Scotland – Its Unique Story Part 3 Caledonia 

This next period of Scotland’s unique story is marked by a lack of written sources which has resulted in considerable debate and questions for this period. Historians are forced to rely to a large extent on archaeology to get any type of view of this time. However the use of archaeology has considerably extended historians knowledge of this period over the last few decades. There has been much ink spilled over the reasons for what actually happened. In particular why the Roman Empire did not simply invest the necessary resources to secure the conquest of what is now Scotland. One of the main explanations for this failure is thought by most historians to lie in what was happening in the wider Roman world in this period.  The second period was marked by a purely defensive stance particularly after 300 AD when the Roman strategy became to fend off Pictish and other external attacks on the province.

                                    The First Roman Invasion

The first Roman period is marked by sudden, substantial changes in strategy, either to go for full scale conquest of the northern tribes or else to roll back to existing defensive lines usually Hadrian’s Wall (built from 122 AD onwards). The common assumption for many years was that the Romans according to the Agricola by Tacitus arrived in Scotland in the year 80 AD. There has recently been some debate amongst historians about when the first Roman invasion actually occurred and if Tacitus’s dating is incorrect. Some put as early as the 60’s AD but based on Tacitus’s book ‘the Agricola’ is is most often put at 80 AD under the Roman Governor Julius Agricola.  The aim was to complete the conquest of all the Celtic tribes and add them to the existing province of the Roman Empire.   

Despite successes including a victorious battle called Mons Graupius by Tacitus in 84 AD, thought to have been in North East Scotland, Agricola was recalled to Rome in 85 AD and within a further 5 years the Roman army had retreated from Scotland back to what is now the North of England.

                                                  Hadrian’s Wall

Though there are no written accounts of what next happened in the border area, inscriptions and some later references indicate there were major uprisings by the native peoples against the Roman occupiers culminating in the possible loss of the IX Hispania legion some where around 117 AD. The reaction of the new emperor Hadrian on a visit to the province in 122AD was to order the construction of a defensive wall 73 miles long from the Tyne to the Solway Firth. Believed to have been called the ‘Aelian Wall’ (Vallum Aelium) after Hadrian’s family name of Aelius, the wall is thought to have been completed within 5 years by the existing Roman garrison.

                                              The Second Invasion 

The second major invasion occurred some 60 years later when the then Roman Governor Quintus Lollius Urbicus was ordered by the new Emperor Antinous Pius in 140 AD to move forward and establish a defensive wall on the Forth Clyde line some 37 miles long. This invasion seems to have brutal in the extreme but like its predecessor it only lasted a few years until the Roman forces pulled back again to the existing Hadrian’s Wall. Again this is thought to be caused by major defeats for the Roman Army on the Upper Danube river in the 160’s  leading to the withdrawal of large numbers of Roman troops to the continent. Though there is an almost complete lack of sources there seems to have been a major war fought round Hadrian’s Wall around 180 AD.

                                             The Third Invasion

This instability continued for many years and in 208 under the Emperor Septimius Severus (195 – 2011) the Roman Empire  made their largest and most determined effort to conquer what is now Scotland. Under the command of Septimius Severus himself a vast Roman army invaded what is now Scotland but met determined resistance. After falling ill Septimius Severus died at York in 2011 and his successor Caracalla abandoned the attempted conquest of the northern tribes. The frontier was now permanently fixed on a rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall.

 

                                          The End of the Roman Era

Though there was occasional conflict between Rome and the Northern Tribes particularly during the course of the 4th century there was no repeat of the previous full-scale Roman invasions.  As Roman strength continued to decline in the later 4th Century there was ever increasing attacks on the Roman province sometimes in conjunction with Germanic invaders. The last mobile Roman military forces are thought to have left the province around 409.