[*]
[* Tacit Ann. lib. xiv.]
During these military enterprises, he neglected not the arts of peace.
He introduced laws and civility among the Britons, taught them to desire
and raise all the conveniences of life, reconciled them to the Roman
language and manners, instructed them in letters and science, and
employed every expedient to render those chains which he had forged both
easy and agreeable to them.[*]
[* Tacit. Agr.]
The inhabitants, having experienced how unequal their own force was to
resist that of the Romans, acquiesced in the dominion of their masters,
and were gradually incorporated as a part of that mighty empire.
This was the last durable conquest made by the Romans, and Britain,
once subdued, gave no further inquietude to the victor. Caledonia alone,
defended by its barren mountains, and by the contempt which the Romans
entertained for it, sometimes infested the more cultivated parts of the
island by the incursions of its inhabitants. The better to secure
the frontiers of the empire, Adrian, who visited this island, built a
rampart between the River Tyne and the Frith of Solway; Lollius Urbicus,
under Antoninus Pius, erected one in the place where Agricola had
formerly established his garrisons, Severus, who made an expedition
into Britain, and carried his arms to the most northern extremity of it,
added new fortifications to the wall of Adrian; and during the reigns
of all the Roman emperors, such a profound tranquillity prevailed in
Britain, that little mention is made of the affairs of that island by
any historian.
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