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ROMAN INVASION AND
OCCUPATION—ROMAN REMAINS.
The ‘Life of Agricola’ by
Tacitus may be described as the false dawn of Border history. In that
beautiful little monograph—a model of classical dignity and condensation of
style, some of whose phrases have passed into stock quotations— the light of
literature falls for the first time upon our Borderland. But it falls there
only to be withdrawn again, plunging the country which for the twinkling of
an eye it had illuminated back into darkness for a thousand years.
It was in the year of our
Lord 78 that that accomplished military commander and exemplary Roman,
Cnaeus Julius Agricola, was sent as consular legate into Britain, — that
island, as will be remembered, having been first invaded by his great
countryman, Julius Csesar, one hundred and thirty-three years earlier; and
in the interim, after a period of neglect, having been by successive
governors brought partially into the condition of a Roman province. The
first two years of his residence in Britain were devoted by Agricola to the
punishment of insubordination on the part of the tribe of Ordovices in North
Wales, to subduing the island of Mona, and to pushing his conquests north of
the Humber, which is thought to have formed [the boundary of the Roman sway
at the time of his arrival,1 in all of which undertakings he met with
brilliant success. These, however, were merely, the first steps in his
achievements. Still, comparatively speaking, young, and though just and
moderate in victory, of a lofty and aspiring temperament, Agricola had no
intention of resting here upon his laurels. His second winter in Britain,
thinks the author of ‘Caledonia Romana,’ he spent on nearly the same ground
where afterwards stood Hadrian’s Wall; and this writer—whose statements
must, however, be accepted as probabilities or surmises rather than as
facts—adds that his officers may at this time have been engaged in acquiring
what knowledge they could of the country which lay immediately in front of
them, with this view enticing natives into their camps, in order that
information as to the best routes through forests and morasses, and the most
accessible passes of the mountains, might be elicited. At any rate, and
however this may have been, in the summer of his third year in Britain,
flushed by the splendour of his recent victories, and spurred by the desire
to explore and overrun the country to its farthest limits, Agricola advanced
in a northerly direction. The precise point at which he passed what we now
call the Border is unknown. Hill Burton, an eminent though too digressive
authority, speaks of the evidence from vestiges of the Roman progress in
Scotland as seeming to point to his having marched along the east coast to
the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Stuart, on the other hand, supposes that he
may have crossed the present shire of Roxburgh, and proceeded by the vale of
Leader to the same destination. His field forces are estimated by the latter
writer at from 25,000 to 30,000 men, who may either have been divided into
an eastern and western invading column, or into two divisions following each
other at the interval of a day’s march. Speaking of the advance of the Roman
forces, Tacitus gives a striking description of the parallel progress of the
army and fleet into unknown lands and seas—“ whilst often infantry, cavalry,
and marines, meeting together in one encampment to carouse, would recount,
with characteristic embellishments, each their own experiences and exploits,
comparing now the intricacies of mountains and forests with the hardships of
the waves, and again battles against the enemy with victories over the deep.
Strictly speaking, it must be acknowledged that this passage belongs to a
somewhat later date, and, indeed, the co-operation of the fleet at the
present juncture has not been established. Yet for its vivid picture of the
frame of mind of the invaders, if for nothing else, the quotation deserves a
place here.
In the first year of his
campaign in Scotland, Agricola carried his ravages as far as the estuary of
the Taus, or Tanaus,—his advance spreading such consternation among the
large-limbed, red-haired Caledonians who constituted the native population,
that, though by assailing the invading army with violent storms heaven
itself seemed to war upon their side, they appear to have struck not a blow
in self-defence. As to the identity of the limit named above, uncertainty
prevails—its identification with either the Firth of Forth or the Tyne Water
in East Lothian being plausible, whilst of the two the balance of opinion
inclines to the latter supposition. After overrunning the country to the
south of the Firths of Clyde and Forth, Agricola devoted the next summer to
the consolidation of his new conquests; and at this point our personal
interest in his movements may be said to cease. Merely premising, therefore,
that his triumphant advance northward was continued till it culminated three
years later in the great victory over the Caledonian tribes under Galgacus,
gained probably in the neighbourhood of Forfar or Brechin, and shortly
followed by his own recall by the jealous Domitian, we may here leave
following his movements and turn to a brief examination of such relics of
Roman occupation, dating from this or a later time, as are still extant in
the Border country. These remains consist of roads and camps, or military
stations; but, as will soon appear, there is much still to be done in
establishing their authenticity. The roads are those known as Watling Street
and the Wheel Causey.
