05-15-2021, 03:48 PM
Nathan wrote
I've been reading lately about agriculture in medieval England, and I realise that I've been quite mistaken about the sowing and harvesting seasons (which were presumably the same in the Roman era, as the germination time of wheat cannot have changed much). I was assuming that the main wheat crop was sown in the spring, but it is, of course, almost entirely sown in the autumn. I think Deryk tried to point this out to me several times - sorry, Deryk!
Thanks Nathan, I couldn't make sense of it either.
I couldn't see the relevance of Tacitus’ chronological statement “for they had been careless about sowing corn, people of every age having gone to the war, while they reckoned on our supplies as their own" and trying to fit it into the previously recognised timelines which I couldn’t.
Tacitus and Dio make references to the importance of the wheat crop both for the Brythons regarding a famine after the end of the war and for SP and the Fourteenth who were running out of food during on the march prior to the battle.
What I am proposing is perhaps that the underlying reason for the annexation of land from the Iceni, the invasion of Anglesey and also the spark for the rebellion (as Nathan has proposed) was wheat supply.
Harvests around the Mediterranean were inconsistent around this period as referenced in the Bible and there were major shortages in other parts of the Roman world.
The Roman army of 40,000 based in Britannia would have been a major drain of wheat supply, a huge logistics nightmare in the supply chain and unsustainable in the long run.
Whereas as Britain had in the past exported wheat to the Roman Empire now this crop needed to be used locally to feed the army and could only be done either from State Farms or by taxation.
As a policy this made sense to the Romans and was possibly standard practice.
So the confiscation of lands after the legal agreement with Prasatugus of Client King had finished would create the State Farms, taxation on wheat grown elsewhere would provide more and finally invading a fertile region such as Anglesey would create further State Farms.
Although Anglesey was the spiritual home of the Druids and an affront to the Romans (mainly because the Druids in a higher body than the state and therefore were a threat to the state) merely by invading it would not eradicate the religion. Any Druid leader would have been evacuated.
What Anglesey was known for was its huge copper deposits and as the “breadbasket of Wales” due to its abundance of wheat.
So the confiscation of Iceni lands duly went ahead and possibly the defiling of Boudica and her daughters at the same time but there was little that the Brythons could do about it as the army was omnipresent at that time.
The insult would never be forgotten but the practicalities of trying to feed the Roman Army and themselves on now depleted land acreage may have been the final tipping point and plans may have been laid to give Rome a tribute with a sting in the tail.
Roman policy ground on and SP duly successfully invaded Anglesey, and installed forts to guard the harbour, the island and the fort Segontium at the straight etc.
Everything was going to plan but just as SP was about to leave to disband the army to its winter quarters he gets news that there has been an uprising and Colchester has been destroyed.
One of the other mysteries is why did no one set up defences around Colchester at all and why were only 200 poorly armed soldiers sent there from Catus and no troops sent from Cerialis if there was even a mild threat to the Roman capital of Britain?
If we start to look at this as an issue around wheat, it is possible that the wheat tax was to be delivered to the nearest administrative centre by the Iceni as part of the wheat tax normally delivered to Colchester by the Trinovantes at the same time ( the second / third week of August).
This would have been the first time that both tribes would have done this and as it had been an accepted and peaceful practice by the Trinovantes in the past it was regarded as a normal event but with possible risks due to the numbers of people assembling.
It would make sense, as this was an administrative action that Catus would be responsible for policing the event and ensuring that the wheat was stored in the granaries or on to ships at a later stage.
Sending 200 hundred soldiers to police a festival would seem reasonable in normal circumstances but it was a major mistake by Catus who had totally underestimated the feelings that had been provoked by the treatment of the Iceni aristocracy and was a huge failure in administration.
As it happened this was a perfect scenario for the Iceni and the Trinovantes to literally walk into Colchester and create mayhem rather than join in to the planned festival – perhaps the Augustali to celebrate the harvest.
Obviously someone sent messengers to Catus and Cerialis once the attack had begun and Catus fled to escape retribution possibly from his own countrymen and Cerialis gathered what forces he had, sent a messenger to SP and marched with all speed to Colchester and either met the returning Iceni or was ambushed, the latter being more likely as the cavalry survived and the foot soldiers perished indicating the two were separated.
