"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)
Claudius conquered Britain in AD 43, supposedly persuaded to send troops there by Bericus (Verica), a client king and nominal ally of Rome who had been expelled after an uprising (Dio, LX.19.1). Commemorating the event, the Arch of Claudius was dedicated in AD 51–AD 52 (as can be determined from titles in the inscription). It was a monumental rebuilding of one of the arches of the Aqua Virgo where the aqueduct crossed the Via Lata just north of the Saepta Julia (the modern Via del Corso) and continued the Via Flaminia, the main artery leading north out of the city. Given that eight years separated the Senate voting a triumphal arch and its dedication, Barrett has suggested that the Aqua Virgo, itself, may have been intended as the actual monument to Claudius' conquest and the arch, which was an integral part of the aqueduct, its final crowning achievement.
Barrett has proposed that the fragmentary inscription be read as follows:
"The Senate and People of Rome [dedicated this] to Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, son of Drusus, Pontifex Maximus, during his eleventh tenure of Tribunicia Potestas, Consul five times, hailed as Imperator twenty-two times, Censor, Pater Patriae, 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 epigraphic evidence for such a translation is tenuous, however. The first five lines and last two of the fragment are largely formulaic. As to lines six and seven, it simply is not possible to discern the actual number of British kings. Suetonius, who may have taken his own words from the inscription, speaks only of "the surrender of the kings of the Britons" (Life of Claudius, XXI.6). To have "conquered without loss" also is problematic. It, too, is echoed by Suetonius in his claim that there was victory "without any battle or bloodshed" (XVII.2). Because it is unlikely that Claudius would minimize the difficulty of his own military campaign, a diplomatic triumph may be implied instead, a reading supported by Dio's observation that Claudius "won over numerous tribes, in some cases by capitulation, in others by force" (LX.21.4).
However accomplished, it was a triumph that Suetonius disparages.
"He made but one campaign and that of little importance. When the senate voted him the triumphal regalia, thinking the honour beneath the imperial dignity and desiring the glory of a legitimate triumph, he chose Britain as the best place for gaining it, a land that had been attempted by no one since the Deified Julius and was just at that time in a state of rebellion because of the refusal to return certain deserters....[he] without any battle or bloodshed received the submission of a part of the island, returned to Rome within six months after leaving the city, and celebrated a triumph of great splendour" (XVII.1–2).
Josephus, too, is dismissive of "a triumph bestowed on him without any sweat or labor of his own" (Wars of the Jews, III.1.2).
The arch in Gaul at Gesoriacum (Boulogne) from where Claudius had embarked has not survived, and there are only fragments of the arch in Rome. That it was not standing in the eighth century is known from the Einsiedeln itinerary (named after the Benedictine monastery in Switzerland where it is preserved). A guide for pilgrims, the itinerary describes eleven walks, from gate to gate through Rome, and the sights to be seen on either side of the route. It tells of broken arches (those of the Aqua Virgo) only to the east of the Via Lata.
In this reconstruction by Pirro Ligorio (d.1583), one should imagine the equestrian statue and trophies surmounting the attic and a program of panel reliefs running on the architrave below it. Ligorio also indicates that reliefs flanked the attic inscription and the piers between the columns. Beneath the column bases were dedications to the imperial family. It is likely, too, that the inscriptions were duplicated on both sides of the arch, to be seen by travelers as they entered or left Rome.
In anticipation of the arch's construction, coins were issued in AD 46/47 and AD 49 that depict on the reverse a fornix or arch with two pairs of columns surmounted by an equestrian statue between two trophies and pairs of shields. The inscription on the aureus abbreviates DE[victis] BRITANN[is] ("Triumph over the Britons")—and is the first allusion to Britain on Roman coinage. On the silver denarius, the legend is DE BRITANNI ("The Britons").
After an unopposed Roman landing and several skirmishes, the Britons finally regrouped at the River Medway. The battle, which lasted two days, was in doubt until Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, one of the legionary legates, led a victorious attack. The Thames was crossed but the advance halted until the arrival of Claudius, himself. Spending just sixteen days in Britain, he made a triumphant entry into Camulodunum (Colchester), the capital of the Trinovantes, accepted the surrender of tribal chieftains. He then hastened back to Rome, instructing Aulus Plautius, the consular governor, to "subjugate the remaining districts" (Dio, LX.21.5).
Caratacus, one of the sons of Cunobelinus, king of the Catuvellauni when Rome invaded in AD 43, likely was among the subjugated kings mentioned by Suetonius. Retreating west, first to the land of the Silures in southern Wales and then to the Ordovices in the north, he was defeated and eventually was surrendered to the Romans. The stubborn resistance of the Welsh, however, had prompted the new Roman governor to disarm the native tribes, even those who were nominal allies. In AD 47, the Iceni were the first to revolt (Tacitus, Annals, XII.31ff), although it may be that only some of the tribe rebelled, as Prasutagus, king of the Iceni (and husband of Boudica), was allowed to retain his position. He, too, may be among those who surrendered to Claudius.
The fragment (top) was discovered in 1641 and is displayed in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Rome). Three smaller fragments had been found in 1562 but now are known only from drawings.
References: The Monuments of Ancient Rome as Coin Types (1989) by Philip V. Hill; Freeman & Sear Catalog No.12 (2005), item 536; "Claudius' British Victory Arch in Rome" (1991) by A. A. Barrett, Britannia, 22, 1-19.
See also Aqua Virgo and Pediment of the Temple of Mars Ultor.