Of the great Roman road which
bears the former name, the reader may be reminded that its course has been
traced as far as the intrenchments of Chew Green on the Coquet.1 Leaving
this place, it is supposed to bend to the east round Brownhart Law, and
cross the Border line, whence it proceeds in a north-westerly direction
along the back of the range of hills which “ send down their streams into
the Kale near the Hindhopes, and crosses that river at Towford. It then
passes the camp of Towford, or Street House, and, after skirting Cunzierton
and passing to the south of Shibden Hill, continues its course in the same
direction, and now in a perfectly straight line, past Cappuck, where it
crosses Oxnam Water, to Bonjedward, where, according to Jeffrey, traces of a
station which have since disappeared were in the middle of the eighteenth
century still visible. From Bonjedward it runs on through the grounds of
Monteviot House and over Lilliardsedge, forming for three and a half miles
the boundary between the pashes of Ancrum and Maxton. It then stretches away
in the direction of Newtown, running straight for Eildon, believed by
Jeffrey, on the authority of Roy and other antiquarians of the last century,
to be the Trimontium of the Romans—a supposition to which the striking
outline of the three hills gives plausibility, but which is otherwise
unsupported by a shadow of evidence. From Eildon the road runs on to
Newstead, the site of a Roman station, at which point, as record of an
ancient bridge is found, Jeffrey assumes it to have crossed the Tweed.1
Since Jeffrey’s day, however, a more carefully trained antiquarian2
has been over the same ground, and his conclusions are arrived at with more
caution. He admits that, owing to the position of their military capital at
York, the Romans probably entered North Britain from the east; but,
proceeding to divide the road into two parts, he dwells upon the fact that
no antiquities have been found along the first half of its course, and,
indeed, that there is nothing in its structure so far to differentiate it
from any other old drove-road in the country. Even the name of Watling
Street, whatever its exact significance may be, is not in common use, but
has chiefly been applied to it in books. With the second half of the
road—extending from Shibden Hill to a point near St Boswells Green, beyond
which no traces of it are now visible in Roxburghshire—the case is
different. Here its undeviatingly straight course, its imposing
breadth—extending to 24 feet or more, with the addition of banks and
ditches—and, above all, the fact of its communicating directly between the
stations of Cappuck and Newstead, seem to point unmistakably to the
conclusion of its having been used, and probably laid down, by the Romans.
The second road mentioned by
Jeffrey is the Wheel Causey — a supposed continuation of a great Roman
military road, described by archaeologists as running from Overburgh in
Lancashire to Newcastle in Cumberland, and known as the Maiden Way. Jeffrey
asserts that it crosses the Border line at Deadwater, proceeding almost due
north by Bagrawford and past the ruins of a chapel known as the Wheel
Church, and so on over the summit of Neideslaw to the eastern slope of
Wolfhopelee, beyond which point its course becomes mere matter of
conjecture. Jeffrey’s critic, however, confines himself to saying that in
medieval and later days, when the Maiden Way was in use as a drove-road, a
continuation of it into Scotland would be necessary, and in this sense the
Wheel Causey may be spoken of as its continuation. But that the latter was
ever a Roman road the evidence before us does not justify us in concluding.
As in the case of the roads,
so with the Roman camps of the Border counties there remains much scope for
scientific investigation. Among the latter, that upon which the light of
recent antiquarian research has been best brought to bear is the recently
discovered station at Cappuck, near Jedburgh, which has been discussed by Dr
Joseph Anderson in an article in the ‘ Scotsman.’ The remains were
discovered at a depth of some 18 inches below the present surface, all but
the three or four lowest courses of the mason-work having been removed for
building operations in the neighbourhood, where it is on record that at
least one farm-steading has been built from their materials. Of the
remaining stones, many are “dressed to the rectangular form of nearly a cune
and a half so common in Roman masonry, and have their faces dressed with the
diamond broaching which is so characteristic of all the Roman stone-work.”
