[50]. Chalmers has narrated the Roman campaigns with a strange affectation of military language. He makes the Roman troops debouch, defile, and deploy through the hills and in the glens in the most wonderful manner, so as to have rendered the cutting off of the whole army at any point of their progress no very difficult task to the natives. He involves the troops in this march, when the army was divided into three, among the remains of small camps in the hilly region of the west of Fife in a manner to render the real account of the transaction very unintelligible. General Roy, with correcter military knowledge, but without attending to the narrative with sufficient minuteness, is not more fortunate. He supposes that Agricola’s position was at the camp at Ardoch, and that, when he divided his army into three, he remained there with the main division, and sent the ninth legion to Comrie, and the other division to Strageath, at both of which places there are the remains of Roman camps; but, independently of the expression ‘incessit,’ which implies a march forward, conceive an able general sending the weakest legion into the heart of the Grampians, at a distance of nine miles from the main body, through an almost impassable country. So far from preventing the army from being surrounded, it sent its weakest division into the midst of the enemy. In what sense, too, could Agricola be said to have followed on the enemy’s track, and how could he, between night and daybreak, have received news of the attack, and have traversed what must have been, without roads, a long day’s march? It is obvious, on a careful attention to Tacitus’s expressions, that the three divisions could have been at no great distance from each other, and the main division nearest the enemy. There is a plan of the camp at Lintrose in General Roy’s Military Antiquities, Plate XIV., which will show how singularly it corresponds with the narrative.
[51]. Tacitus commences the campaign in which the ninth legion was attacked by stating that it was in the sixth year of Agricola’s administration; and in his speech before the battle at Mons Granpius he says it was then the eighth year, and that the attack on the ninth legion had taken place the preceding year. This apparent discrepancy has been usually solved by supposing the word eighth a mistake for seventh, but it is more probable that the previous campaign had lasted two years. Tacitus, after the fifth year, ceases to mark the separate campaigns with the same precision, and, perhaps, was not unwilling to gloss over the little real progress that had been made during the last three years. The expression, ‘Ad manus et arma conversi Caledoniam incolentes populi,’ probably marks the commencement of the second year of the campaign.
[52]. In a recent edition of the Life of Agricola, from two Vatican MSS., by Carolus Wex, published in 1852, he substitutes Tanaus, Mons Graupius, and Boresti, for the Taus, Mons Grampius, and Horesti of the ordinary editions as the correct reading of these MSS., and Mr. Burton has at once adopted the two former readings. The author, however, questions their accuracy. It is hardly possible to distinguish u from n in such MSS., and they are constantly interchanged. That Tauaus is the correct reading of the first, is plain from the form of the name in Ptolemy, Ταούα or Tava, and the real form of the second he cannot doubt was Granpius. The combination of a u or v with a labial is rarely met in Celtic words. That of the dental with the labial is very common, as in Banba, an old name for Ireland; Conpur, where the same combination occurs. As to the third there is fortunately an inscription on a Roman altar at Neuwied, brought from the Roman station of Nieder Biebr on the Rhine, where some British cohorts in the Roman army were stationed in the third century, in the following terms:—
Idus Octob. Giinio
Hor. N. Brittonum
A. Ib. kiomarius op. fi
Us. posit tum quinta
nensis pos. nt. v. h. m.
which Mr. Roach Smith thus renders:—Idus Octobris Genio Horestorum numeri Brittonum. A. Ibkiomarus Obfius posuit titulum quintanensis posuerunt votum hoc monumentum (Collectanea, ii. part v. p. 133), which seems to leave no doubt as to Horesti being the correct form, and does not inspire one with much confidence in Wex’s new readings, sanctioned as they are by Mr. Burton.
[53]. There has been no point in the history of the Roman occupation of Scotland which has been more contested, or made the subject of more conflicting theories, than the position of this great battle. Gordon thought it was at Dealgan Ross, near Comrie. Chalmers, with, less difficulty, from the size of the camp, at Ardoch; others in Fife, and latterly a favourite theory has placed it at Urie in Kincardineshire. Mr. Burton abandons the attempt as hopeless.