Such are the statements of the Roman historians respecting the authorship of the Wall. Several circumstances tend to invalidate the claim which they make in behalf of Severus. The first author who attributes the Wall to Severus is Spartian, a weak writer, who lived in an ignorant age, and nearly a century after the time of Severus. Surely his assertion will not be allowed to outweigh the negative testimony of Herodian and Dion Cassius, the contemporaries of Septimius Severus. Of all the authors who mention the length of the Wall, the only one who approaches correctness is Spartian, when speaking of the Wall, which he states that Hadrian drew from sea to sea; eighty Roman miles is very nearly the true length. The other writers call it thirty-two, |SPARTIAN INCONSISTENT.|or one hundred and thirty-two. Admitting, as some have supposed, that the larger number is an error, occasioned by some careless transcriber’s inserting in the copies the centurial number (C), which did not exist in the original, the difficulty is not removed. Thirty-two Roman miles is the length of the Barrier of the Upper Isthmus, not of the Lower, and these writers seem to have confounded the one with the other. Buchanan, Usher, and several writers, who were as capable of weighing the evidence furnished by the ancient historians as we are, have accordingly maintained, that the Wall which extended from the Forth to the Clyde, is that which was reared by Severus. This opinion we now know, from the inscriptions found upon it, to be erroneous; but the fact that it was entertained by such able scholars, proves the incompleteness of the historic evidence upon the subject. Milton correctly estimates the vague nature of this testimony. He writes—
Severus, on the frontiers of what he had firmly conquered, builds a wall across the island from sea to sea; which our author judges the most magnificent of all his other deeds; and that he thence received the style of Britannicus; in length a hundred and thirty-two miles. Orosius adds, it is fortified with a deep trench, and between certain spaces many towers or battlements. The place whereof, some will have to be in Scotland, the same which Lollius Urbicus had walled before. Others affirm it only Hadrian’s work re-edified; both plead authorities, and the ancient track, yet visible: but this I leave, among the studious of these antiquities, to be discussed more at large.—(History of England, bk. ii.)
Spartian, moreover, invalidates his own testimony when he says, that the erection of this Wall was the greatest glory of Severus’s reign (quod maximum ejus imperii decus est). The Wall is indeed a magnificent work; it is, as Stukely characterizes it, ‘the noblest monument’ of Roman power ‘in Europe;’ but if reared by Severus, it is, a lasting monument of his failure. He came to Britain panting for renown—he resolved to reduce the whole island to his subjection—to make the sea-girt cliffs of Northern Caledonia his barrier. The efforts which he put forth were worthy of his resolve—‘In a word,’ says Dion Cassius, ‘Severus lost fifty thousand men there, and yet quitted not his enterprise.’ Were the abandonment of the Wall of Antonine, and the withdrawal of the frontier to the southern Isthmus, where Hadrian, eighty years before, had prudently fixed it, the glorious results of all his aspirations? Spartian assuredly errs, if not in saying that Severus built the Wall, at least in stating that this was the great boast of his reign.
OCCUPATIONS OF SEVERUS.
When, too, we may ask, did he build the Wall? not assuredly when he issued forth on the expedition that was to win him so much renown, and which occupied him the greater part of the time he was in Britain. He was then bent upon aggression, not defence. Neither is it probable that he would do it on his return. According to Spartian, he had at that time proved himself not only victorious, but the founder of eternal peace, and thus had removed all ground for apprehension in the direction of Caledonia. Or, on the other hand, according to the more accurate and trustworthy historians, Herodian and Dion Cassius, he was returning worn out with disease and the endless fatigues he had sustained; chagrined at the havoc which the islanders had made in his army, though they uniformly refused to hazard a general engagement; and broken-hearted at the misconduct and ingratitude of his sons, and so would, we may suppose, have been deficient in the spirit and the means to embark in so large a work. That he should have repaired some of the stations, particularly those upon the line of his march, when about to enter upon what he hoped to be the crowning enterprise of his life, and that he should have maintained garrisons in them to make good his communications with the south, is not only probable, but is rendered almost certain by the inscriptions which several of them have yielded; but that, in such circumstances, he should have planned and executed the whole line of the Wall, its castles and turrets, and several of the stations, is almost incredible.
POPULAR OPINION.
But it may be asked, if Hadrian formed the whole Barrier, how is it that the popular voice should ascribe the most important part of it not to him, but to Severus? That the Wall is generally called by the name of Severus, is at once admitted. So long ago as the reign of Elizabeth, Spencer wrote—
Next there came Tyne, along whose stony bank
That Roman monarch built a brazen wall,
Which mote the feebled Britons strongly flank