Gnaeus Julius Agricola lived from A.D. 37 to 93, a Roman consul under the Emperor Vespasian, and governor in Britain, the greater part of which he reduced to the dominion of Rome: distinguished as a statesman and general.
His life (which extended through the reigns of the nine emperors from Caligula to Domitian) has been excellently written by his son-in-law, the famous Tacitus, who holds him up as an example of virtue. This life of Agricola, in addition to its excellence as a piece of biography, contains information with regard to the state of Britain in the first century after Christ which possesses great interest for the British antiquarian.
Agricola was born at Forum Julii (now Frejus in Provence), and was the son of Julius Graecinus, a senator put to death under Caligula. He served his first campaign in Britain in 60, and after serving in Asia Minor and again in Britain, and governing Aquitania as praetor for three years, he was raised to the consulship in 77, and next year went to Britain as governor.
Agricola was the twelfth Roman general who had been in Britain, but was the only one who effectually subdued it; and this not more by his consummate military skill than by his masterly policy in reconciling the Britons to the Roman yoke. This he did by teaching them the arts and luxuries of civilization, to settle in towns, and to build comfortable houses and splendid temples. He also elaborated an educational system for the sons of the British chiefs, who finally adopted Latin as their language and the toga as their dress.
In his seventh and last campaign (A.D. 84) Agricola gained entire possession of the country as far as he had penetrated, by the total defeat of the assembled Caledonians under their general Galgacus, at some place called by Tacitus Mons Grampius (the Grampian Mountain). In this campaign his fleet, the first which Romans had in those quarters, sailed northward from the coast of Fife around Britain to the Trutulensian harbour (supposed to be Sandwich), thus discovering for the first time the country to be an island. The death of this illustrious general was either caused or hastened by the minions of the jealous tyrant Domitian. Dion Cassius says expressly that he was killed by Domitian.