ABSTRACT
Without more ado, Tacitus plunges straight into his description of the battle which was to be so decisive to both Caratacus and Scapula. The lines of advance and the preliminary battles and skirmishes are ruthlessly excised by the historian, ever anxious to move onwards towards a dramatic climax. He offers only a hint of the direction of the campaign when he states that the British leader ‘moved the war into the territory of the Ordovices’ (transfert bellum in Ordovicas) (Ann, xii. 33) but, in an equally terse phrase, Tacitus tells us that Caratacus was ‘inferior in military strength’ (vi militum inferior) and that, having set up his standard, he was ‘joined by those who dreaded our (i.e. Roman) peace’. This clearly implies that the purpose of the move was to bring more warriors to his standard especially from the large and important tribe of the Ordovices which he could expect to join him.
