The Picts E-Book

Tim Clarkson

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 383

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The Picts were an ancient nation who ruled most of northern and eastern Scotland during the Dark Ages. Despite their historical importance, they remain shrouded in myth and misconception. Absorbed by the kingdom of the Scots in the ninth century, they lost their unique identity, their language and their vibrant artistic culture. Amongst their few surviving traces are standing stones decorated with incredible skill and covered with enigmatic symbols - vivid memorials of a powerful and gifted people who bequeathed no chronicles to tell their story, no sagas to describe the deed of their kings and heroes. In this book Tim Clarkson pieces together the evidence to tell the story of this mysterious people from their emergence in Roman times to their eventual disappearance.

Leseprobe

The Picts

This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QS www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © Tim Clarkson 2010

First published 2008 by Tempus Publishing This revised edition first published in Great Britain in 2010 by John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

The moral right of Tim Clarkson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-906566-25-8 eBook ISBN: 978-1-907909-03-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Contents

Preface

Genealogical Tables

1 A People Apart

2 Caledonia and Rome

3 The Painted People

4 Into the Sixth Century

5 Maelchon’s Son

6 Neighbours and Kinsmen

7 Brude and Ecgfrith

8 Reformers and Rivals

9 The Warlord

10 East and West

11 Twilight of the Picts

12 Legends and Legacies

Appendix A Kings of the Picts

Appendix B Pictish Timeline

Appendix C Some Pictish Puzzles

Places to Visit

Further Reading

Index

Preface

The first edition of this book appeared in early 2008. Since its publication my views on several aspects of Pictish history have changed, particularly with regard to relations between Picts and Scots during the ninth century. By the end of 2008, the final chapters were already at odds with my altered perception of Cináed mac Ailpín and his ‘conquest’ of the Picts. It was with this new perception in mind that I made reference to Cináed in my recently-published book The Men of the North: the Britons of Southern Scotland. At the same time an opportunity arose to produce a new edition of The Picts: a History. It seemed an appropriate moment to bring the two books in line with one another.

In the case of The Picts, the changes relating to the end of the Pictish period have been accompanied by a geographical shift regarding the location of Fortriu. The 2008 edition adopted an older belief, now generally regarded as mistaken, that this region lay in Perthshire. Historians now prefer to locate it further north, in Moray, and the growing consensus is duly reflected here. In revising and updating The Picts I have retained the character of the 2008 edition which was, after all, intended to be a non-academic work. The various changes have not caused a major disruption to the style of the original narrative.

The bibliography has been expanded in this new edition to include a wider range of literature grouped by subject. It now lists a larger selection of books and journal articles but remains a fairly informal guide to further reading. The equally informal appendix of ‘Pictish puzzles’ is little changed, except in the sections relating to Cináed mac Ailpín, Fortriu and the Gaelicisation of the Picts. One visual difference between the two editions is the presentation of illustrations, the photographs having been reduced in number to make way for maps, drawings and genealogical tables. This reorganisation has, I believe, enhanced the aesthetic appeal and overall usefulness of the book.

Tim Clarkson

June 2010

The Scottish Highlands: a selection of modern territorial divisions.

CHAPTER 1

A People Apart

‘Picts’ was the name given to a people who inhabited a large part of what is now Scotland during the first millennium AD. Together with their neighbours – Scots, Britons and English – they played an important role in the early history of the British Isles. They make their first appearance in the historical record at the end of the third century when their raiding activities troubled the authorities of Roman Britain. After less than 600 years, they seem to vanish from the pages of history, leaving behind no written records of their own nor any significant trace of their language. In the wake of their apparent disappearance a fictional tale was created to explain it, and a shroud of myth enveloped the true story of their fall from power. From these legends there emerged a belief that the Picts were a mysterious race whose history was unknown: a strange, almost alien nation who were very different from their neighbours. They became, in other words, a people apart.

The modern visitor to the Highland areas of Scotland usually encounters the Picts through their spectacular artistic legacy. This is most vividly represented by several hundred finely carved stones, many of which are still visible in the landscape. A large number of these stones bear esoteric designs which are repeated and replicated with remarkable consistency across a wide geographical area, from Skye to Aberdeen and from Shetland to Fife. The meaning of these symbols defies interpretation and, despite numerous attempts to decipher them, their original purpose remains an enduring puzzle. It is perhaps ironic that the symbol stones – the most impressive legacy of the Picts – make this ancient people seem even more mysterious.