The buildings occupy the •crown of a “bluff,” formed by the junction of a
rivulet with the Oxnam Water; and, commanding as they do the latter stream
at the point where it is crossed by the Watling Street, it is pointed out by
the writer above-named that their position is evidently chosen with a view
to the protection of the ford. So far as they have yet been excavated, they
exhibit a ground-plan consisting of an oblong chamber or court of 60 feet in
length, the walls being over 3 feet thick, in rear of which are several
smaller buildings, less massive in construction; whilst adjoining the end
next the Oxnam are a number of more irregularly shaped structures, one of
which is semicircular, and at some distance from the opposite end of the
larger building the foundations of another, nearly as large, have been laid
bare. In rear these buildings appear to have been protected by some kind of
circumvallation, which is now traceable only by a slight depression in the
field.
The walls of the main
building show buttress-like projections at about every 6 feet, with an
opening of some 9 inches passing through the wall midway between every two
of the projections ; whilst round the front of this part of the building,
and converging towards the irregularly-shaped foundations of the one end, is
a series of conduits, which may have been either drains or flues “for the
passage of hot air from a heating-chamber outside to the interior of the
main building by means of the openings between the buttress-like
projections.” It may, then, be supposed that the buttress-like projections
were not buttresses, but solid supports of an external platform or verandah
running round the building at the height of the floor, which, in Roman
remains of the kind in Britain, is always found placed at some height above
the ground-level, the basement being used for cellarage and heating. The
workmanship, so far as is seen, is rude; but this is accounted for by the
circumstance of only the lower courses of the basement being left, whilst
indications of a more finished superstructure are not wanting. Besides the
dressing of the stones above mentioned, fragments of the large square Roman
bricks and of a somewhat artificial kind of roofing-tile have been found,
together with pieces of concrete of considerable thickness, having a smooth
upper surface, upon which floor-tiles may have been laid. The military
character of the settlement is argued, not only from its situation, but from
the finding within it of fragments of weapons, such as iron spear heads and
the bosses of shields, as well as the bronze ornaments of the trappings and
harness of horses; and Dr Anderson has even speculated that the vexillation
of the Rhaetian spearmen, under the command of Julius Severinus, the
tribune, may have been quartered here when they carved and dedicated an
altar to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which is now built, face downwards, into
the turret stair of Jedburgh Abbey. Besides vessels of various forms in the
slate-coloured and dark bluish-grey ware manufactured in the Roman potteries
of Britain, fragments of handsome dishes, formed of the highly prized red
lustrous ware called Samian, together with broken wine-jars of large size,
which have been found among the ruins, bear witness, as the same authority
thinks, to the luxurious life led by the Roman officers stationed here. Of
two coins which have been picked up, one is a silver denarius of the Emperor
Domitian, struck a.d. 83, the other a brass coin of Trajan, struck a.d. 116.
From Cappuck, as has been
said, the Watling Street runs on in a north-westerly direction towards the
triple summits of the Eildons; and though we are not justified in claiming
these as the Roman Trimontium, yet in this neighbourhood —namely, at
Newstead on the Tweed—there have been discovered vestiges of a Roman
settlement or Roman British village. Here were traditions of old buildings;
here, as before, Roman pottery has been found, together with two stones
bearing a rich carved moulding, including as its central member a rope or
cable pattern, of frequent occurrence in Roman work.3
The chief interest of the site, however, consists in its possession of a
cemetery, in which an excessively peculiar mode of burial, better known in
Gaul than in Britain, has been carried on. This was discovered in 1846, when
a cutting for the Hawick line of the North British Railway was being made.
