P.J. O’Gorman, Britain & Rome (Pen & Sword, 2022)
Did you know that Tacitus’ writings were a fake? And those of Cassius Dio? Agricola didn’t exist, nor did Boudicca and her destruction of the fake town of Camulodunum. They are all fictions, part of a Renaissance fraud perpetrated by the Roman Catholic church in an attempt to control classical history and thus establish Papal supremacy in northern Europe and England. Rather, P.J. O’Gorman argues in Britain and Rome, the only true history of Britain between the invasions of Caesar and Claudius is a Brittonic source as viewed through the lens of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
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O’Gorman’s opening shots are fired at the traditional narrative of Julius Caesar’s invasions. He argues that Britain was a wealthy trading island providing support to Gaul against Caesar. The Britons were certainly well organised enough to send Caesar packing on his first attempt. But that was diversionary, according to O’Gorman, the second attempt would be a proper invasion of conquest. But it too failed, despite Caesar claiming otherwise. With that, O’Gorman turns to the sources that lie at the heart of his thesis.
We owe our accepted understanding of the sources for early Roman Britain to the Renaissance, O’Gorman posits. He focuses on Tacitus and Dio and their inconsistencies, which have largely been ignored. Tacitus, and how we came to know his work, is first on O’Gorman’s chopping block. We know very little about the historian and almost all of his work stems from discoveries in the Renaissance – the Agricola dates to 1476. Dio too was not discovered until the Renaissance. Neither of them had been heard of before that period. O’Gorman concludes that ‘Tacitus and Dio are unreliable; they are fabrications…’. The 6th Century Anglo-Saxon historian Gildas, on the other hand, becomes the first identifiable British historian, and O’Gorman puts much stock in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, stemming from a 5th Century Brittonic source. Having established his thesis, O’Gorman sets out to prove it.
O’Gorman begins his journey into the Brittonic source with an examination of the British royal lineage, comparing that evidence to Caesar’s Commentaries. This goes well until O’Gorman finds that Boudicca was a ‘fictional queen of the Iceni’ invented during the Renaissance. Nevertheless, O’Gorman sticks with his thesis that the Brittonic source is the most reliable account of British history during this period, complementing Caesar and Suetonius in crucial details. O’Gorman turns his attacks on Cassius Dio, the traditionalist’s historian for the Claudian invasion, who he finds inauthentic, while Tacitus is again dismissed as fictitious. Returning to Dio, O’Gorman argues that his work on Roman Britain was plagiarised from Caesar and Seutonius. He then explains why Dio and Tacitus only appear in the Renaissance. O’Gorman sets that up against a background of mediaeval intrigue, the restoration of papal supremacy, and the establishment of the Renaissance as a ‘perverse propaganda programme’.
Turning to the archaeology for the Claudian invasion, O’Gorman notes that what we think we have revolves around Dio’s ‘imagining’. But O’Gorman finds no evidence for Dio’s Claudian arch and castigates those who do, or think they do. He also attacks interpretations of inscriptions and numismatic evidence; the latter O’Gorman mostly puts down to Renaissance forgeries. Returning to Dio’s writings on Claudius’ invasion of Britain, O’Gorman maintains that it is ‘bogus’ and that Dio is a ’lazy and blatant’ plagiarist who replaces Caesar with Claudius and embellishes the rest of the story. O’Gorman argues also that the Roman town of Camulodunum is another Renaissance fiction.
To find a reliable account, O’Gorman turns once again to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s transcription of the Brittonic source. Here we find a very different account of Claudius’ invasion, one in which Claudius was forced to use diplomacy rather than conquest and Rome did not subjugate Britain at all despite maintaining an army on the island. They were there, according to O’Gorman, only to facilitate a trade deal. He then discusses the evidence from Juvenal alongside Seutonius, amongst which he claims Nero lost Britain. A consideration of Claudius’ daughter, Antonia Augusta, follows, which is pivotal to O’Gorman’s argument regarding a marriage treaty rather than conquest.
O’Gorman turns his fire on modern Roman historians. He rejects the concept of Romanisation and those who perpetuate it through nepotism and ‘blinkered beliefs’. He provides a ‘genealogy’ of Oxford classicists and calls them a ‘band of brothers’ preventing progress in this field. O’Gorman attacks their continued belief in Tacitus and Dio and labels their work as ‘indoctrinated ignorance’. He then rehashes his arguments over Tacitus and Dio, pointing to the Brittonic source as the ‘guiding light’ for understanding Britian and the Romans. This also requires a reassessment of the available archaeology, including Fishbourne Palace, Winchester and its treasure, the ‘red herring’ of Camulodunum, Glevum, and coin volume and distribution. O’Gorman also finds no evidence for the traditionally held campaigns from 43AD to 60AD, including the Boudiccan rebellion. He goes on to say that academics have now accepted that the evidence weighs against the traditionalist view. O’Gorman’s final chapter regurgitates his reconstruction from his evidence. His appendices are comprised of extracts from Caesar, Suetonius, and other sources he deems relevant to support his case.
It’s not often that you read a book where the aim is to bring down a whole field of study along with its most acclaimed scholars. But that is O’Gorman’s purpose in Britain & Rome. His effort, however, falls flat for various reasons. First, he has to knock out the twin pillars of Tacitus and Cassius Dio, but he does so by deploying a fundamental flaw that runs through the book: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This doesn’t just apply to those two historians, O’Gorman argues that other historians, such as Suetonius, would have mentioned things if they had happened; but Suetonius didn’t, so they didn’t. It’s a weak line of reasoning to underpin O’Gorman’s thesis. Moreover, O’Gorman misunderstands the role of plagiarism, applying modern values to ancient historians who routinely drew on other sources to tell their stories or bolster their arguments and thought nothing of it. In addition, O’Gorman’s selection of archaeological evidence omits some peculiar examples, the most glaring of which, to this reviewer, is the absence of discussion on marching camps – if the Romans did not conduct military expeditions into the interior of Britain, what function did the camps serve? However, setting his argument aside, the most unedifying aspect of O’Gorman’s diatribe is the tone he uses, which is often disrespectful, dismissive, and sarcastic, as if he knows that the evidence he musters cannot hold the water he wants it to carry, so he has to attack his opposing historians, both ancient and modern. It’s all very distasteful and unbecoming of a serious historian as O’Gorman purports to be. This is all rather unfortunate because there is an argument to include the Brittonic source in the discussion of the early Roman contacts with the Britons, be they peaceful or otherwise, but O’Gorman chooses not to engage in any meaningful or respectful way with his peers or forbears. All in all, Britain & Rome is a wasted opportunity, a flawed thesis written with unwarranted venom.
