Page:Notices by the Rev. T. Surridge ...of Roman inscriptions discovered at High Rochester, Risingham and Rudchester, in Northumberland ... (IA noticesbyrevtsur00surr).pdf/13



Tacitus, in his rapid haste to the eulogy of his uncle or father-in-law and hero Agricola, passes over, with a single and not impartial glance, the second expedition of Cæsar to Britain. He says, "Julius Cæsar, instead of conquering, merely shewed the way to the future conquest of Britain." Thus transferring to the brows of Agricola the laurels which had been won by the renowned Cæsar in his second invasion of this country.

On this authority Rapin hesitates not to assert that for more than ninety years after this second invasion of Britain the Britons were free.

The Roman monumental inscriptions, for some fifteen centuries buried in the earth, are now exhumed to qualify, if not to disprove, these statements, and to effect the "restoration unto Cæsar of the things which are Cæsars." They bear irrefragible evidence that, in his second invasion of Britain, Cæsar aimed at its conquest, not as an empty name, and neither did he retire, nor was he compelled to retire, from it without first securing the conquest he had made.

It is true that subsequent events and the prudence of Augustus, which made him eschew distant wars and to defer his threatened completion of British subjugation, may have left the Britons comparatively at ease