Scotland - Our Scotland.  A.D. 80—410.

(in many parts) Part 1

It is with the year 80 a.d., when Agricola entered the region of North Britain, that the history of Scotland as a traceable sequence of cause and effect may be said to begin. When the Romans first came in contact with them, the inhabitants of that region had long passed the stage of mere barbarism. Various remains that have been found prove that they had attained considerable knowledge of many of the arts of life ; and from something like direct evidence we know that they possessed an organized society with civil and religious institutions of some complexity. Yet with the knowledge we possess we are unable to trace such causal relations in that earlier time as would bring it within the domain of history in the ordinary acceptation of the word. On the other hand, from the invasion of Agricola onward, materials, however scanty and intermittent, are never wholly wanting to mark the action of the internal and external forces that eventually moulded Northern Britain into modern Scotland.

It was in the interest of the Roman power in South Britain that Agricola led his forces into the region of the north. Experience had proved that so long as a tribe was left unsubdued in the whole island the Roman colony could never be counted safe ; and in six successive campaigns Agricola attempted the task of subduing the northern Britons. From the vague terms of his biographer, Tacitus, it is impossible to trace with precision the course of these various campaigns. In the summer of 80 he entered North Britain, probably by the East coast, and Laid waste the country as far north as a tidal water which Tacitus calls the Tanaus . The following summer he spent in securing the ground he had won by constructing a chain of forts between the Firths of Forth and Clyde. In 82 he carried his arms into the west and south, and apparently with such effect that in the following year he was able to begin operations against the tribes beyond the Forth. During three successive years he carried on this work, bringing his wars to a close by a great victory over the Caledonians at a place called Mons Graupius, the exact site of which still remains uncertain. Of his line of march, of the positions of his camps and his battles, it is impossible to speak with certainty from any indications that have yet come to hand. To this account if we add that Agricola gave orders to the commander of his fleet to sail round the island—orders which appear to have been only partially obeyed—we have before us the main facts that are known regarding Agricola's northern expedition.

On the precise value of Agricola's conquests we have an emphatic comment some forty years later. In  20 A.D. the Emperor Hadrian visited Britain, and built a rampart between the Tyne and the Solway—thus, in keeping with his general policy, abandoning territory which had never been an integral part of the Empire. But during the next twenty years it was seen that Agricola's policy of conquest had been well considered. Hadrian's rampart proved no barrier against the tribes to the north, whose inroads left little peace to the inhabitants of the Province. To strike at the head of this evil, Lollius Urbicus was commissioned (140 a. d.) by Antoninus Pius to repeat the work of Agricola as a necessary condition for the peace of Britain. Of the achievements of Urbicus we know still less than of those of Agricola. He must, however, have fought many battles, and he must have virtually subdued all the country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, since between these estuaries he built the earthen rampart known as the Wall or Vallum of Antoninus Pius.

The conquests of Urbicus were not more permanent in their results than those of Agricola. During the last half of the second century we have but one or two casual references to the state of North Britain ; but from these we gather that the inroads into the Province went on as before, and every year assumed a more formidable character. At the accession of Severus to the Empire (197 a.d.) two great tribes, the Maeatae somewhere near the one or the other dividing wall, and the Caledonians conterminous with them', were specially prominent by their dangerous activity.

For the third time North Britain was to feel the weight of the Roman arm. In 208 a.d. Severus, though confined to a litter by old age and gout, marched northwards in person at the head of a punitive expedition. On his passing the boundaries of the Roman province, a vigilant foe beset his march at every turn and, without risking a decisive engagement, cut off his men in such numbers that his loss was set down at 50,000. From the vague accounts that have been preserved nothing can be determined either as to his various fortunes with the enemy or his line of march or his places of encampment. He is said to have reached "the extremity of the island"; but this may be a mere random expression to which no definite meaning can be attached. Like his predecessors Severus gained at least a temporary triumph, and forced the Caledonians to terms by which they conceded a considerable portion of their territory. Like Agricola and Urbicus, also, he is said to have constructed a line of defence which ran from sea to sea, but more probably he only repaired one of those already existing.

Severus had hardly turned his back before Caledonians and Maeatae were again at their old work; and only his death at York in 211 prevented his re- newing his efforts against them. For the next century and a half  North Britain passes entirely out of sight ; and again it is the insubordination of the northern tribes that brings it into notice. Under the general name of Picts these tribes are now reported as ravaging at will the territory south of the Tyne and the Solway—a work in which they were effectually aided by Scots on the western and by Saxons on the eastern shore. So persistent and general were these combined assaults that the very existence of the Province was now at stake ; and to delay the inevitable end Theodosius, father of the Emperor of the same name, was despatched by Valentinian (368 a.d.) to  the help wretched provincials. In two campaigns Theodosius broke the power of the Picts, and recovered certain territories, to a part of which, whose position is not certainly known, the name of Valentia was given in honour of the Emperor. But the evil day had merely been postponed. Rome required all her resources to defend herself against the destroyers who were gathering round her. Twice the great Stilicho, the minister of the Emperor Honorius, sent a force to the help of the British provincials (396, 406); but with the fall of Rome before Alaric (410) foreign assistance was finally cut off, and henceforward the inhabitants of Britain in all its length and breadth had their own destinies in their hands.

To this account of the Romans in North Britain should be added a passing reference to the geographical description by the famous Ptolemy of Alexandria. From Ptolemy's tables in his great Geography and from the maps that were constructed for them either by himself or by a later hand we gain a view of the whole island with the " towns " and the various tribes that inhabited it. To the region north of the Cheviots he assigns at least seventeen tribes and nineteen towns, thus corroborating other evidence as to the numerous subdivisions of the northern Britons. Yet as far as North Britain is concerned, the work of Ptolemy can be regarded only as an interesting antiquarian relic, offering a wide field of conjecture as to the precise amount of knowledge he really possessed, and the sources from which it was obtained.

end of part 1