This book seeks to venture behind the myths and legends to find the real history of the Picts, to ‘de-mystify’ them in so far as it is possible to do so. It does not take a themed approach, in which aspects of society and culture are discussed as separate topics, but adopts instead a linear structure guided by a simple chronological framework. The span of this chronology is the era of the historical Picts, covering the years 300–850, with some leeway at the beginning and end. This span includes much of the so-called Dark Ages, a term applied rather loosely to the centuries of transition between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the end of the eleventh century. The phrase ‘Dark Age Scotland’ certainly has a dramatic impact and conjures an image of mist-shrouded hills brooding in a Celtic twilight, but it also carries negative overtones of ignorance and gloom. As an alternative to ‘Dark Age’, the more neutral term ‘Early Historic’ is therefore used throughout this book.

Documentary Sources

This is not meant to be an academic textbook, nor a scholarly investigation, but a narrative history presented as an unfolding sequence of events. The chronological framework guiding the narrative is a list of Pictish kings. This ‘king-list’ survives in a number of medieval manuscripts which differ slightly from each other in the information they provide. They ultimately derive from an original text that is now lost. This was written at an unknown Pictish monastery and later came into the hands of medieval Scottish monks, whose own versions of it are seen in the surviving manuscripts. In the interests of simplicity the various versions are treated throughout this book as a single source referred to here as ‘the king-list’. In reality, the manuscripts fall into two groups, each of which incorporates variant versions of the list together with additional notes relating to the Picts. The basic format of each version is a sequence of some sixty kings giving their reign-lengths and their fathers’ names. Based on the chronology of the reigns it becomes apparent that the line of kings begins in the fourth century and ends in the ninth. Recent analysis of the manuscripts has shown the value of the list as a source of data for Scotland’s early history, but it has also revealed its shortcomings. Thus, although early versions existed in written form as early as the eighth century, the oldest surviving manuscript is a product of some six centuries later. This means that the text needs to be treated with caution if it is to be employed as a signpost to the Early Historic period. Fortunately, the information it provides for people and events from AD 550 to 850 is frequently corroborated by other sources. This kind of cross-referencing makes the king-list a fairly trustworthy source for the main era of Pictish history between the sixth and ninth centuries.

Among the reliable sources whose testimony corroborates the data in the king-list is the Ecclesiastical History of The English People, a book written by the Venerable Bede and completed in 731. Bede spent almost his whole life as a monk at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria and became a scholar of high repute. His Ecclesiastical History is an important source of information for the early history of Anglo-Saxon England, but it is also a valuable contemporary source on the Picts. Despite its title, the book deals with secular as well as religious topics and provides a fascinating window on Early Historic society. The nature of kingship was of particular interest to Bede, and it is through his eyes that the modern reader sees how ambitious kings rose to power by defeating their rivals and waging war on their enemies. Bede was not, however, a historian in the modern sense of the term. For him, the course of history was pre-determined by a divine scheme in which the English were a chosen people appointed by God to conquer the native Celtic inhabitants of Britain.

Bede’s interest in the Celts was limited to their contact with the English, especially where such contact impinged on religious matters, so the information he provides for political events in Scotland is rather patchy. To learn what was happening in the Pictish regions, historians turn instead to sources of Celtic origin, some of which are far less trustworthy than Bede. The most informative Celtic sources are the Irish annals, a group of texts whose creators noted historical events as brief entries in a year-by-year format. Sometimes these entries were written contemporaneously, as they happened, while others were made retrospectively. The surviving manuscripts are not the original annals but copies made much later than the Early Historic period. However, detailed appraisal of the manuscripts has shown that a substantial number of entries relating to Scotland were part of an original text compiled at the great monastery of Iona in the seventh and eighth centuries. At some point before AD 800, this ‘Iona Chronicle’ was taken to Ireland, where its information was eventually incorporated into the Irish annals. Many of the annal entries relating to Scotland and the Picts are therefore contemporary with the events they describe and bring to life the figures whose names appear in the king-list.

More controversial than the annals are the vitae or ‘lives’ of early saints whose missionary activities brought them into contact with the Picts. These vitae look like biographies, but their purpose was not to give a factual account of their subjects. On the contrary, their authors sought to prove the holiness of a particular saint by describing him or her as a successful performer of miracles. Truth and historical accuracy were secondary considerations or were sometimes dismissed altogether. The vitae are therefore difficult to use and need to be treated with caution, although some examples are more trustworthy than others. The most valuable in the context of Pictish history is the Vita Columbae, the Life of Saint Columba, written by an abbot of Iona called Adomnán. Iona was founded by Columba in the sixth century and played an important role in bringing Christianity to the Picts. Adomnán was a later successor of Columba as abbot of the monastery in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. He was therefore a contemporary of Bede and almost certainly met him during a visit to the monastery at Jarrow. Because of Iona’s status as the mother-church of the Picts, Adomnán had many contacts among their clergy and had dealings with at least two of their kings.