A further message was then sent to SP from Cerialis informing him of the loss of Colchester and 2,000 legionaries.
The main purpose having been accomplished, the Trinovantes now re-occupied their lost holdings from the veterans settlers and State across their land and the Iceni went back to their homelands, all awaiting the Roman retribution that was inevitable. The only question would have been how many troops and from which direction would the army come from?
In this scenario SP would have been in London by the 2nd or 3rd week of September, taken stock of the situation and be back in Verulamium by the end of September.
The harvest had all been collected and it now remained for the main crop to be resown which would have been the normal amount that the Iceni were used to but as Tacitus states “for they had been careless about sowing corn, people of every age having gone to the war, while they reckoned on our supplies as their own".
[Although this has always been interpreted as the tribes were expecting to rely on supplies that the roman army actually had (although it would seem that they were struggling themselves), does he actually mean that although they had sown and grown the wheat that they would normally need for themselves, that they had not taken into account that a substantial portion had to be given to the Roman State as taxation and that the taxation was taken in AD62 leading to the subsequent famine in AD62 /63.]
My hypothesis is that the Trinovantes mobilised to attack London once they knew that SP was there and the Iceni mobilised once they realised that SP had retreated to Verulamium. There is evidence that the Brythons could communicate effectively to time attacks in different areas to great effect.
It is my supposition that the Trinovantes approached from London and the Iceni from the East reaching SPs chosen battle site at around the first week in October.
SP overcame the Brythons but not only kept his field army (Fourteenth Legion) together but also pulled in troops from Wales and then waged a war of attrition (fire and sword) on the tribes who had rebelled, to the extent rather than capture valuable slaves for the State he was happier killing them.
One would expect that Nero would have waited until there was a successful outcome before investing in more troops.
The procurator who succeeded Catus Decianus, Julius Classicanus observed the carnage that SP was visiting on the tribes and called for another Governor and typically of a large Administration an enquiry was set up under the freedman Polyclitus, possibly in the spring of AD62 as Nathan proposes and to assess the value of the province and its governance.
Polyclitus actually did a fine job by getting the wasteful Governor replaced and recommending a further investment that duly came in the form troops from the continent, possibly sent with the replacement Governor at their head.
I've been reading lately about agriculture in medieval England, and I realise that I've been quite mistaken about the sowing and harvesting seasons (which were presumably the same in the Roman era, as the germination time of wheat cannot have changed much). I was assuming that the main wheat crop was sown in the spring, but it is, of course, almost entirely sown in the autumn. I think Deryk tried to point this out to me several times - sorry, Deryk!
Thanks Nathan, I couldn't make sense of it either.
I couldn't see the relevance of Tacitus’ chronological statement “for they had been careless about sowing corn, people of every age having gone to the war, while they reckoned on our supplies as their own" and trying to fit it into the previously recognised timelines which I couldn’t.
Tacitus and Dio make references to the importance of the wheat crop both for the Brythons regarding a famine after the end of the war and for SP and the Fourteenth who were running out of food during on the march prior to the battle.
What I am proposing is perhaps that the underlying reason for the annexation of land from the Iceni, the invasion of Anglesey and also the spark for the rebellion (as Nathan has proposed) was wheat supply.
Harvests around the Mediterranean were inconsistent around this period as referenced in the Bible and there were major shortages in other parts of the Roman world.
The Roman army of 40,000 based in Britannia would have been a major drain of wheat supply, a huge logistics nightmare in the supply chain and unsustainable in the long run.
Whereas as Britain had in the past exported wheat to the Roman Empire now this crop needed to be used locally to feed the army and could only be done either from State Farms or by taxation.
As a policy this made sense to the Romans and was possibly standard practice.
So the confiscation of lands after the legal agreement with Prasatugus of Client King had finished would create the State Farms, taxation on wheat grown elsewhere would provide more and finally invading a fertile region such as Anglesey would create further State Farms.
Although Anglesey was the spiritual home of the Druids and an affront to the Romans (mainly because the Druids in a higher body than the state and therefore were a threat to the state) merely by invading it would not eradicate the religion. Any Druid leader would have been evacuated.
What Anglesey was known for was its huge copper deposits and as the “breadbasket of Wales” due to its abundance of wheat.
So the confiscation of Iceni lands duly went ahead and possibly the defiling of Boudica and her daughters at the same time but there was little that the Brythons could do about it as the army was omnipresent at that time.
