ABSTRACT
The successful landing of a force of four legions with support troops, probably 40,000 men in all, on the south coast of England in AD 43 marked the start of the conquest of Britain. There is no surviving Roman statement detailing the long-term intentions of the expedition, though the order given by Claudius to the governor Aulus Plautius, to conquer ‘the rest’, coupled with the general expansionism of the Empire at the time, strongly suggest that the aim was to subdue the whole island. The Romans certainly knew Britain to be an island, and that Ireland lay to one side; the invasion of Ireland was even considered at one point. It was to be forty years before Roman arms reached their greatest extent in Britain (fig. 9.1) but the famous victory at Mons Graupius in 83 or 84 was almost immediately followed by retrenchment and the abandonment of some territory. Ironically, it was during the campaigns which led to Mons Graupius that the first suggestion that the Romans might stop short of the conquest of the whole island appears.
