The transformation of Britain: from 55 BC to AD 61

Abstract The Britain that Julius Caesar so famously invaded in 55 and 54 BC was for most Romans, and other Mediterranean peoples, dimly known, and certainly a place of no consequence: it lay much too far beyond the pale of the civilized Graeco-Roman world for that. Even the name of its inhabitants aroused confusion. Pytheas, a Greek from Massalia, modern Marseilles, who claimed to have circumnavigated the British Isles in the fourth century BC, called them Prittanoi (interestingly echoed by the word for a Briton in modern Welsh, Prydain), and it may be that it was Caesar himself who brought into wider currency the word ‘British’. Admittedly, Pytheas was denounced repeatedly as a liar and a fraud by another Greek, Strabo, writing around the beginning of the first century AD; but many of Pytheas’ reported observations (his actual work is lost) ring true, especially his reference to the long hours of daylight, and to Thule-a name applied erroneously by other ancient writers such as Tacitus and Ptolemy to the islands of Shetland.