43] This gave occasion to the Emperor Claudius, ninety-seven years after the first expedition of Caesar, to invade Britain in person, and with a great army.

But he, having rather surveyed than conducted the war, left in a short time the management of it to his legate, Plautius, who subdued without much difficulty those countries which lay to the southward of the Thames, the best cultivated and most accessible parts of the island.
But the inhabitants of the rough inland countries, the people called Cattivellauni, made a more strenuous opposition.

They were under the command of Caractacus, a chief of great and just renown amongst all the British nations.

This leader wisely adjusted his conduct of the war to the circumstances of his savage subjects and his rude country.

Plautius obtained no decisive advantages over him.