The insult would never be forgotten but the practicalities of trying to feed the Roman Army and themselves on now depleted land acreage may have been the final tipping point and plans may have been laid to give Rome a tribute with a sting in the tail.
Roman policy ground on and SP duly successfully invaded Anglesey, and installed forts to guard the harbour, the island and the fort Segontium at the straight etc.
Everything was going to plan but just as SP was about to leave to disband the army to its winter quarters he gets news that there has been an uprising and Colchester has been destroyed.
One of the other mysteries is why did no one set up defences around Colchester at all and why were only 200 poorly armed soldiers sent there from Catus and no troops sent from Cerialis if there was even a mild threat to the Roman capital of Britain?
If we start to look at this as an issue around wheat, it is possible that the wheat tax was to be delivered to the nearest administrative centre by the Iceni as part of the wheat tax normally delivered to Colchester by the Trinovantes at the same time ( the second / third week of August).
This would have been the first time that both tribes would have done this and as it had been an accepted and peaceful practice by the Trinovantes in the past it was regarded as a normal event but with possible risks due to the numbers of people assembling.
It would make sense, as this was an administrative action that Catus would be responsible for policing the event and ensuring that the wheat was stored in the granaries or on to ships at a later stage.
Sending 200 hundred soldiers to police a festival would seem reasonable in normal circumstances but it was a major mistake by Catus who had totally underestimated the feelings that had been provoked by the treatment of the Iceni aristocracy and was a huge failure in administration.
As it happened this was a perfect scenario for the Iceni and the Trinovantes to literally walk into Colchester and create mayhem rather than join in to the planned festival – perhaps the Augustali to celebrate the harvest.
Obviously someone sent messengers to Catus and Cerialis once the attack had begun and Catus fled to escape retribution possibly from his own countrymen and Cerialis gathered what forces he had, sent a messenger to SP and marched with all speed to Colchester and either met the returning Iceni or was ambushed, the latter being more likely as the cavalry survived and the foot soldiers perished indicating the two were separated.
A further message was then sent to SP from Cerialis informing him of the loss of Colchester and 2,000 legionaries.
The main purpose having been accomplished, the Trinovantes now re-occupied their lost holdings from the veterans settlers and State across their land and the Iceni went back to their homelands, all awaiting the Roman retribution that was inevitable. The only question would have been how many troops and from which direction would the army come from?
In this scenario SP would have been in London by the 2nd or 3rd week of September, taken stock of the situation and be back in Verulamium by the end of September.
The harvest had all been collected and it now remained for the main crop to be resown which would have been the normal amount that the Iceni were used to but as Tacitus states “for they had been careless about sowing corn, people of every age having gone to the war, while they reckoned on our supplies as their own".
[Although this has always been interpreted as the tribes were expecting to rely on supplies that the roman army actually had (although it would seem that they were struggling themselves), does he actually mean that although they had sown and grown the wheat that they would normally need for themselves, that they had not taken into account that a substantial portion had to be given to the Roman State as taxation and that the taxation was taken in AD62 leading to the subsequent famine in AD62 /63.]
My hypothesis is that the Trinovantes mobilised to attack London once they knew that SP was there and the Iceni mobilised once they realised that SP had retreated to Verulamium. There is evidence that the Brythons could communicate effectively to time attacks in different areas to great effect.
It is my supposition that the Trinovantes approached from London and the Iceni from the East reaching SPs chosen battle site at around the first week in October.
SP overcame the Brythons but not only kept his field army (Fourteenth Legion) together but also pulled in troops from Wales and then waged a war of attrition (fire and sword) on the tribes who had rebelled, to the extent rather than capture valuable slaves for the State he was happier killing them.
One would expect that Nero would have waited until there was a successful outcome before investing in more troops.
The procurator who succeeded Catus Decianus, Julius Classicanus observed the carnage that SP was visiting on the tribes and called for another Governor and typically of a large Administration an enquiry was set up under the freedman Polyclitus, possibly in the spring of AD62 as Nathan proposes and to assess the value of the province and its governance.
Polyclitus actually did a fine job by getting the wasteful Governor replaced and recommending a further investment that duly came in the form troops from the continent, possibly sent with the replacement Governor at their head.
Deryk
