big history: crossing the Rubicon

On this day (10th January) in 49 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar and a legion of the Roman army famously crossed the Rubicon. The Rubicon is a small river in north-eastern Italy. It was a proscribed crossing into Gaulish  territory and it marked the start of the ‘great Roman civil war’ (49-45 BC) in the Roman republic. In 45 BC, Caesar was victorious and became Dictator perpetuo of Rome. He was Consul (the highest office) of the republic in 46 and 45 BC, and he was assassinated in 44 BC. However, the changes that he made to the government of the Roman republic led to the founding of the empire in 27 BC.

Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) was the very famous and significant Roman general, statesman, Consul and author. He led invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 BC, during the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC: British tribes sent military assistance to the Gauls and the Belgae during these wars against Caesar. The Roman invasion of 55 BC was a landing on the coast of Kent, which met with resistance and was abandoned. In 54 BC, however, it is recorded that Caesar and his army invaded Britain again and besieged a native Iron Age stronghold in Britain, which is thought to have been Wheathamstead in Hertfordshire. However, Trust director Philip has a theory that Julius Caesar actually came to Camulodunum, a major Iron Age stronghold where the Roman town of Colchester was later founded. Camulodunum was an area defined and protected by large defensive earthworks (ditches and ramparts) and containing settlements and the farmstead of the tribal leader (at Gosbecks). (‘Camulodunum’ means fortified stronghold of Camulos, the Iron Age god of war.) Philip thinks that Camulodunum may have been the principal Iron Age stronghold in southern England. It included the hill on which Colchester town centre now stands and, of course, the River Colne and access to the sea. Over the years, we have found evidence that dates Camulodunum to the 50s BC, for example, at Stanway, Gosbecks, Lexden and Colchester Institute.

Iron Age Britain was sub-divided into territories which were occupied by different tribes. The Trinovantes tribe occupied what is now Essex. Mandubracius, the son of the leader of the Trinovantes, was displaced by Cassivellaunus, who became the leader. Camulodunum was his stronghold. Mandubracius called the Romans into Britain and, in the summer of 54 BC, the Roman army, led by Caesar, again landed in Kent. Five years before crossing the Rubicon, they crossed another river into another territory – the River Thames, where London was later founded, entering the territory of the Trinovantes. There was a major Iron Age route from the crossing-point to Camulodunum. Philip thinks that Caesar took this route and stopped off at Chelmsford (Roman name ‘Caesaromagus’) on the way. Cassivellaunus and the Trinovantes are both named in Caesar’s Commentarii De Bello Gallica: Cassivellaunus was the commander of the combined tribal resistance to Caesar. The Trinovantes did a deal with Caesar and the Romans besieged the stronghold of Cassivellaunus. Caesar described the stronghold as being protected by man-made ditches and ramparts, as well as by trees and marshes, but he did not give its name. The Romans forced Cassivellaunus to submit; they made Mandubracius the leader of the Trinovantes and left Britain, having established a ‘client kingdom’ of the Trinovantes in the east and of the Roman Commius in the south, and set up the payment of tribute money by the other tribes in eastern Britain. Caesar described this as the ‘conquest’ of Britain. But the Roman empire started its full conquest of Britain in AD 43, when the emperor Claudius and the Roman army took the submission of some of Britain’s tribal leaders, probably at Gosbecks, on the western side of Colchester…

Coincidentally, a couple of the coins in the Fenwick treasure hoard, which we found at the Williams & Griffin store site in Colchester in the summer, and which was hidden during the Boudican revolt in AD 61, are coins of Julius Caesar and were minted in Rome.

(The phrase ‘crossing the Rubicon’ means passing the point of no return…)

The image is a plan of Camulodunum, showing the defensive dyke system, Gosbecks (the tribal leader’s farmstead) and Sheepen (settlement).

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