One result, however, was to add greatly to the knowledge the Romans possessed of the island and its inhabitants, and to give them a practical acquaintance with the tribes inhabiting Caledonia, and hitherto known to them only by report, as the ‘Caledonii Britanni.’ The expression of Tacitus in his narrative sufficiently indicates that they were to be distinguished from the other Britons as a different race, at least in some sense or degree as the ‘new nations,’ with whom Agricola first came in contact in his third campaign. This and similar expressions are applied to the tribes he encountered during that and the subsequent years of his government; and the arguments of the historian as to whether the inhabitants of the island were indigenous or an immigrant population show that, while the Romans observed considerable difference in the physical appearance of the different races, they were not aware of any great distinction in their language. Tacitus considers the question of origin as it affects the inhabitants viewed as one nation. He says that the red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia might infer a German descent; the swarthy features and crisp hair of the Silures, as well as their situation, which in the erroneous notion of the position of Britain was supposed to be opposite Spain, an origin from that country; but the other Britons, in all respects, resembled the inhabitants of Gaul. His remarks have generally been viewed as if he considered that the Britons consisted of three distinct races, and that there were traditionary accounts of their respective origins, but this is entirely to misapprehend the bearing of his statements. They are arbitrary inferences merely, drawn by himself from the difference in the physical appearance of different parts of the nation whose origin he is treating of as a whole; and the general conclusion he comes to is, that notwithstanding these appearances, the whole country received its population from Gaul, differing in this respect from the earlier account of Cæsar, who pronounces the inhabitants of the interior to be indigenous. As one ground for this general conclusion, Tacitus adds that their language did not greatly differ from that of Gaul, which implies that there could have been no very marked or striking difference of language among themselves. He says that the Britons possessed the same audacity in provoking danger, and irresolution in facing it when present. The former quality in a greater degree, while the latter imputation in the main, is disproved, so far as the northern tribes are concerned, by the narrative of the historian himself which follows this statement in his Life of Agricola. He observes one of the peculiar customs of the Britons among the Caledonians—the fighting in chariots, which was now apparently confined to the ruder tribes of the north; but it is remarkable that he alludes neither to the practice of their staining their bodies with woad, nor to the supposed community of women among them. He shows that, in the wedge-like shape attributed to Britain by previous writers, Caledonia was excluded as still unknown to them. In the language put by the historian into the mouth of the Caledonian leader Calgacus, he implies in the strongest manner that the tribes embraced in the designation he usually gives them of inhabitants of Caledonia, were the most northerly of the British nations; that no other people dwelt beyond them; that they had neither cultivated lands, mines, nor harbours; and that he knew of no state of society among them resembling the promiscuous intercourse of women, as he mentions their children and kinsfolk, their wives and sisters, in language only consistent with the domestic relation in greater purity. He also implies that their normal condition was that of small communities or ‘civitates,’ who were independent of each other, and only united in one common action by a formal confederacy among themselves.
The fruit of Agricola’s campaigns being thus so speedily lost to the Romans, and the Caledonian tribes having, so far as subjugated by him, resumed their independence immediately after his recall, matters appear to have remained in the same state, in other respects, till the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. On his accession in the year 117, the Britons would seem to have threatened an insurrection; but of what really took place during the interval of thirty-six years between the recall of Agricola and the commencement of his reign we know nothing.
A.D. 120.
Arrival of the Emperor Hadrian, and first Roman wall between Tyne and Solway.
In the year 120 Hadrian visited Britain in person, when he appears to have put down any attempt at insurrection; and, having adopted, or rather originated, the policy of defending the frontiers of the Roman empire by great ramparts, he fixed the limits of the province in Britain at a line drawn from the Solway Firth on the west to the mouth of the river Tyne on the east, and constructed a great barrier designed to protect it equally against the incursions of the Barbarians or independent tribes to the north of it, and the revolt of those included within the province. It consists of ‘three parts—a stone wall strengthened by a ditch on its northern side; an earthen wall or vallum to the south of the stone wall; and stations, castles, watch-towers, and roads, for the accommodation of the soldiery who manned the wall, and for the transmission of military stores. These lie, for the most part, between the stone wall and earthen rampart.’ The stone wall extends from Wallsend on the Tyne to Bowness on the Solway, a distance of seventy-three and a half English miles. The earth wall falls short of this distance by about three miles at each end, not extending beyond Newcastle on the east, and terminating at Dykesfield on the west. The result of the most recent examination of the wall is that the whole is undoubtedly the work of Hadrian.[[54]]
Hadrian thus made no attempt to retain any part of the country conquered by Agricola in his last campaigns, but withdrew the frontier in one part even from where it had extended prior to Agricola’s government, in order to obtain a more advantageous line for his favourite mode of defence.
[19]. Orphei Argonaut. v. 1171, ἢν νήσοισιν Ἰέρνισιν ἆσσον ἵκωμαι.
[20]. Herodot. iii. 115.
[21]. Aristot. De Mundo, iii.
[22]. Polyb. iii. 87.