[74]. Dio, 75, 76, 77; Herodian, iii. 7; Capitolin. Clod. Alb. c. 9; Eutropius, viii. 18.
[75]. From Magh, a plain. The same word seems to enter into the name Vacomagi.
[76]. Colonel Gurwood’s Speeches of the Duke of Wellington, vol. ii. p. 729.
[77]. At Habitancum, a station on Watling Street, on the south bank of the Rede, inscriptions have been found showing that Severus restored the gate and repaired the walls of the station. See Bruce’s Roman Wall, p. 384.
[78]. These camps are as follows—viz., Wardykes, near Keithock; Raedykes, near Stonehaven; Normandykes, on the Dee; and Raedykes, on the Ythan.
[79]. The account of the campaigns of Severus, and of the state of the hostile nations at the time, is given at length in the two independent narratives of Dio (as abridged by Xiphiline) and Herodian, and therefore rests upon peculiarly firm ground. A great deal too much has been made of the Mæatæ by previous historians. It has been stated, as if it were a name in general use and applied to the tribes between the walls during the whole period of the Roman occupation of Britain; but the fact is that the Mæatæ are mentioned by Dio alone, and on this occasion only. We never hear of them before or after. Innes and Chalmers talk of the Mæatæ or Midland Britons (that fatal or of historians implying an identity assumed but not proved), as if there were some analogy between the names. There is none. The term Midland Britons nowhere occurs, and the root of the name Mæatæ is probably the word for a plain, nearly the same in Welsh and Gaelic—Maes, Magh. That both nations were in Caledonia is plain, independently of the position that the wall alluded to by Dio is the wall between the Forth and the Clyde, for Dio styles them both ‘the inhabitants of that part of Britain which is hostile to us,’ that is, extra-provincial. Moreover, Dio’s expression ‘advanced into Caledonia,’ is the equivalent of Herodian’s, ‘he passed beyond the rivers and fortresses that defended the Roman territory.’ That Severus constructed roads and built bridges is emphatically stated by both Dio and Herodian, and it is to him alone that the classical historians attribute such works in Britain.
[80]. The Horesti are mentioned in the inscription noticed in chap. i., Note [52]. The other inscription is as follows—‘In H.D.D. Baioli et vexillarii Collegio Victoriensium signiferorum Genum de suo fecerunt viii. kal. Octobr. Presente et Albino Cos.’ which places it in 239.
[81]. That Severus built or had reconstructed a wall in Britain rests upon the direct authority of Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Spartian, Orosius, and Eusebius. Spartian, who wrote in 280, says (c. 18), ‘Britanniam, quod maximum ejus imperii decus est, muro per transversam insulam ducto, utrimque ad finem oceani munivit.’ Unfortunately he does not give the length of the wall, which would have indicated its position; but he also says (c. 22), ‘Post murum aut vallum missum in Britannia, quum ad proximam mansionem rediret, non solum victor, sed etiam in aeternum pace fundata;’ which shows that it was after his expedition into Caledonia; and it is rather remarkable that at Cramond—the proxima mansio—behind the wall of Antoninus, was found a medal of Severus, having on the reverse the inscription, ‘fundator pacis.’ Aurelius Victor, who wrote 360, says, ‘His majora aggressus Britanniam quae ad ea utilis erat, pulsis hostibus, muro munivit, per transversam insulam ducto, utrimque ad finem oceani’ (De Caes. 20). And again: ‘Hic in Britannia vallum per triginta duo passuum millia a mari ad mare deduxit’ (Epit. 40). And Eutropius, who wrote at the same time, says, ‘Novissimum bellum in Britannia habuit: utque receptas provincias omni securitate muniret, vallum per 32 millia passuum a mari ad mare deduxit’ (viii. 19).
Both these writers place the construction of the vallum after the war, and if it was thirty-two Roman miles in length, it can only have extended across the peninsula between the Forth and the Clyde. Orosius, who wrote in 417, says, ‘Severus victor in Britannias defectu pene omnium sociorum trahitur. Ubi magnis gravibusque praeliis saepe gestis, receptam partem insulae a caeteris indomitis gentibus vallo distinguendam putavit. Itaque magnam fossam firmissimumque vallum, crebris insuper turribus communitum, per centum triginta et duo millia passuum a mari ad mare duxit.’ Eusebius, as reported by St. Jerome, says, ‘Severus in Britannos bellum transfert, ubi, ut receptas provincias ab incursione barbarica faceret securiores, vallum per 132 passuum millia a mari ad mare duxit.’
The length here given of 132 Roman miles is as inconsistent with the distance between the Tyne and the Solway, as it is with that between the Forth and the Clyde. Horsley, who considered that the earthen vallum between the Tyne and the Solway was the work of Hadrian, and the murus or wall which runs parallel to it, the work of Severus, supposed that in the original MS. of these writers the distance had been written LXXXII and that C had been written by mistake for L, which would reduce the distance to eighty-two miles; but no MS. supports this conjecture, and Mr. Bruce, in his work on the wall, clearly establishes that both are the work of Hadrian.