A council house and a tribunal were erected for the Roman magistrates;
temples, a theatre, and baths raised. The civilian population
increased rapidly. Architects, artists, and musicians, decorators,
skilled artisans, and traders were attracted from the mainland to
the rising city, which rapidly increased in wealth and importance.
Conspicuous on the most elevated position stood a temple erected to
the honour of Claudius, who was raised by the grateful legionaries
to divine rank. So strong and populous was the city that the
Trinobantes, during the years that had elapsed since the Romans
took possession of it, remained passive under the yoke of their
oppressors, and watched, without attempting to take part in them,
the rising of the Iceni and Brigantes, the long and desperate war
of the Silures and Ordovices under Caractacus, and the reduction
of the Belgae and Dumnonii from Hampshire to Cornwall by Vespasian.
Yet, had their spirit remained unbroken, there was an opportunity
for revenge, for a large part of the veteran legionaries had been
withdrawn to take part in the struggle against the western tribes.
The tribe had, however, been disarmed, and with Camalodunum on the
north, and the rising towns of London and Verulamium on the south,
they were cut off from other tribes, and could not hope for final
success, unless the powerful Iceni, who were still semi-independent,
rose in the national cause. Whether their easy defeat of this tribe
soon after the occupation of Camalodunum had rendered the Romans
contemptuous of their fighting powers, or that they deemed it wiser
to subdue the southwest and west of England, and to strike a heavy
blow at the Brigantes to the north before interfering with a powerful
tribe so close to their doors, is uncertain; but doubtless they
felt that so long as Prasutagus reigned there was little fear of
trouble in that quarter, as that king protested himself the friend
and ally of Rome, and occupied himself wholly in acquiring wealth