"The senate on learning of his achievement gave him the title of Britannicus and granted him permission to celebrate a triumph. They voted also that there should be an annual festival to commemorate the event and that two triumphal arches should be erected, one in the city and the other in Gaul, because it was from that country that he had set sail when he crossed over to Britain."
Cassius Dio, Roman History (LX.22.1)
The Arch of Claudius was dedicated in AD 51 to commemorate his victories in Britain (Suetonius, XVII), although it was anticipated on the reverse of coins issued in AD 46-47 and AD 49. The reconstructed inscription reads
"The Senate and People of Rome dedicated this to Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus...because he received into surrender eleven kings of the Britons conquered without loss and he first brought the barbarian peoples across the Ocean under the authority of the Roman people."
The arch, which is surmounted by an equestrian statue between two trophies, was constructed by converting one of the arches of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct where it crossed the Via Flaminia, the main road to the north. DE BRITANNI (instead of DE BRITANN) on the architrave of this coin may indicate an irregular issue.
Of course, the conquest was not without loss. After several skirmishes, the Britons gathered to oppose the Romans crossing the river Medway. The battle, which lasted two days, was in doubt until Hosidius Geta, one of the legionary legates, led a victorious attack. Among those subjugated kings probably was Caratacus, one of Cunobelinus' sons, who had been captured that same year and sent to Rome, where he was pardoned by Claudius, himself. Tacitus records the chieftan as saying in his defense "If you want to rule the world, does it follow that everyone else welcomes enslavement?" Another was Prasutagus, king of the Iceni and the husband of Boudica. In submitting to Rome, the tribe retained the status of a client state, free to keep its arms but obliged to pay tribute and provide recruits for the Roman army. In AD 47, however, the stubborn resistance of the Welsh under Caratacus prompted the Roman governor to disarm the native tribes, even those who were nominal allies.
Forced to relinquish their finely wrought swords, which were a mark of aristocratic status, the Iceni were the first to revolt. They fought, as Tactitus relates in his Annals, from a hillfort, "a place protected by a rustic earthwork, with an approach too narrow to give access to cavalry." Still, the Romans were able to break through and overwhelm the defenders, who were trapped within the embankments. Prasutagus retained his position as king and ally, however, and it may be that they were pardoned or that only some of the tribe had rebelled.
The fragment above is displayed in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Rome).
References: The Monuments of Ancient Rome as Coin Types (1989) by Philip V. Hill; Freeman & Sear Catalog No.12 (2005), item 536; .
