Suetonius Paullinus

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Suetonius Paullinus. Governor of Britain 58–61. A native of Umbria, he waged a successful mountain campaign in Mauretania in 42. This experience may have influenced his posting to Britain, where he spent most of his governorship campaigning in Wales. Eventually in 60 he penned up the last resistance and the last of the druids in the island of Anglesey. Batavian auxiliaries forced the Menai Straits, the Britons were slaughtered, and the sacred groves put to the axe. At the moment of triumph, news came of the Boudiccan revolt in East Anglia. Suetonius reached London with his cavalry, but could not save it or Verulamium, before rejoining his advancing infantry in the midlands, where he destroyed the British force in battle. The new procurator, Classicianus, fell out with him and a commission under the imperial freedman Polyclitus removed him on a pretext, though not in disgrace.

Alan Simon Esmonde Cleary

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