Client Kings and Kingdoms - Coursework Example

_________ ___________ d: May 4, 2007-05-04 Roman Britain: “Client Kings and Kingdom” Roman Client kingdoms were those tribal groups who associate themselves with the Roman Empire and consider them as one of the families of Roman Empire in order to get security or in order to defend themselves from other tribal conflicts. Roman historian Tacitus mentions in his book ‘Life of Agricola’ that “it was traditional to view the Britons as rather sullen spectators of the activities of their Roman oppressors, suffering a loss of their freedom, compounded by occasional ‘rape and pillage’”1. That was the main reason for why the kings chose to become clients rather than masters. Others historians evidence the long-term effect of the Roman presence in Britain for three and a half centuries. Client kingdoms were established to speed up the process of Romanisation, whilst units of the army (legions and auxiliaries) were put in place at intervals to defend the frontiers from outside attack and to look inwards as ‘police forces’ and to act in the role of a ‘pioneer corps’ 2. Caesar’s incursions and Claudius’ invasion saw many successful changes in the relationship between Rome and the British tribes, which were largely based upon the inescapable fact that neither side could afford to ignore the other. Rome wanted at least a balance of pro- and anti-Roman forces in southern Britain, if for no other reason than to sustain conditions which would allow unimpeded progress towards Romanisation. Client kings were appointed or dismissed at the whim of the current emperor. The institution provides a good illustration of Rome’s traditional readiness to adapt to circumstances. Usually the king’s task was to form a buffer between Roman territory and potential enemies; within the borders of the imperial, however, he might be appointed to rule areas whose terrain made them difficult to police, as in Cilicia in Asia Minor, where a mountainous area known as Rough Cilicia seems to have been administered by client-kings through most of the Julio-Claudian period 3. Rome’s interest in these outer barbarian lands was confined at this time to the safety of their new province. The practice, continued from an earlier period, had been to seek protection of frontiers through friendly states. A special arrangement under the Roman method of patronage visualised the creation or recognition of kingdoms, the rulers of which had a client relationship with the Senate and people of Rome and, after Augustus, with the Emperors. It was the primary duty of the client rulers to prevent people beyond the frontier from invading Roman territory. Therefore, in this context the use of client kings was a success as the kings used a highly convenient security system which could be maintained along the difficult frontiers at minimal cost 4. In the decades immediately after Caesar’s visits, tribal politics in Britain appear to have stabilised, and although pro- and anti-Roman stances were detectable, it made little immediate difference to the state of relations between Rome and the southern British tribes. Indeed, British tribes did business with Roman Gaul and, according to historians, commodities passing from Britain included grain, wheat and other material. The principal tribal clients in Roman Britain residing in North and South of the Thames River which were ‘Catuvellauni’ and ‘Atrebates’. The Atrebates had been the client kingdoms of Rome since Caesar’s first invasion. Although deriving from a Gallic tribe which had opposed Caesar, Atrebates were the more firmly pro-Roman, whilst the Catuvellauni were suspicious but circumspect. Both were effectively lead. The Atrebates were lead by Verica, who was a client of Rome and had principal centres at Silchester and Selsey, and the Catuvellauni by Cunobelinus who ruled from Colchester and who, despite his independence of spirit, used coinage with the title, ‘Rex’ (King), and probably also enjoyed a treaty with Rome. The stances of the tribes were well caught by the symbolism of their coinage; Verica, indicating his sympathies and his commercial contacts with the Mediterranean, coined with a vine-leaf motif, whilst Cunobelinus coined with a prominent ear of barley - a ‘trade war’ between Mediterranean wine and British beer. Recent excavations at Silchester have provided firm artefactual evidence of the strength of trade between the Atrebates and the Roman world, including both ‘consumer durables’ and foodstuffs; as has been noted, it has also become clear that Silchester, in the late pre-Roman Iron Age, was fast becoming a ‘Romanised town’5. It is not clear at what stage or at what pace the formation of partly self-administering civitates was undertaken; recent archaeological work has suggested that those British with wealth, or the ability to borrow from Roman money-lenders, rapidly set about involving themselves in developing a Romanised lifestyle. Whilst obligation to money-lenders might prove to be a dangerous procedure, the keenness to adopt Roman ways rather confirms the observations of Tacitus; such events as the rebellion of the Iceni and Trinovantes under Boudica in AD 60, however, serve to demonstrate the propriety of Tacitus’ qualification of his observation - namely that the British were not prepared to tolerate abuse 6. According to Yorke (1997) “client kingdoms can also be studied through Mercian involvement with religious communities in these areas. Although only a handful of Mercian charters datable to the seventh century survive they show a striking degree of patronage to religious houses outside the main Mercian province”7. That means client kings were religious Scapula with an equivalent strength of auxiliaries his campaign army would have amounted to about half his total troops. To have removed such a large number of soldiers to the