnificence
sprang up, complete with wood- or coal-fired central heating, windows and glazed tile flooring.
But even as these outward signs of affluence amused their owners, the seeds of destruction had
been sown. The traumas of the Empire, its division into eastern and western sectors, the movement
of the centre of the western Empire from Rome, first to Milan, then to Trier in eastern France, the