Other sources are more esoteric and include legendary material presented as genuine history. Some of their data on the Picts is reliable, but much of it is based on folklore, myth and other ‘traditions’ of doubtful origin. An example is the rather odd Prophecy of Berchan which probably dates from the twelfth century, although the oldest surviving manuscript was written 600 years later. It contains a number of ‘prophecies’ which purport to foresee the deeds of 24 Scottish kings but which were in fact made retrospectively. In many instances the prophecies were created several centuries after the lifetimes of these kings. The entire work is essentially a king-list which gives for each monarch his reign-length, his place of death and other information, but not his name. Identifying who is being described in a particular prophecy is not always easy. To make matters even more frustrating, most of the prophecies are so cryptic that their context is barely intelligible, while some incorporate legends and folk-tales. Berchan nevertheless contains interesting nuggets of information which can be cautiously added to the general picture presented by the main Pictish king-list, the Irish annals and other sources. It is one example of the many pseudo-historical texts that historians are obliged to consult when searching for information on the Picts. Various sources of similar type are referred to throughout this book at particular points where their testimony becomes relevant.

The Problem of the Picts

A brief glance at the Irish annals shows that the Picts were not regarded as ‘a people apart’ by their contemporaries. Geographical factors alone ensured that the Pictish lands were caught up in the affairs of northern Britain as a whole. The territory of the Picts was travelled, trampled and invaded by their neighbours – Scots, English, Britons and Vikings – at various times during the Early Historic period. Pictish armies usually returned the favour by launching rampages of their own. When not engaged in warfare, Pictish kings communicated with other kings to shape the political landscape of what eventually became the medieval kingdom of Scotland. To writers such as Bede and Adomnán there was nothing different or special about the Picts beyond the fact that they were a distinct group like the English or the Scots. It is curious, then, that there has arisen in modern times a belief that the Picts were a strange or enigmatic people.

The enigma of the Picts exists because some aspects of their society and culture are indeed controversial. Unlike most of their neighbours, they disappeared from history to become a ‘lost’ people. Their language – in so far as any trace of it survives – looks like an odd sort of gibberish. Their royal inheritance laws apparently relied on a system of matrilineal succession in which kingship was passed through the female line. Some contemporaries regarded them as a barbarous race, a view seemingly supported by their slowness in converting to Christianity. Most enigmatic of all are the arcane symbols that they carved on standing stones. Other groups may have used a selection of these symbols, but only the Picts employed them as a kind of hieroglyphic alphabet. To a Pictish observer the symbols had special meaning and communicated specific information. Today, in spite of many ingenious attempts to solve the mystery, nobody really knows what the symbols actually mean. This alone would be sufficient to isolate the Picts, to make them seem markedly different from other groups. When added to the other enigmas listed above, it becomes part of a larger puzzle, the so-called ‘Problem of the Picts’. Together, the various components of the ‘Problem’ are responsible for modern perceptions – and misconceptions – of just how mysterious the Picts really were.

Interpreting the Evidence

Perceptions have, however, started to change in recent years, and most of the misconceptions are now in retreat. Interest in the Picts is currently running at its highest level, not only in academic circles but also in the Scottish tourism sector and among the visitor community. More and more Pictish sites are being identified and excavated by archaeologists. Material evidence unearthed by these excavations allows historians to gain new perspectives on the information in the documentary sources. This does not mean that everyone agrees on how the archaeological and documentary evidence should be interpreted. There is much disagreement and debate on many aspects of Pictish history, chiefly because the sources themselves frequently contradict each other’s testimony on particular points. The resulting uncertainty breeds a lack of consensus among historians and is another part of the ‘Problem’.

The documentary sources and the archaeological data offer a large amount of information on the Picts. Despite the debates about how a particular item of data should be interpreted, there is more than enough data to reconstruct a broad outline of Pictish history. Using this outline to create a more detailed narrative is rather more difficult and less straightforward. It requires the use of sources deemed unreliable or controversial, together with a measure of informed speculation, to bridge the gaps in the framework and so produce a more coherent account. Such an approach is not to everybody’s taste and is likely to draw criticism from those who argue that the sources are not suited to the purpose. It is true that the available data does not give a crystal-clear view of the course of events in northern Britain during the Early Historic period, and it is equally true that there are many gaps and uncertainties. Nevertheless, the necessary components of a narrative account are available, and they are retrievable from the sources. By weaving these components together it should be possible to present a coherent, chronological history of the Picts. This is the approach adopted here and is the raison d’etre of this book.

Land of the Picts: the Highlands of Scotland.

CHAPTER 2

Caledonia and Rome

On, then, into action; and as you go, think of those that went before you and of those that shall come after.

