I’ve been reading a lot of Ian Fleming lately – one of the few authors I read during my childhood, when I was a voracious if unadventurously narrow consumer of books. Returning to the Bond stories, even the titles I didn’t get around to twenty-five years ago, is a nostalgic treat.
Anyone interested in Roman History may like this. It’s a rough draft of my final dissertation.
How successful was the governor Agricola in securing Northern Britain as a Roman province?
Introduction
The most important and detailed source we have on Agricola’s career is the biography of him, The Agricola, written by his son-in-law, Tacitus, several years after Agricola’s death. It is therefore problematic to use written sources alone to ascertain how successful or otherwise Agricola had been in his post as governor of Britain; since any account written by a close relative is bound to be biased in his favour. Especially if, like Tactitus in this case, the historian follows the standard pattern of latin biographies and praises his subject arguably beyond his worth.