The graves consisted of deep circular pits, like draw-wells, lined with
masonry, some of them being as much as 20 feet deep, and from 2 feet 6
inches to 4 feet in diameter; wrhilst the bodies buried in them are seen to
have been unburnt, and accompanied by bones of oxen, horses, and other
domestic animals, by coins, iron weapons, and pottery. In one pit in
particular a human skeleton was found in an erect position, with an iron
spear beside it. Of even greater interest than these, however, are two
votive altars discovered beneath the surface of the neighbouring fields, the
one in 1783, the other in 1830. Of these the former measures about 2 feet in
length by a foot in breadth, and bears an inscription of which the following
is a translation : “To the deities presiding over contests in the Campus,
sacred. .AElius Marcus, a decurion of the wing of the Vocontian cavalry
(styled) the August, dedicates this altar in discharge of a vow willingly
and justly performed.” The second altar measures 43 inches by 18, and its
inscription has been translated as follows: “To the god Silvanus, for his
own and his soldiers’ safety, Carrius Domitianus, the centurion of the
Twentieth Legion, (surnamed) the Valiant and Victorious, fulfils his vow
justly and most willingly.”5 In addition to the
above, a stone having carved upon it in bold relief a wild boar, which is
known to have been the symbol of the Twentieth Legion, was also found in the
neighbourhood.
It is much to be wished that
the remaining so-called Roman camps of the district had been examined with
as much care as those described above. Of these there is good ground for
supposing that the camp at Lyne in Peeblesshire would prove to be one of the
very few in Scotland, exclusive of the forts in rear of the Antonine Vallum,
for which an authentic Roman origin might be established. The camp is a fine
one, the cleared space within the successive mounds and ditches measuring
575 feet by 475 feet; and as its outline is gradually growing more and more
indistinct—a fact to which Chambers drew attention many years ago—it is
highly desirable that no time be lost in subjecting it to thorough
examination.
This camp is figured in Roy’s
‘Military Antiquities,’ which work also furnishes a plan, dated 1774, of
what is there called “Agricola’s Camp” at Towford, in Roxburghshire. The
latter is said to be of the earlier, or Polybian, type of Roman temporary
camp, and the author is of opinion that most of the camps which resemble it
were actually occupied by Agricola during his campaigns in North Britain—a
conclusion which he bases upon the ground that shortly after the era of
Agricola a new system of castrametation, known as the Hyginian, was adopted
by the Romans. Pending further investigation, however, it may be expedient
to accept the conclusions of this authority only for what they may prove to
be worth.
The absence of Roman remains
throughout Selkirkshire, where no traces of the conquering race have been
discovered, is surprising, and has inclined the historian of the county2 to
believe that the conquerors may have been able to hold in check the
inhabitants of the forest-covered valleys of Ettrick and Yarrow by means of
a fort located at Kippilaw. But the authenticity of this fort must be
acknowledged as doubtful.
Such, then, is a sketch—so
far as up to the present one can be furnished—of the remains of the Roman
occupation of our district. Did space admit, it might, no doubt, be
amplified by detail but we must here content ourselves with main features as
with well-ascertained facts. For in this summary all that is based upon mere
unsupported hypothesis has been either deliberately rejected or stated for
what it is worth. Of this the fancy which sees traces of a Roman method of
cultivation in the peculiar terraces visible on some of our hillsides, as at
Romanno in Peeblesshire and Oakwood Mill in Selkirk, may serve as an
example. Of that, as of other ingenious theories, all that can with safety
be said is that they may or may not be well grounded. And today the methods
so admirably satirised in ‘The Antiquary,’ by which any intrenchment not
otherwise accounted for became a Roman camp, and any old sword or spear
discovered was spoken of as a gladius or a hasta — these methods, already
beginning to be discredited in the days of Sir Walter Scott, are happily no
more. The results of careful inductive reasoning, stated with due caution
and accuracy, have supplanted them ; and if to some of us the first
consequence of the exchange has been the loss of cherished illusions, we
have at least gained in return the bracing knowledge that the ground on
which we stand is firm. A rich mine of investigation, too, lies now before
instead of behind us— for paradoxical though it may seem, it is perhaps
scarcely too much to say that adequate knowledge of the Roman antiquities at
our command in the country lies in the future rather than in the past.
