us of
every reputation which seemed too great for the measure of a subject, he
neither undertook any enterprise of moment in his own person nor cared
to commit the conduct of it to another. There was little in a British
triumph that could affect a temper like that of Tiberius.

His successor, Caligula, was not influenced by this, nor indeed by any
regular system; for, having undertaken an expedition to Britain without
any determinate view, he abandoned it on the point of execution without
reason. And adding ridicule to his disgrace, his soldiers returned to
Rome loaded with shells. These spoils he displayed as the ornaments of a
triumph which he celebrated over the Ocean,--if in all these particulars
we may trust to the historians of that time, who relate things almost
incredible of the folly of their masters and the patience of the Roman
people.

But the Roman people, however degenerate, still retained much of their
martial spirit; and as the Emperors held their power almost entirely by
the affection of the soldiery, they found themselves often obliged to
such enterprises as might prove them no improper heads of a military
constitution. An expedition to Britain was well adapted to answer all
the purposes of this ostentatious policy. The country was remote and
little known, so that every exploit there, as if achieved in another
world, appeared at Rome with double pomp and lustre; whilst the sea,
which divided Britain from the continent, prevented a failure in that
island from being followed by any consequences alarming to the body of
the Empire. A pretext was not wanting to this war. The maritime Britons,
while the terror of the Roman arms remained fresh, upon their minds,
continued regularly to pay the tribute imposed by Caesar. But the
generation which experienced that war having passed away, that which
succeeded felt the burden, but knew from rumor only the superiority
which had imposed it; and being very ignorant, as of all things else, so
of the true extent of the Roman power, they were not afraid to provoke
it by discontinuing the payment of the tribute.

[Sidenote: A.D. 43]

This gave occasion to the Emperor Claudius, ninety-seven years after the
first expedition of Caesar, to invade Britain in person, and with a great
army. But he, having rather surveyed than conducted the war, left in a
short time the management of it to his legate, Plautius, who subdued
without much difficulty those countries which lay to