Words attributed by Tacitus to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, AD 84

Before the Picts made their first appearance in history, their territory in what is now Scotland was inhabited by an earlier population. These were the ancestors of the Picts and were the people encountered by Roman armies during the Empire’s attempt to conquer the northern parts of Britain. Theirs was a typical Iron Age society of farmers, fishermen and craftsmen grouped into tribes and ruled by a landowning aristocracy. They spoke a dialect of Brittonic, the Celtic language used in most parts of mainland Britain in pre-Roman times. Like other ancient Celtic peoples, the ancestors of the Picts lived in well-organised communities within a hierarchical society ruled by a minority upper class. Most of the population lived in small settlements scattered across the landscape, owing their primary allegiance to local chiefs who in turn acknowledged the authority of greater chiefs or kings. The economy was based on livestock – sheep, pigs and cattle – and on crops such as oats and barley. The majority of houses were built of timber, but some were of stone. Kings and chiefs built fortified residences on prominent hilltops, in valleys or in coastal locations. In some areas prosperous lords constructed large stone towers around which smaller dwellings were clustered. These towers are known today as ‘brochs’ and a few still survive in ruinous form. They are the most visible and impressive reminder of the prehistoric forefathers of the Picts.

It was around the time of the broch-builders that the Romans first came to Britain. The island was already familiar to Rome because it lay adjacent to her newly conquered territories in Gaul but its interior was largely unknown. The first Roman forays across what is now the English Channel were made by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC. These brought him into conflict with the south-coast tribes but, on both occasions, he returned to Gaul after making a token show of force. In common with his newly conquered Gaulish enemies, the native Britons who opposed him spoke a Celtic language and were similarly well-organised in tribal groups under the rule of kings. Rome regarded their land as rich in agricultural and mineral resources, but Caesar knew that the warlike inhabitants were unlikely to give up their wealth without a fight. A large-scale military campaign would therefore need to be mounted if Britain was to be brought to heel and drawn within the Empire. Although this was not accomplished in Caesar’s lifetime, it was inevitable that Rome would one day return.

Conquest was considered by the emperors Augustus and Caligula but postponed until the middle of the first century ad. In AD 43, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, the project commenced in earnest with a full-scale invasion from Roman Gaul. The initial assault was followed by campaigns against tribes in the southern parts of the island. Some of these surrendered, or made deals with Rome, but others fought bravely to preserve their independence. Within thirty-five years, after crushing all serious resistance and quelling revolts, the invaders successfully brought much of Britain under their sway. Consolidation of the conquered territory proceeded swiftly, driven by a steady process of Romanisation and the reorganising of native political structures. These changes were enforced by a large and permanent military garrison housed in strategically placed forts linked by a network of roads.

Agricola and the Highlands

By the end of the third quarter of the first century the main phase of the conquest was complete. Half the island lay under imperial control and the Britons in these areas became subjects of the Empire. The southern tribal kings were either dead, exiled or working for Rome as urban bureaucrats in newly built towns and cities. The emperor entrusted the task of running the new province to a governor who, because of the volatile character of the natives, was usually an experienced general. In AD 78 the governorship passed to one of Rome’s most capable men, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, a career soldier who had already seen service in Britain as commander of the Twentieth Legion. Agricola returned to the province and immediately launched campaigns to subdue rebellious tribes in Wales and the Pennines.

A contemporary account of Agricola’s career was written by his son-in-law, Tacitus, whose work has survived. This account bears the simple title Agricola and appeared in AD 98, five years after the death of its subject, as a eulogy in praise of his character and achievements. It does not offer a straightforward, factual report of administrative policies or military campaigns, nor is it concerned with presenting an objective view of the peoples and places encountered by Agricola during his time in Britain. Its value for the present chapter lies in what it says about the people of Celtic Britain. Tacitus paid special attention to the northern parts of the island, the area now known as Scotland. It was here that Agricola found his ambitions thwarted by troublesome natives and an inhospitable landscape. In the Highlands across the firths of Forth and Tay, beyond the furthest limit of Rome’s early conquests, dwelt tribes of untamed barbarians. Tacitus provides fascinating information about these people, much of it gleaned at first-hand in conversations with his father-in-law, who knew them as well as any Roman could.