Perhaps it is impossible at present to form any just idea of the degree to
which Roman influence permeated the Border country, and probably the general
tendency is greatly to underrate this. And in order to be in a position to
gauge it, it is at least necessary to remember not only that, though
repeatedly traversed and interrupted, that influence was in action during a
period of above three hundred years—viz., from a.d. 80 to 410—but also that
it was the glory of Rome and the secret of her peculiar greatness that with
her to conquer was to assimilate, and that wherever the power of her arms
extended she made not so much subjects as Romans. Besides this, it must be
remembered that York became the seat of the Roman government, and that the
Roman military power in the country was concentrated upon the southern wall.
The relics of Roman dominion now in our possession may be few and
fragmentary, yet the appeal made through them to our common humanity is
often irresistible; for surely it would be difficult to read without
sympathy to-day the words in which, nearly two thousand years ago, an
upright and simple-minded soldier records his vow discharged after perils
past, or to contemplate without emotion such a find as that made at Cappuck,
where a pretty bracelet has been brought to light which is seen to have been
cut down and bent together so as to fit a tinier wrist than that for which
:t had first been fashioned.
It now only remains, for the
sake of continuity of narrative, to run rapidly over the outstanding events
of the Roman occupation of Scotland. In marking off and securing his
conquests by a line of forts, Agricola had been content to avail himself of
the convenient isthmus between the Firths of Forth and Clyde • but even this
moderate annexation appears to have been untenable. For when, some thirty
years later, the wise Hadrian visited Britain, he judged It expedient to
draw in his limit to a line extending from the Firth of Solway to the mouth
of Tyne, on which he raised his famous wall, 73 miles long and 20 feet high,
and garrisoned by 15,000 men. Whether the cause of this renunciation was of
a military or an economical character, whether he had found the new country
not worth holding or too difficult to hold, that country was not destined to
be long abandoned. Early in the reign of Antoninus, a.d. 138-161, Lollius
Urbicus, who had been appointed lieutenant of the Roman emperor in Britain,
resumed possession of the south of Scotland, and maintaining his authority
there, proceeded to connect the old forts of Agricola by a rampart. On the
above events as they affected the Borders, coins found at Newstead throw
some light. Among them are pieces of the Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and
Antoninus, as well as of Faustina the Elder, empress of the last named,
which probably argue the occupation of the settlement during these reigns.
And to the period now reached, from the regular succession of the coins,
their number and condition, it is suggested that the principal occupation of
the station may be ascribed, although from its situation on the great north
road, as well as its nearness to the consolidated conquests of Albion, its
origin may well belong to a much earlier, and even to the earliest, period.
To Antoninus succeeded Marcus
Aurelius, who reigned till the year 180.
In the first year of his
successor, Commodus, there was an irruption of the natives through the Roman
Wall, and it so happens that no coins of the eighty or ninety years
following have been found at Newstead. The cause of this may be that the
station was then temporarily abandoned. In the year 208 the Emperor Severus
made his great expedition into Scotland, forcing his way, in the face of
unheard-of difficulties, and at a cost of 50,000 men, to the extreme north
of the country, and it is in the narrative of this time that we first hear
the name Maeatians applied, as it seems, to the inhabitants of the district
lying between the two walls. The next coins catalogued at Newstead are of
the reigns of Victorinus (265-267) and Diocletian, not forgetting one of
Carausius, the Belgic Gaul, who at this time revolted from Rome, and sailing
for Britain with the fleet intrusted to his charge, usurped the dominion
there, and ruled for eight years. For by this time such regularity as had
ever existed in the succession of the emperors was no more. They appeared
almost as they pleased, two or more at a time, and Rome itself was deserted
by them in favour of more convenient centres.
The upstart Carausius fell by
the treachery of Allectus, his associate, from whom Britain was recaptured
by Constantius the Pale, successor to Maximian, who had shared the Empire
with Diocletian. Several coins of Constantius (a.d. 305) have been found in
the neighbourhood of Newstead, but none of any later date. To Constantius,
who had died at York whilst on an expedition against the turbulent natives
north of the wall, succeeded his son Constantine, afterwards called the
Great; whilst from Valentinian, who followed the latter emperor after an
interval of twenty-seven years, the country between the two walls, becoming
for a time a province of Roman Britain, received the name of Valentia. |
