Site of the Claudian invasion of Britain
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The site of the Claudian invasion of Britain in AD 43 is a matter of some controversy. It is generally believed that the force left from Gesoriacum (Boulogne) and landed at Rutupiae (Richborough on the east coast of Kent), but neither location is certain.
The only detailed account of the invasion comes from Dio Cassius's Roman History,[1] written in the early 3rd century. He states that the main invasion force under Aulus Plautius sailed in three divisions, and George Patrick Welch[2] argues that there were three landing sites in Kent: Lympne furthest west (the Legio II Augusta under Vespasian), Dover in the centre (the XX Valeria Victrix under an unknown commander) and Richborough in the east (the IX Hispana and XIV Gemina under the overall command of Plautius). The three divisions would have then advanced from the coast and met at the River Medway.
Other historians dispute that the Romans landed in Kent. Dio describes how the troops saw a shooting star whilst at sea and were cheered by this omen. He adds that it traveled from east to west and that this was the direction the Romans were sailing in. However, a voyage from Boulogne to Kent sails from south to north. Taking Boulogne as the point of departure, historians such as John Morris,[3] J. F. Hind[citation needed] and Barry Cunliffe[citation needed] have used Dio's account to suggest a landing point much further west along the south coast of Britain, around the Solent or Southampton Water. This is supported by Dio's stated reason for the Roman invasion, that Verica, the king of the Atrebates who lived in modern Hampshire, had appealed for Roman assistance after he was expelled in a coup, and by Suetonius's assertion that Vespasian conquered the Isle of Wight.[4] Similarly Dio writes of an early victory when the Romans received the surrender of a tribe he calls the "Bodunni". No tribe of this name is known, but it is very similar to that of the Dobunni who occupied Gloucestershire. In this case, a landing point in the region of Chichester or Portsmouth might be expected. The remains of military storehouses dating to the appropriate period have been found under Fishbourne Roman Palace, a 1st century Roman villa near Chichester.
It has been argued that the commanders of Roman invasion fleet, perhaps numbering as many as 1,000 ships, would have wanted to minimize their time spent at sea given that their troop transports were slow and ungainly vessels which required a favourable wind behind them. A long journey up the Channel to the Solent, highly reliant on weather conditions, would therefore have been a risky enterprise compared to a short hop to Kent. Richborough has a large natural harbor which would have been suitable for the landing, and archaeological remains of earthwork defenses dating to the period of the invasion. It was later the site of a triumphal arch, suggesting it did indeed have a role in the invasion. Dio's account is consistent with that. The British defence was led by Caratacus and Togodumnus of the Catuvellauni, an eastern kingdom with influence over Kent, and the Romans' immediate objective seems to have been to secure a crossing of the River Thames near its estuary. Suetonius tells us that the secondary force under Claudius sailed from Boulogne,[5] but it does not necessarily follow that the main force under Plautius sailed from the same place. It is possible that Plautius's forces sailed west from the mouth of the Rhine, which Strabo names as a point of departure used for crossings to Britain in the early 1st century; ships commonly sailed along the coast of Belgic Gaul to the territory of the Morini, before taking a relatively short open-sea crossing to Britain.[6] The Dobunni, who Dio says were tributaries of the Catuvellauni, could have sent troops to their aid, who then surrendered to Plautius, and Vespasian's western conquests could have taken place after the Thames crossing was secured.
The three divisions mentioned by Dio also leave open the possibility that, while the main landing was in Kent, part of the force sailed to the Solent to aid Verica, or vice versa. It should of course be remembered that Dio wrote about 150 years after the event, and his sources are unknown; the details of his account are uncorroborated and may be unreliable.