The natives of the Highlands are described by Tacitus as having ‘reddish hair and large limbs’, a typically stereotyped barbarian image rather than an objective view. They were a proud people whose warriors were brave and fierce, but Rome had met such folk elsewhere and did not fear them. As far as Agricola was concerned they stood in the way of a total conquest of Britain and needed to be swept aside. He was not the kind of man to leave such a task to others, nor did he lack the means to accomplish it. First, however, he had to deal with another obstacle: a group of unconquered tribes between the Pennines and the Forth-Clyde isthmus. In AD 80, the third year of his governorship, he marched north into what is now the Scottish Lowlands to bring these tribes within the Empire. They offered little resistance and were subjugated so quickly that the Romans were able to spare time for the construction of new forts in the conquered districts. Before the end of the summer, Agricola’s advance brought him to the southern edge of the Highlands. He then crossed the River Forth and led his troops into territory where no Roman army had gone before.

The invaders soon found themselves battling wet, windy weather of the kind familiar to any modern visitor who travels among the lochs and glens. Storms hindered the army’s progress after it crossed the Forth into what is now Stirlingshire, but the advance pressed on. Communities of terrified natives could do little but watch helplessly as their lands were plundered by foraging bands of Roman soldiers. The march soon reached the estuary of the Tay, bringing Agricola within sight of the northern mountains, but at this point he decided to advance no further. Instead, he turned around and marched back to the Forth to consolidate his gains in the Lowlands. There he spent the next year building forts and installing garrisons of auxiliaries. The following year, AD 82, saw him campaigning near the Solway Firth in unconquered territory west of Annandale. The tribes of this region were swiftly defeated, their capitulation bringing Roman troops to the shore of the Irish Sea. Agricola briefly considered the viability of an invasion of Ireland but decided against it. A more pressing matter – the subjugation of the far north – still preyed on his mind. With all territory south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus now firmly under Roman control, he knew that the free peoples beyond the Firth of Tay represented a lurking menace. Such a situation was intolerable and had to be resolved by a major campaign of invasion and conquest.

In AD 83 Agricola marched across the River Forth at the head of an army of 25,000 men. Three renowned legions – the Second, the Ninth and the Twentieth – provided the core of his fighting strength, the remainder being cohorts of auxiliaries. These cohorts included some highly experienced infantry units together with several thousand cavalry. As well as these land forces, a fleet of warships under the command of an admiral shadowed the army’s progress. The admiral’s task was to keep the troops supplied and to make a detailed reconnaissance of the coast. Aboard the ships were units of tough marines who periodically came ashore to scout the best harbours and terrorise the natives. Sometimes the soldiers, sailors and marines camped together to share tales of their achievements and adventures, or to joke about the bad weather and the harsh terrain. Eventually the land forces reached the River Tay and crossed it, entering for the first time a region called Caledonia. Here they were harassed by a group of people whom Tacitus calls Britanni, ‘Britons’, like the other inhabitants of the island. Modern historians generally refer to these folk as Caledonians. They were a tribe or confederation whose core territory included large tracts of the central Highlands as well as most of eastern Scotland between the Firths of Tay and Moray. A memory of their presence survives today in three place-names within their old heartland: Dunkeld (‘Fort of the Caledonians’), Rohallion (‘Rath of the Caledonians’) and Schiehallion (‘Fairy Hill of the Caledonians’).

Unlike their neighbours in the South, the Caledonians were not content to stand idly by while Roman troops plundered their lands. They retaliated swiftly, launching a series of devastating raids on the forts and camps established by Agricola in the wake of his advance. Using hit-and-run tactics, the native warriors caused such dismay that some Roman officers advised their commander to make a strategic withdrawal. At that moment, however, Agricola learned that the enemy was planning a full-scale attack on his column and decided to thwart it by splitting his army into three divisions. This in turn prompted the Caledonians to amend their original plan by launching a night-attack. Their target was the Ninth Legion as it lay sleeping in a temporary camp, but Agricola anticipated the assault and brought up the rest of his forces behind the enemy’s rear. At the same time, the soldiers of the Ninth rose up to defend themselves, not only to expel the raiders but also to show the relief force that they could win the fight on their own. The Caledonians were routed, the survivors vanishing into impenetrable forests and marshlands. Tacitus observed that the Roman victory would have ended the campaign had not the Highland landscape aided the enemy’s retreat. This was clearly an echo of his father-in-law’s assessment of the battle. Like all Roman generals, Agricola was irritated by an enemy who used hit-and-run tactics. He longed to meet the Caledonians in a pitched battle, but this began to seem like a forlorn hope. Eventually he grew so frustrated by their refusal to stand and fight that he described them as ‘just so many spiritless cowards’. This label was unfair and undeserved: the natives were merely waging war in their own way, utilising the landscape of their homeland to its best strategic advantage.

