Carausius and Allectus: The British Usurpers (Roman Imperial Biographies)

212 Pages·2005·4.29 MB·English

by  P. J. Casey

CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS:
THE BRITISH USURPERS
CARAUSIUS AND
ALLECTUS
The British Usurpers
P.J.Casey
With translations of the texts by R.S.O.Tomlin
B.T. BATSFORD LTD • LONDON
© P.J.CASEY 1994
First published 1994
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Published by B T Batsford Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 0-203-97435-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0 7134 7170 0 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of Figures v
List of Plates v
Introduction 1
1 The Roman Empire in the Third Century 6
2 Britain in the Third Century 14
3 The Date and Duration of the Revolt 29
4 The Literary Narrative 36
5 The Ideology of Carausian and Allectan Coin Types 45
6 The Evidence of the Coinage 59
7 Narrative and Archaeology I: the Revolt 79
8 Narrative and Archaeology II: the Second Continental Episode 96
9 The Shore Forts 105
10 Allectus 116
11 Aftermath 129
12 Ships and Naval Warfare 145
13 Carausius II 157
14 Carausius and Allectus in the Post-Roman World 162
Appendix: The Literary Sources— select translations 185
Bibliography and Abbreviations 193
Index 201
List of Illustrations
Figures
1 The decline of the gold and silver coinage 19
2 Sixth-century Christian tombstone, Penmachno 38
3 Finds of Carausian coinage in Gaul 62
4 Finds of coins of the Rouen mint in Britain 64
5 The British legions in Gaul 84
6 The Carausian defences of Boulogne 98
7 The topography of the Roman port of Boulogne 102
8 The Saxon Shore forts 106
9 Reculver fort 107
10 Burgh Castle 109
11 Pevensey Castle 109
12 Late third-century coin deposits in Saxon Shore forts 113
13 Finds of Allectan coins in Gaul 117
14 Allectan building sites in London 123
15 Tetrarchic building inscription from Birdoswald 136
16 A hippago 147
17 The Roman myoparonis 152
Plates (Between pages 80 and 81)
Coins of Aurelian, Tetricus I, Carinus, Constantius I, Diocletian, Maximian
Coins of Carausius
Coins of Carausius, Maximian
Coins of Carausius, Maximian, Allectus
Coins of Carausius, Maximian, Diocletian, Allectus
Coins of Carausius, Maximian, Diocletian
Medallions of Constantius I, Constantine I
Coins of Allectus, Postumus, Constantius I
Coins of Diocletian, Constantine I, ‘Carausius II', Constantius II, Constantine
I, Giovanni Pesaro
a St Peter’s Hill, London, foundations of Allectan date
b St Peter’s Hill, London, foundations and oak piles
c Milestone of Carausius
vi
d Portchester Castle
e Fourth-century boat from Nydam
f Mosaic of Aeneas from Low Ham villa
g The title page of de Peyster’s work on Carausius
h Engraving of the assassination of Carausius
i Boulogne in the eighteenth century
j Boulogne: the setting of the Roman fortress
INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK BRINGS TOGETHER THE evidence from the literary,
numismatic and archaeological spheres of a relatively little known yet
extraordinary episode in the history of Roman Britain. For a decade the island
achieved an independence which threatened the stability of the empire, brought
the constitutional and administrative reforms of Diocletian into question and
almost certainly delayed their full implementation. On two occasions, during
these ten years, coastal areas of Gaul formed part of the separatist dominion. The
urgent need to bring the revolt in Britain to an end led to the creation of a second
tier of imperial rulers, designated heirs to the joint emperors. In the West
Constantius Chlorus was promoted specifically to suppress the revolt. In the East
Galerius was selected to deal with the encroaching threat of Persia. Constantius’s
success was instrumental in opening the road to power for his son Constantine,
who used the province recovered by his father as the base for his own bid for
imperial recognition. It was the battle-hardened army of the father which threw
its support behind the son who, it can be argued, through the adoption of
Christianity as the state religion shaped the world in which we still live.
The independence of Britain during the rule of Carausius and his successor
Allectus was based on naval power. These rulers controlled the sea lanes of the
English Channel and the North Sea and maintained what was probably the most
effective naval force to exist in the Roman world after serious naval warfare
ceased in the reign of Augustus. There had been previous attempts to found
regimes based on naval power, notably by Demetrius Poliorcetes and Sextus
Pompey, but neither of these charismatic leaders secured popular support nor did
they enjoy the resources of a fertile land base, equipped with an administrative
and industrial infrastructure of sufficient sophistication to support their naval
forces. Indeed the absence of such resources drove them to piratical expedients in
search of the wherewithal with which to maintain their forces. In the aftermath of
the defeat of the rebellion strategic decisions were taken which had an impact on
the north-western provinces in the fourth century and which, arguably, made
them less resilient to the naval attacks mounted on them by Scots, Saxon and
Pictish raiders. The abolition of a unified naval command such as that enjoyed by
Carausius, and its replacement by individual fleets attached to coastal forts,
reduced Roman response to seaborne raiders to a reactive strategy rather than an
2 THE BRITISH USURPERS
aggressively campaigning one. Despite rhetorical protestations to the contrary
the coasts of Gaul and Britain were subject to frequent and devastating attack
throughout the century following the overthrow of the British regime.
Whatever the truth behind the causes of the revolt of Carausius, and these
remain obscure, it serves to highlight one of the growing contradictions in the
continued existence of Rome’s empire, the increased diversity of its constituent
parts submerged below a thin covering of generalized romanitas. This diversity
was recognized by Diocletian himself whose division of the empire between an
eastern half, over which he retained direct control, and a western half which
