2. Excerpt from "Of the Britons and the British Chariot of Maecenas under Augustus Caesar,"Nero Caesar, or Monarchy Depraved: An Historical Work, by Edmund Bolton (1624)

[Edmund Bolton sketches the background of Roman invasion and British tribute that serves as background for Cymbelinein his 1624Nero Caesar. Shakespeare's representation of the withholding of tribute as an act of rebellion offers a more dramatic portrayal of the situation than Bolton's historical survey.]

[Julius Caesar's] next successor, Octavius, who, in the consulary registers of the capitol, is Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, second emperor and first Augustus, had somewhat else to think of at his entrance into the empire than the affairs of Britain. But when the Roman world, recovering out of those civil miseries into which the murder of Julius Caesar had headlong plunged it, began to flourish afresh by the benefit of monarchy (the only confessed remedy), then came he down in person as far as into Gallia, with a purpose to re-assail our island, so to force upon it the keeping of covenants (as Dio Cassius{Roman historian also known as Cassius Dio} insinuates) about eight- or nine-and-twenty years from his predecessor's invasions. At this Horace pointeth in his odes.

Some princes, therefore, of Britain, beholding the near approach of so black a tempest, sent special ambassadors to deprecate{beg or pray to prevent} the effects, and (for such reasons as Strabo{Greek geographer and historian} commemorates) prevailed. Julius Caesar assessed upon the Britons of Cassibelan's party a certain yearly payment (three thousand pounds, saith Gaufridus Arturius{aka Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Welsh historian who wrote Historia regium Britanniae}), and it pleased Augustus to content himself with such petty performances as did rather serve for tokens of subjection or acknowledgements of tenure{subservient obligation to authority} than meriting to carry the weight or name of tribute, being customs or tolls upon ivory ornaments for bridles, carcanets{ornate jewelry to be worn around the neck}, or chains of amber, vessels of glass, and other toys, which passed for merchandise between the Gauls and Britons.

. . .

All this while the island was not yoked down with garrisons—not a Roman soldier in it. And Augustus was so indulgent to the state thereof or so provident for his own in having kings for instruments of their proper{own} servitude that he bred up (as the British story saith) King Cymbeline, the third from Cassibelan and the same with Cunobeline whom Greeks and Romans celebrate.