ABSTRACT
For Tacitus, Agricola’s victory at Mons Graupius in AD 83 was a triumph for the general’s inspirational leadership and the traditional valour of his troops. In the historian’s view, therefore, what followed, represented a sell-out: ‘Britain was totally conquered, and immediately allowed to slip from our grasp’ (Histories I:2). The reality was more complex; as we have seen, policy in Britain had been under scrutiny since the late 70s, and troop-withdrawals in AD 80 had already indicated that the objective of total conquest might have to be compromised.
