ABSTRACT
The two expeditions of Julius Cæsar in the years 55 and 54 b.c.—the first of which was certainly a failure and the second very nearly so—were followed by almost a century of repose from foreign invasion. It was not till ninety years after Cæsar’s earlier attempts that the Romans, led on this occasion by Aulus Plautius, and aided by German auxiliaries, again invaded Britain (a.d. 44). But this time they came to stay, and although the conquest proved perhaps more difficult than they had anticipated, it was under successive generals accomplished at last. The year 70 a.d. may be taken, for convenience, as the date when the power of the most stubborn of the natives was effectually broken, and though much fighting remained to be done, the conquest was practically complete. For seventy years after the victories of Julius Agricola (a.d. 70–84) there was peace, and had it not been for the incursions of the Picts and Scots by land, and of the Saxon pirates by sea, the peace would have been almost uninterrupted. The Romans remained as the rulers of Britain for three centuries and a half, and then the exigencies of self-defence in other regions of the Empire compelled them to retire. The last legions left the island in 407 a.d. 1