devolved to Maximian, effectively acknowledged the existence of a Hellenistic
and a Celtic/Germanic empire. Within the context of the latter, Britain retained a
distinctive character of its own which was recognized in antiquity and
commented upon, with contemptuous irony, by a number of contemporary
commentators. The very location of Britain placed it beyond the bounds of
Ocean, the sea which encompassed the land mass of the ancient world. Despite
the fact that daily commerce existed between Britain and Gaul before and after
the establishment of Roman power on the Channel coast, Britain continued to be
regarded as outside the bounds of the civilized world. In spite of Julius Caesar’s
well-publicized expeditions to Britain, in AD 43 Claudius’s invasion army
refused to embark on the grounds that they were being taken beyond the known
world. The inhabitants themselves enjoyed a poor reputation, though Tacitus said
that they were cleverer and more adaptable than the Gauls. A document of the
Trajanic period, found in a fort on the northern frontier, refers to them with the
demeaning epithet ‘Britunnculi’—little Britons—poor fighters who run around
shaking their spears ineffectually. Generally comment is adverse: the climate
dismal, the inhabitants dishonest; but the wonder of the inclusion of even distant
Britain within the empire of the Roman people never diminished.
Ownership of Britain, a disappointment in terms of mineral resources, a drain
on the finances of the state, populated by natives who even made poor slaves,
was regarded, in a perverse way, as a measure of the virtus of the Roman people
and their qualification to hold imperial power elsewhere. Invested with such
symbolic value, Britain was not a territory to be abandoned casually, the fact of
possession of Britain being too deeply embedded in imperial ideology. The
recovery of the island, according to the panegyric which celebrated the
reconquest in AD 296, rectified a situation which was an affront to the empire as
a whole; the eternal light of Romanitas was restored to an island which had been
benighted under the shadow of revolt. Her peoples were not to be abandoned to
unlicensed savagery but once again to be enfolded in the embrace of imperial law
and civilized human relationships. These blessings were restored as the result of
sacrifices made on behalf of the Britons by their fellow citizens of the empire.
Despite the seriousness of the event in Roman terms, it is no surprise that the
reigns of Carausius and Allectus have failed to take root in the British historical
psyche. The sources are scant, the episode virtually suppressed by contemporary
imperial historians and the protagonists survive as shadowy figures illuminated
INTRODUCTION 3
only by the feeble light of hostile commentators. Access to the story is made
difficult by the nature of the surviving non-literary evidence, which is almost
entirely numismatic. The numismatist is normally thought of by historians and
archaeologists less as a contributor of primary evidence, ideas or historical
synthesis and more as a classificatory specialist. A scientist in his own right, the
numismatist has been marginalized in the evolution of the explication of the
historical process and thus a primary source of information has been largely
neglected. This factor must loom large in any consideration of the relative neglect
of Carausian studies; the body of coin material is formidable, apparently
confused, poorly documented in the available catalogues and contaminated, in
the minds of literary scholars, by its whimsical use in the past. Overcoming these
prejudices requires a clear statement of numismatic methodology, a careful
weighing of the value of individual components of coin evidence in relation to
other sources and, it must be bluntly stated, some small effort on the part of the
reader.
Britain is rich in national heroes, some fictional some of historical reality, who
enshrine national characteristics. From time to time these iconic beings find
sublime expression in literature or political debate, but for the most part they
exist in a hazy limbo. Nevertheless, popular heroes are powerful figures in
defining national consciousness. The transmission of the specific legend is a
matter of historical chance and the defining element may in itself be trivial. King
Alfred’s lack of culinary skill hardly constitutes his most important achievement,
which must be accounted the stemming of the Norse conquest of England, whilst
Boudica’s revolt against Rome is a relatively unimportant episode in either
British or Roman imperial history; yet, under the name Boadicea, she has a place
in popular legend, a commemoration in leaden verse by Dibdin and a much
photographed statue in the shade of Big Ben; the name of Tacitus, the historian
who immortalized her, is known only to scholars. Carausius and Allectus have
not made it to the iconic first rank but have from time to time surfaced as
representatives of national aspiration or political factions. The full treatment of
this aspect of the Carausian episode occupies the second half of this book. In the
centuries during which insular political debate was paramount, the Carausian
episode held its place in literary and historical discussion, and legendary
accretions were grafted on to the bare historical framework in order to
manipulate the present by recourse to a fictitious past. By contrast the academic
debates of the eighteenth century accurately reflect the trivialization of classical
scholarship and a downgrading of the legendary past in a period of dynamic
commercial and industrial growth. When, in the nineteenth century, scholarship
was again turned to social use, to intellectualize the acquisition of empire and to
educate its rulers, it was to well-documented episodes of the ancient past, that
were seen as being of a morally elevated nature, that the tutors of the colonial
administration turned for their material, not to squalid manoeuvrings from what
was perceived as a period of imperial degeneracy. Thus events which defined the
insularity of Britain fell in desuetude, since they served no socially useful