Celtic Scotland

by W. F. Skene

The great extent of the province, and the difficulty experienced in defending it, probably led to Roman Britain being now divided into two provinces. Herodian distinctly tells us that after the war with Albinus, Severus settled matters in Britain, dividing it into two governments, and Dio alludes to them under the names of Upper and Lower Britain. It is impossible now to ascertain the precise relative position of the two provinces; but the older province of Britain, formed in the reign of Claudius, seems to have been one, while the other probably embraced the later conquests of the Romans from the Humber to the Firths of Forth and Clyde, comprising mainly the great nation of the Brigantes with its dependent tribes. Dio states that the second and twentieth legions were stationed in Upper Britain, while Ptolemy places the one at Isca Silurum or Caerleon; and both Ptolemy and the Itinerary of Antonine place the other at Deva, now Chester. The sixth legion was stationed, according to Dio, in Lower Britain, and Ptolemy as well as the Itinerary of Antonine place it at York, which is the only indication we have of the situation of the two provinces.

These few meagre and incidental notices are all that we possess of the state of the Roman occupation of Britain, from the clear and detailed account given by Tacitus of Agricola’s campaigns, to the second great attempt to subdue the northern tribes, which we are now approaching. The one great feature of this intermediate period was the construction of the great rampart between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the fixing of that boundary as the frontier of the province—the line of separation between the provincial Britons and the barbarian or independent tribes. To the few emphatic words of the historian of Antoninus, the remains of the great work itself, and the inscriptions found in its vicinity, add confirmation and a definite locality; and the great boundary at the Firths of Forth and Clyde became from thenceforth the recognised and permanent frontier of the Roman province.

A.D. 208.
Campaign of the Emperor Severus in Britain.

While Severus remained at Rome, after the defeat and death of Albinus, he received letters from the prefect of Britain announcing that the independent tribes had again broken loose and were in a state of open hostility, overrunning the province, driving off booty, and laying everything waste; and that it would be necessary for him either to send additional troops, or to come in person, to take steps for the protection of the province. The latter was the course adopted by Severus. Accompanied by his two sons, and from age and disease travelling in a litter, he arrived in Britain in the year 208, and drawing his troops together from all quarters, and concentrating a vast force, he prepared for war. His object in these great preparations was apparently not merely to repel the incursions of the enemy, but effectually to prevent them from renewing them by striking a severe blow, and carrying the war, as Agricola had done before him, into their fastnesses and the interior of the country.

Situation of hostile tribes.

When this war again drew the attention of the Roman historians to the state of the barbarian or hostile tribes, they found them in a very different situation from what they had been when so vividly painted by Tacitus, and so minutely described by Ptolemy. Instead of their condition as described by the former, who only knew them as a number of separate and independent tribes, inhabiting a part of Britain known by the name of Caledonia, and whom the imminence of the Roman invasion alone united into a temporary confederacy, they are now found combined into two nations, bearing the names respectively of ‘Caledonii’ and ‘Mæatæ,’ for into these two, says the historian Dio as abridged by Xiphiline, ‘were the names of the others merged.’ The nation of the ‘Mæatæ’ consisted of those tribes which were situated next the wall between the Forth and Clyde on the north. The ‘Caledonii’ lay beyond them. The former inhabited the more level districts, or, as the historian describes them, the plains and marshes, from which indeed they probably derived their name.[^[75]] The latter occupied the more mountainous region beyond them. There is no reason to suppose that the line of separation between them differed very much from that which divided the tribe of the ‘Caledonii,’ as described by Ptolemy, from those on the south and east of them.

The manners of the two nations are described as the same, and they are viewed by the historians in these respects as if they were but one people. They are said to have neither walls nor cities, as the Romans regarded such, and to have neglected the cultivation of the ground. They lived by pasturage, the chase, and the natural fruits of the earth. The great characteristics of the tribes believed to be indigenous were found to exist among them. They fought in chariots, and to their arms of the sword and shield, as described by Tacitus, they had now added a short spear of peculiar construction, having a brazen knob at the end of the shaft, which they shook to terrify their enemies, and likewise a dagger. They are said to have had community of women, and the whole of their progeny were reared as the joint offspring of each small community. And the third great characteristic, the custom of painting the body, attracted particular notice. They are described as puncturing their bodies, so as, by a process of tattooing, to produce the representation of animals, and to have refrained from clothing, in order that what they considered an ornament should not be hidden.

But in these descriptions it must be remembered that the Romans only saw them in summer, and when actually engaged in war; and that, like the American Indians in their war-paint, their appearance might be very different, and convey a totally erroneous impression of their social habits, from what really existed among them in their domestic state.

The arrival of the Emperor himself in Britain, and the vigorous preparations Severus at once made, caused great alarm among the hostile tribes, and they sent ambassadors to sue for peace. They had hitherto easily obtained it; but it was not Severus’s intention to depart from his purpose of total subjugation, and he dismissed the ambassadors without a decided answer, and without avowing his purpose, and proceeded with his preparations. When these had been completed, and a larger force collected than had ever yet been arrayed against them, Severus left his son Geta in the province, and taking his son Antoninus with him, he ‘passed the fortresses and rivers which guarded the frontier, and entered Caledonia.’ Severus had seen that the nature of the country had hitherto in the main prevented the Romans from penetrating far, or their conquests from being permanent in the north. The numerous natural bulwarks, the wide-spreading woods, and the extensive marshes, interposed almost insurmountable obstacles. What are now extensive plains, well-watered straths, and rich carses, must then have presented the appearance of a jungle or bush of oak, birch, or hazel; the higher ground rocky and barren, and the lower soft and marshy. If the native tribes were for a time subdued, and their strongholds taken, they could not be maintained in such a country by the Romans, and the natives speedily regained possession. The policy adopted by Severus was the true mode of overcoming such obstacles—to open up the country and render it passable for troops by clearing the jungles, forming roads in every direction, and throwing bridges over the rivers, so as to penetrate slowly with his troops and enable them to continue in possession of the districts as they occupied them in their advance through the country.

There could not be a better illustration of what a war between the Romans and these outlying tribes at this time really was, and how Severus dealt with it, than a few extracts from a speech by the Duke of Wellington upon our war at the Cape with the Kaffir tribes beyond the Colony in 1852. He says,—‘The operations of the Kaffirs have been carried on by the occupation of extensive regions, which in some places are called jungle, in others bush: but in reality it is thick-set, the thickest wood that can be found anywhere. The Kaffirs having established themselves in these fastnesses with their plunder, on which they exist, their assailants suffer great losses. They move away with more or less celerity and activity, sometimes losing and sometimes saving their plunder, but they always evacuate their fastnesses; our troops do not, cannot, occupy these places. They would be useless to them, and in point of fact, they could not live in them. The enemy moves off, and is attacked again; and the consequence is, to my certain knowledge, under the last three Governments, that some of these fastnesses have been attacked three or four times over, and on every occasion with great loss to the assailants. There is a remedy for these evils: when these fastnesses are stormed and captured, they should be totally destroyed. I have had a good deal to do with such guerilla warfare, and the only mode of subduing a country like that is to open roads into it, so as to admit of troops with the utmost facility. It is absolutely necessary that roads should be opened immediately into these fastnesses.... The only fault I can find with Sir Harry Smith’s operations is, that he has not adopted the plan of opening such roads, after he had attacked and taken these fastnesses. I have, however, instructed him to do so in future; but it is a work of great labour; it will occupy a considerable time, and can only be executed at great expense.’[^[76]]