After the failed attack on the Ninth Legion the Caledonians regrouped. They placed their families in safe locations away from danger and began to muster for the kind of encounter that Agricola wanted. Their reasons for abandoning guerilla tactics are unclear. Perhaps their leaders believed that their superior numbers could overwhelm the Roman force in a set-piece battle? Certainly, by the following summer a huge native army was ready to meet the invaders in a final, decisive engagement. Tacitus speaks of tribes forging ‘treaties’ with each other to unite their warriors under a common purpose, but this is likely to represent a Roman rather than a native way of doing things. In reality, the Caledonians probably rallied around a single paramount leader, the king or chieftain of a powerful tribe, whose authority was strong enough to persuade or coerce other tribal leaders to follow him into battle. Similarly, when Tacitus speaks of native warriors ‘flocking to the colours’ he is applying the imagery of Rome to a people whose military organisation was markedly different. The Caledonian forces did not have well-drilled regiments of professional soldiers, each with its own standard or ‘colours’: they were made up from the personal warbands of individual kings and chiefs.

The great clash of arms occurred in late August or early September at Mons Graupius, a name that later inspired the naming of the Grampian Mountains. The slightly different spelling arose from an error on the part of a fifteenth-century Italian writer who, in preparing the first printed edition of the Agricola, transcribed Graupius as Grampius. This mis-spelt name was subsequently applied to the formidable mountain range which since medieval times has been called ‘The Mounth’, a term of Gaelic origin with the simple meaning ‘mountain’. The precise location of the battlefield of AD 84 is a matter of considerable debate, chiefly because Tacitus gives few clues as to where it lay. The hill of Bennachie in Aberdeenshire has been put forward as a likely candidate: its most distinctive peak, the Mither Tap, is certainly deserving of the Latin description mons. Another candidate, although hardly a mons, is the Perthshire hillock of Duncrub which rises to no great height from the farmlands of Lower Strathearn. Although the name Dun Crub might correspond to a Pictish or Gaelic equivalent of Mons Graupius, the site seems too far south to be acceptable to those who envisage Agricola’s victory taking place north of the Mounth. The line of Agricolan forts and marching-camps running northward from the Tay suggests that he advanced a long way beyond the fertile valley of the Earn. On the other hand, somewhere in the vicinity of Duncrub lies an unlocated Roman fort whose Latin name was simply Victoria, ‘Victory’. Perhaps this name was given in commemoration of a great triumph over local natives? Some historians believe that the victory in question was indeed Mons Graupius, despite the insignificance of Duncrub as a landmark. Opponents think it more likely that the Romans named their fort to honour a different battle.

Wherever Mons Graupius lay, it was on its lower slopes that the Caledonians mustered a huge force of warriors, ranging from young men to old veterans, under the command of many kings and chieftains. Tacitus names one of these leaders as Calgacus, whose name is a Latinisation of a Brittonic term meaning ‘The Swordsman’. Tacitus shows this heroic figure giving a stirring speech about courage, freedom and heroism. It is one of the most vivid passages in the entire narrative of the Agricola. Standing before the assembled multitude, Calgacus gives words of hope to his people and a solemn vow that Rome will never conquer the Highlands. He predicts that the inexorable advance of the imperial army will be stopped in its tracks by the valiant warriors of the North, whose isolation has hitherto protected them from invasion:

We, the choicest flower of Britain’s manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded until today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name . . . Let us then show, at the very first clash of arms, what manner of men Caledonia has kept in reserve.

Tacitus describes how this rousing address was greeted with euphoria by the gathering of 30,000 native warriors, who sang and yelled as they eagerly prepared for battle. Above the din, Calgacus closed his speech with these final words: ‘On, then, into action; and as you go, think of those that went before you and of those that shall come after’. Historians tend to believe that Calgacus was invented by Tacitus to present an idealised image of a noble savage, but the speech and its setting certainly capture the spirit of a proud barbarian people defying the power of Rome. In similar vein, the account of the ensuing battle – embellished from Agricola’s own words – is detailed and full of action. The scene unfolds with the noise of native chariots manoeuvring into position on the flat terrain between the two armies. Both sides then hurl spears at each other before Agricola orders six cohorts of war-hardened German auxiliaries to engage the enemy. Tacitus describes how these tough, disciplined veterans throw the Caledonians into disarray and push them backwards up the hill, ‘raining blow after blow, striking them with the bosses of their shields and stabbing them in the face’. Meanwhile, the chariots are easily dispersed by Roman cavalry and career wildly into their own lines. Other Roman horsemen charge the Caledonian rear and break the ranks, causing many warriors to break and flee. Some bravely stand their ground, or rally in nearby woods to launch small counter-attacks, but by then the battle is already lost. With customary efficiency the Romans ensured that they finished the job, and Tacitus tells that ‘the pursuit went on till night fell and our soldiers were tired of killing’. He may be exaggerating when he puts the Caledonian losses at 10,000, a third of their force, but the intensity of the slaughter need not be doubted. Roman casualties were less than 400.

