After obtaining hostages from the Horestians, who in all probability inhabited what is now the county of Fife, Agricola garrisoned the stations on the isthmus and elsewhere, recrossed the Forth, and took up his winter-quarters in the north of England, about the Tyne and Solway. In the meantime he gave orders to the fleet, then lying probably in the Frith of Forth or Tay, to proceed on a voyage of discovery to the northward. The enterprise appears to have been successfully accomplished by the Roman navy, which proceeded coastwise as far as the Orkneys, whence it sailed by the Western Islands and the British Channel ad Portum Trutulensem, Richborough in Kent, returning to the point from which it started. This is the first voyage on record that determined Britain to be an island.
The Emperor Domitian now resolved to supersede Agricola in his command in North Britain; and he was accordingly recalled in the year 85, under the pretence of promoting him to the government of Syria, but in reality out of envy on account of the glory which he had obtained by the success of his arms. He died on the 23d of August, 93, some say, from poison, while others attribute his death to the effects of chagrin at the unfeeling treatment of Domitian. His countrymen lamented his death, and Tacitus, his son-in-law, preserved the memory of his actions and his worth in the history of his life.
During the remainder of Domitian’s reign, and that of Hadrian his successor, North Britain appears to have enjoyed tranquillity; an inference which may be fairly drawn from the silence of the Roman historians. Yet as Hadrian in the year 121 built a wall between the Solway and the Tyne, some writers have supposed that the Romans had been driven by the Caledonians out of North Britain, in the reign of that Emperor. But if such was the case, how did Lollius Urbicus, the Roman general, about nineteen years after Hadrian’s wall was erected, penetrate without opposition to Agricola’s forts between the Clyde and the Forth? May we not rather suppose that the wall of Hadrian was built for the purpose of preventing incursions into the south by the tribes which inhabited the country between that wall and the Friths? But, be this as it may, little is known of the history of North Britain from the time of Agricola’s recall till the year 138, when Antoninus Pius assumed the imperial purple. That good and sagacious emperor was distinguished by the care which he took in selecting the fittest officers for the government of the Roman provinces; and his choice, for that of Britain, fell on Lollius Urbicus.
The positive information concerning the transactions of this general in North Britain is as meagre as could possibly be, the only clearly ascertained fact in connection with his command being that he built a wall between the Forth and Clyde, very nearly on a line with the forts established by Agricola. “The meagreness of all ancient record,” says Burton,[13] “of the achievements of Lollius Urbicus is worthy of emphatic mention and recollection, because his name has got into the ordinary abridged histories which speak of it, and of ‘his campaign in the north’ as well-known events, of which people naturally expect fuller information elsewhere. The usual sources for reference regarding him will however be found utterly dumb.” The story commonly given is that he proceeded north as far as the Moray Frith, throwing the extensive country between Forth and Clyde and the Moray Frith into the form of a regular Roman province, which, on the worthless authority of the pseudo-Richard, was named Vespasiana. All this may have been the case, and the remains[14] of Roman stations found throughout the wide tract just mentioned give some plausibility to the conjecture; but there is only the most slender grounds for connecting them with any northern expedition of Lollius Urbicus. At all events we may very safely conclude, from the general tone of the records which remain of his and of subsequent expeditions, as well as from the fact that they found it necessary to divide the Lowlands from the Highlands by a fortified wall, that the Romans considered the Caledonians of their time very troublesome, and found it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to bring them under their otherwise universal yoke.
Map and Profile of Antonine’s Wall.
It may not be out of place to give here some account of the wall of Antonine. The wall or rampart extended from Carriden on the Forth, two miles west from Blackness, and about the same distance east from Bo’ness, to West Kilpatrick on the Clyde. The date, which may be depended on, assigned to the building of the wall is between 138 and 140 A.D. Taking the length of this wall from Kilpatrick on the Clyde to Caeridden or Carriden on the Forth, its extent would be 39,726 Roman paces, which exactly agrees with the modern measurement of 36 English miles and 620 yards. This rampart, which was of earth, and rested on a stone foundation, was upwards of twenty feet high and four and twenty feet thick. Along the whole extent of the wall there was a vast ditch or prætentura on the outward or north side, which was generally twenty feet deep and forty feet wide, and which, there is reason to believe, might be filled with water when occasion required.[15] This ditch and rampart were strengthened at both ends, and throughout its whole extent, by about twenty forts, three being at each extremity, and the remainder placed between at the distance of about two English miles from one another; and it is highly probable that these stations were designedly placed on the previous fortifications of Agricola. The following, going from east to west, are the names and sites of some of the stations which have been identified:—Rough Castle, Castlecary, Westerwood, Bunhill, Auchindinny, Kirkintilloch, Bemulie, East Kilpatrick, Castlehill, Duntocher, West Kilpatrick. It will be seen that to a certain extent they are on the line of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway, and throughout nearly its whole length that of the Forth and Clyde canal. Its necessary appendage, a military road, ran behind the rampart from end to end, for the use of the troops and for keeping up the usual communication between the stations or forts. From inscriptions on some of the foundation stones, which have been dug up, it appears that the Second legion, with detachments from the sixth and twentieth legions and some auxiliaries, executed these vast military works, equally creditable to their skill and perseverance. Dunglas near the western extremity, and Blackness near the eastern extremity of the rampart, afforded the Romans commodious harbours for their shipping, as also did Cramond, about five miles west from Edinburgh. This wall is called in the popular language of the country Grime’s or Graham’s Dyke.[16] In 1868 a large oblong slab, in first-rate preservation, was dug up at Bo’ness, in the parish of Kinneil (Bede’s Peanfahel, “the head of the wall”), containing an inscription as distinct as it was on the day when it came from a Roman chisel. We give here a cut of this remarkable stone, which is now in the Scottish Antiquarian Museum.