“FIRST CENTURY AD. The Roman General Agricola reportedly says he can take and hold Ireland with a single legion.”
I’m not Irish, but I DON’T THINK SO. It took the Brits nearly 700 years to conquer the Irish. They are great brave fighters and aren’t beat easily.
Thank God we had a lot of them on OUR side in the Revolution, Civil War, WW1 and WW2!!!!
Often the same thing is said about Highland Scotland, which was spared Roman conquest because Agricola wasn’t allowed to finish things up — that’s imperial politics for ya. Agricola knew what he was talking about.
Roman involvement with clients and allies in Irish fits their pattern elsewhere. Roman penetration of the German frontier was in the form of creeping Romanization. Tribes just along the border were brought into alliance through largesse; former auxiliaries recruited from over the border resettled after their service, and thus Roman towns grew up over the border, deeper and deeper in areas not strictly in the Empire. In the Near East, client states were maintained as buffers between Rome and Parthia, until the buffer states became more trouble than they were worth — then they got conquered outright.