required forward positions would have stripped half the province of its garrisons; all the land to the east of a line from the Wash to the Solent was now to be virtually deprived of troops. It would seem to have been such an enormous risk that it leaves one to consider if there were no other measures he could have taken to improve the security of this large area. There has been a general assumption that the two client kingdoms of Prasutagus and Cogidubnus were created by Claudius as a reward for the services of these two rulers at the time of the invasion. But even accepting some quirkiness in the Emperor’s behaviour the founding of the two independent kingdoms which occupied so much of the territory of the new province seems very odd. There would appear to have been no valid reasons for their creation at the time of the visit of Claudius, nor is there any evidence for it in Dio or Tacitus. Claudius was a client King Ruling over a town named ‘Chichester’ in his kingdom. From its name in Ptolemy and Ravenna ‘Noviomagvs Reg Norvm’ was also the cantonal capital of the Region. The inscription is a dedication to a temple of Minerva and Neptune, erected by a guild of iron-workers and ironsmiths. The combination of these two particular deities strongly implies shipbuilding, which is hardly surprising with the proximity of ‘Bosham’ Harbour and the Roman naval base at ‘Fishbourne’, and also the large-scale iron production on the ‘Weald’, closely associated with the British Fleet. The guild members gained their prestige as ship-building and repairing contractors to the Roman Army to become sufficiently wealthy in the first century to fund the building of the temple8. Therefore, client kingdoms brought wealth and were beneficial in providing security to the country. It must also be assumed that the arrangements made with two client kings in the eastern part of the province must have been effective, and that no serious anti-Roman threats had so far occurred. It is considered that the river was not a serious enough obstacle for client kings in the summer, and it left far too much room for manoeuvre by any hostile elements. The client king ‘Scapula’s’ main intention was to pin down the enemy in their mountains by plugging all the outlets from the narrow east-facing valleys. This would also have deprived the tribes of producing the great plains of the modern counties of Shropshire and Herefordshire. It is difficult to explain why the Romans would have allowed Cogidubnus to remain as king into the Flavian period. Sentimentality had little place in Roman foreign policy, and it was not the practice to allow client kings to continue to rule once they had outlived their usefulness, no matter how staunchly loyal their previous service. Polemo II, for instance, after a lifetime of service in the cause of Rome, was deprived of his kingdom of Pontus in 64/65, when it was incorporated fully into the imperium. Once Britain had survived the effects of Boudica’s revolt the danger of internal unrest seems to have been crushed once and for all9. According to Webster (1993) “Moreover, Tacitus’ use of the superlative fidissimus ‘most loyal’ and of the verb mansit ‘remained’ instead of the simple erat ‘was’, to imply that Cogidubnus faced a major test of his loyalty towards the end of his life, since the phrase fidissimus mansit means that he stayed most loyal. Boudica’s revolt would provide an excellent context for such a display of loyalty”10. The northern neighbours of the Trinovantes, the Iceni of East Anglia, submitted to Rome immediately after the initial stage of the invasion, their leader being among the eleven kings who offered their support to Claudius. The identity of the king is unknown but it may well have been Prasutagus who remained faithful to Rome until his death. As a Roman client king he continued to issue silver coins bearing a Roman bust and the legend ‘Subri Prasto’ on the obverse and a horse with the words ‘Esico Fecit’ on the reverse 11. In the three decades during which the Roman armies were forced to subdue the warlike peoples of Wales and the Pennines, the Romanization of the south-east was being completed, but in spite of a deliberate and well-used programme employing client kings, making substantial monetary loans to noble families, founding colonies and undertaking elaborate schemes of urban building, progress was by no means smooth. The first hints that all was not well occurred in AD 47, when some of the Icenian tribesmen, objecting to being disarmed, organized a resistance movement and constructed fortifications. The revolt was easily put down but it must have shown the authorities that a certain instability existed in the client kingdom of the Iceni 12. Trouble came to a head in 59-60 with the death of Prasutagus. In his will he had adopted the wise procedure of making the emperor joint heir with his two daughters, but it is evident from what followed that the Roman administration intended to absorb the client kingdom into the province, quite probably because it was regarded as a point of instability. Roman client kings were beneficial to Britain as they developed the means of trade and commerce across English Channel. The Roman kingdom provided security and introduced new measures of refuge to Britain; therefore client kings and kingdom were a success for Britain. Works Cited A.N. Sherwin-White, (1963) “Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament”: Oxford Cunliffe Barry, (2004) “Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century BC until the Roman Conquest”: Routledge: New York. Shotter David, (2004) “Roman Britain”: Routledge: London. Webster Graham, (1993) “Rome against Caratacus: The Roman Campaigns in Britain AD 48- 58”: Batsford: London. Yorke Barbara, (1997) “Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England”: Routledge: London. Read More