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IV. How Lucius, king of Britain, writing to Pope Eleutherus, desired to be made a Christian.
CHAP. III. How Claudius, the second of the Romans who came into Britain, brought
the islands Orcades
into subjection to the Roman empire; and Vespasian, sent by hint, reduced the
Isle of Wight under the dominion of the Romans. [44 AD]
In the year of Rome 798, Claudius, fourth emperor from Augustus, being desirous
to approve himself a prince beneficial to the republic, and eagerly bent upon
war and conquest on every side, undertook an expedition into Britain, which as
it appeared, was roused to rebellion by the refusal of the Romans to give up
certain deserters. No one before or after Julius Caesar had dared to land upon
the island. Claudius crossed over to it, and within a very few days, without any
fighting or bloodshed, the greater part of the island was surrendered into his
hands. He also added to the Roman empire the Orcades, which lie in the ocean
beyond Britain, and, returning to Rome in the sixth month after his departure,
he gave his son the title of Britannicus. This war he concluded in the fourth
year of his reign, which is the forty-sixth from the Incarnation of our Lord. In
which year there came to pass a most grievous famine in Syria, which is recorded
in the Acts of the Apostles to have been foretold by the prophet Agabus.
Vespasian, who was emperor after Nero, being sent into Britain by the same
Claudius, brought also under the Roman dominion the Isle of Wight, which is
close to Britain on the south, and is about thirty miles in length from east to
west, and twelve from north to south; being six miles distant from the southern
coast of Britain at the east end, and three at the west. Nero, succeeding
Claudius in the empire, undertook no wars at all; and, therefore, among
countless other disasters brought by him upon the Roman state, he almost lost
Britain; for in his time two most notable towns were there taken and destroyed.
CHAP. IV. How Lucius, king of Britain, writing to Pope Eleutherus, desired to be
made a Christian.
In the year of our Lord 156, Marcus Antoninus Verus, the fourteenth from
Augustus, was made emperor, together with his brother, Aurelius Commodus.
[Editor’s note: Marcus Antoninus Verus, commonly called Marcus Aurelius,
succeeded in 161 A.D. His colleague in the empire was his adopted brother,
Lucius Verus, whose full adoptive name was Lucius Aurelius Antoninus Verus
Commodus. He died in 169. Eleutherus became Pope between 171 and 177. Bede’s
chronology is therefore wrong.] In their time, whilst the holy Eleutherus
presided over the Roman Church, Lucius, king of Britain, sent a letter to him,
entreating that by a mandate from him he might be made a Christian. He soon
obtained his pious request, and the Britons preserved the faith, which they had
received, uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquillity until the time of
the Emperor Diocletian.
