In fact the expedition to Britain was a necessary part of the heritage left by Caesar. Already during the Dual Rule Caesar the younger had projected such an expedition, and had only desisted from it on account of the more urgent necessity of procuring quiet in Illyricum, or on account of the strained relation with Antonius, which proved useful to the Parthians in the first instance as well as to the Britons. The courtly poets of the earlier years of Augustus celebrated variously in anticipation the Britannic conquest; the programme of Caesar was thus accepted and adopted by his successor. When the monarchy was consolidated, all Rome thereupon expected that the close of the civil war would be followed by the Britannic expedition; the complaints of the poets as to the dreadful strife, but for which the Britons would long since have been led in triumphal procession to the Capitol, became transformed into the proud hope of adding to the empire the new province of Britain. The expedition was, moreover, repeatedly announced (727, 728) {27, 26.}, yet Augustus, without formally abandoning the undertaking, soon desisted from carrying it out; and Tiberius, faithful to his maxim, adhered in this question also to the system of his father.[98] The worthless thoughts of the last Julian emperor roamed doubtless also over the ocean; but serious things he was incapable of even planning. It was the government of Claudius that first took up the plan of the dictator afresh and carried it out. [Sidenote: The reasons for, and against, the occupation of Britain.] What were the determining motives, on the one side as on other, may be at least partially discerned. Augustus himself laid it down that the occupation of the island was not necessary from a military point of view--seeing that its inhabitants were not in a position to annoy the Romans on the continent--and was not advantageous for the finances; that what could be drawn from Britain flowed into the exchequer of the empire in the form of import and export duties at the Gallic harbours; that at least a legion and some cavalry would be requisite as garrison, and after deduction of its cost from the tribute of the island not much would be left.[99] All this was indisputably correct, but it was not the whole truth. Experience showed later that a legion was far from sufficient to hold the island. We must further take into account, what the government certainly had no occasion to say, that, considering the state of weakness to which the Roman army had been brought by the internal policy of Augustus, it could not but appear very hazardous to banish a considerable fragment of it, once for all, to a distant island of the North Sea. There was presumably only the choice of keeping aloof from Britain or increasing the army on its account; and with Augustus considerations of internal policy always outweighed those of an external character. [Sidenote: Conviction of its necessity predominant.]