Mons Graupius was a resounding victory which could have brought the final conquest of Britain within Agricola’s grasp. However, the result did not turn out to be as decisive as he might have hoped or expected. Two-thirds of the barbarian horde survived the onslaught and managed to return to their homes. Moreover, the summer campaigning season was waning and there was no time to establish control over an area as vast as the Highlands. Agricola duly assessed the situation and realised that consolidating his victory would be impossible, especially with autumn approaching and with large numbers of Caledonians still lurking in the hills. The task of rooting them out, while facing the inevitable nuisance of hit-and-run ambushes, presented an unappealing prospect. He and his officers knew that neither the Highland landscape nor its inhabitants were compatible with the Roman way of war. The invading army duly turned about and returned to winter quarters in the south, leaving a small number of garrisoned forts to guard the glens of Perthshire. Hostages were taken from a people called the Boresti, who may have been among the tribes defeated in the great battle, but the Roman advantage was lost. Agricola nominally held sway over all native territory south of the Moray Firth, but political machinations deprived him of an opportunity to consolidate his gains: the emperor Domitian, consumed by jealousy and paranoia after hearing of the victory, ordered Agricola to leave Britain and return to Rome.

After Agricola: The Two Walls

Tacitus tried to portray the victory at Mons Graupius as a spectacular success but could not hide the fact that Caledonia remained unconquered. Calgacus and his warriors, ‘the last of the free’, were still free. One small consolation for Rome came when the fleet that had shadowed the army’s progress completed its operations. After the battle it made a token gesture of dominance by continuing northward along the eastern seaboard and sailing around the top of Scotland, intimidating the natives with a final display of Roman power before sailing home down the western coast. During this voyage the admiral gathered plenty of information about the geography of the northern lands and learned the names of the tribes who dwelt there. This data, together with similar information gathered by Agricola’s army, was later reproduced on a Roman map which survives today in a version drawn by Ptolemy, a Greek geographer of the second century. The map is a unique and fascinating document which shows how the British Isles appeared to Roman eyes. As well as naming and locating important topographical features, it identifies the tribes who inhabited Britain and Ireland and indicates the approximate positions of their territories.

The map shows sixteen tribes inhabiting Scotland, twelve of them occupying areas north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus. A number of place-names, denoting Roman forts and native sites, are also shown, but none appear on the map in areas north and west of the Great Glen. This distribution suggests that Agricola’s land-campaign never reached beyond Loch Ness or the Moray Firth. The people of Caledonia appear on the map as the Caledonii, but it is curious that the Boresti, from whom the Romans took hostages after Mons Graupius, are absent. The map places the Caledonii across the central Highlands, in territory southwest of a people called Vacomagi, who seem to hold Moray and the Spey valley. Much of what is now Aberdeenshire is shown as lying within the territory of the Taezali, while Fife appears to be the home of a tribe called Venicones.

Within a decade of Agricola’s withdrawal, the Romans had become deeply pessimistic about the idea of ever conquering the Highlands. The forts established in Perthshire during the campaigns of AD 80–4 were abandoned, thereby removing the infrastructure for any future invasion. A new legionary fortress at Inchtuthil, on the north bank of the Tay, was dismantled before its construction could be completed. The frontier shrank back to the river’s estuary and was marked by a line of wooden watch-towers, but these and their associated forts were abandoned by AD 90. In the Scottish Lowlands the garrisons lingered on for a further ten years, but the second century dawned with an urgent need for manpower on the Danube causing a major withdrawal of troops from Britain. The northern frontier fell back again, shrinking the limits of Empire to the Tyne-Solway isthmus.

The early years of the second century saw the northern barbarians launch a series of attacks on Roman Britain. Whether or not the Caledonians were among these raiders is unknown, but the incursions left a trail of devastation in their wake. The situation became so serious that the emperor Hadrian ordered his soldiers to build a mighty wall of stone along the Tyne-Solway frontier. This great work was begun in 122 or 123 and was still in progress when Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, launched a vigorous campaign in the North. The new emperor’s objective was not another attempt to subdue the Highlands but a reconquest of what is now Lowland Scotland and the consolidation of a viable defensive line below the River Forth. Antoninus entrusted the venture to Britain’s newly appointed governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who began the campaign sometime around 140. Within a couple of years Roman authority was restored along the Tay estuary and new forts were built to make the gains permanent. The imperial frontier was fixed slightly to the south, being marked by a barrier – the Antonine Wall – across the Forth-Clyde isthmus. The new barrier was not built of stone, but consisted of a turf rampart with a ditch in front. Sixteen forts sited at regular intervals along its forty-mile length accommodated a total garrison of 6,000 men, while several Agricolan forts and some new ones north of the line were maintained as forward outposts. Despite its impressive appearance and large garrison, the turf wall was probably constructed as a display of prestige by Antoninus rather than for practical defensive reasons. For a while it became the new northern border of the Empire and made Hadrian’s Wall redundant. It did not, however, survive long as a stable frontier. It was briefly abandoned in the 150s, its soldiers moving south to quell a revolt among the Brigantes of the Pennines, before being permanently evacuated in the following decade. The final withdrawal came soon after the death of Antoninus Pius in 161, which allowed his successors to downsize the northern frontier army. A handful of outpost forts beyond the Forth were still garrisoned, but the imperial boundary shrank back to Hadrian’s Wall.

Caledonii and Maeatae

Before the end of the second century the Caledonians were assailing the Scottish Lowlands with increasing ferocity. The Roman writer Cassius Dio described how events took a very serious turn when Hadrian’s Wall was overwhelmed sometime between 180 and 184. Although the onslaught on the Wall was brief, it was a symbolic disaster for Rome and a huge achievement for the barbarians. The great stone barrier was quickly recovered, but all the forts to the north of it were temporarily abandoned to the enemy.

The third century dawned on a rather unsettled situation. The Romans now faced two large groups of hostile natives across the war-ravaged isthmus between the Firths of Clyde and Forth. One was their old enemy the Caledonians, who ended the previous century in some kind of uneasy treaty with Rome. The other was the Maeatae, whose territory corresponded roughly with present-day Stirlingshire. A memory of this people survives in two place-names in the region they once inhabited: Dumyat (from Dun Myat, ‘Fort of the Maeatae’) and Myot Hill. According to Cassius Dio, the Maeatae dwelt immediately beyond the Antonine Wall, while the Caledonians inhabited lands further north. This shows that Caledonian territory still included Perthshire, as had been the case in Agricola’s time, although the precise extent of these lands in either the first century or the third is unknown. Ptolemy’s second-century map shows the name Caledonii covering a wide swathe of northern Scotland from the west coast to the east, but this might denote nothing more than Roman perceptions of the fame and status of this people. On the other hand, it is clear that the Caledonians and the Maeatae were large and powerful political entities, each perhaps an amalgamation of peoples under the sway of a single dominant group. Of the twelve tribes shown on Ptolemy’s map as second-century occupants of the Highlands, some had already been amalgamated into larger groupings during his lifetime. Using information collected by Agricola’s forces, Ptolemy showed four tribes in the area between the Firths of Forth and Moray: the Caledonii, Vacomagi, Taezali and Venicones. By the third century the Caledonii had evidently absorbed the others and subsumed their identities. Given the undoubtedly warlike and ‘heroic’ character of Iron Age society, it is hard to imagine that the process of absorption or amalgamation was voluntary rather than enforced. Even with the threat of a Roman invasion providing a persuasive argument for smaller tribes to join larger ones, the amalgamation was unlikely to have been peaceful. Between the menace of Rome and the dominance of the Caledonii the leaders of the Vacomagi, Venicones and Taezali may have had little choice but to surrender their sovereignty within the Caledonian ‘confederacy’. The alternative was military conquest by one foe or another, the most immediate threat coming not from the legions but from the Caledonians. The Caledonians and the Maeatae are sometimes viewed by historians as voluntary associations formed by separate tribes seeking mutual assurances of protection by amicable agreement. It is more realistic to see these two ‘confederacies’ as the enlarged hegemonies of powerful kindreds who, in a period of uncertainty, exploited the vulnerability of fearful neighbours to forge large groups that they could control as paramount rulers.

In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus emerged victorious from a destructive civil war in Gaul to deal with the growing barbarian menace on his borders. On the northern frontier in Britain the Maeatae were still belligerent and were being held back only by large gifts of Roman cash, while the Caledonians were on the verge of breaking a fragile treaty with the Empire. During the early years of the third century Roman diplomacy maintained control of the frontier but, in 205 or 206, the two confederacies launched an invasion. Britain’s governor appealed to Severus for more troops or, better still, for the direct involvement of the emperor himself. At that time, Severus was eager to take his sons Caracalla and Geta away from the decadence of Rome to give them some experience of generalship. Bringing them to Britain seemed an ideal solution and so, in 208, he arrived on the island at the head of a large army. Taking personal command of the military situation he marched north, crossing the Forth-Clyde isthmus to attack the Maeatae. Fierce fighting ensued, with the barbarians waging a guerilla war on their home territory until they were beaten into submission. At this point, Severus revived the old Agricolan scheme for a conquest of the North and began to plan the construction of a massive new legionary fortress in Perthshire, at Carpow on the Tay.