Since they had crossed the Solway and made their way north, the long column of legions would never have lost sight of a striking landmark. Singular and with a flat summit, Burnswark Hill rose up out of the Annandale Plain. Almost seven centuries before the Romans saw it, the kings of the Anavionenses had commanded the building of a rampart, creating what archaeologists used to call a hill fort. Many ramparts were dug on prominent hills in the first millennium BC by the peoples of Lowland Scotland but they were probably not forts. It seems that their symbolism outweighed any military rationale. Difficult to defend against assault with such long perimeters and usually a lack of a reliable water supply, hill forts were meant simply to look impressive – a statement of power – but they are much more likely to have been temples. Rather than defending against what might attack them from the outside, their ramparts marked off a sacred enclosure where priests and kings (perhaps the roles were often combined) performed rituals.
Scotland’s native society was Celtic in its nature when the legions marched north and hill forts may well have been the focus of the four main festivals of the year – Imbolc in late February, Beltane in early May, Lughnasa in August and, in late October, Samhuinn. These were the nodal points of the farming and stock-rearing year and the communities of Annandale, the Anavionenses, the people of Maben, almost certainly climbed Burnswark Hill to worship, celebrate and listen to the words of their priests and kings. When fires were lit inside the ramparts and music was played and sung, the gods drew near and the veil between the worlds lifted.
As was their prudent habit, Roman armies on the march dug overnight camps wherever they halted. Rudimentary affairs with a single ditch and a bank made from the upcast inside it, a camp could be created in a matter of an hour or two, such was the excellent training and coordinated command of Roman soldiers. It must have seemed extraordinary, even magical to anyone watching. The invading army dug a camp at Birrens, only three miles south-east of Burnswark Hill fort, probably their first since leaving Carlisle. Birrens was to have a long history, remaining occupied as a forward outpost even after Hadrian’s Wall was built fifty years later, and then after the frontier settled there at the end of the second century.
Birrens Fort became known as Blatobulgium. An informative name, it meant ‘the Meal-sack Place’, a central depot where the cereal harvest bought by Roman quartermasters was ingathered. The garrisons of the Wall needed to be fed and the use of Birrens as a depot more than suggests Annandale as a fertile area for corn-growing native farmers. It lay conveniently near the western end of the Wall and its large and hungry garrison. In order to ensure a regular supply, the Romans must have paid reasonable rates and the local economy sufficiently efficient to produce a surplus. More than that, the commercial relationship is unlikely to have been with a series of small suppliers rather with a native government of some kind – kings or an aristocracy – able to organise and enforce collection, probably as an element in local taxation.
The line of the modern A74 was no doubt a well-trodden track two thousand years ago but it was also the Romans’ chosen route north for another reason. From Corbridge in the east, another column also struck north, this time following what became Dere Street and finally the A68. The strategy was clear – a pincer movement to isolate the hostile territory which lay between.
The board had been set and the pieces now began to move into play. Between AD 79 and AD 83, imperial policy directed a huge and highly coordinated invasion and, when war burst over the native peoples of North Britain, it was to shine a vivid, even harsh, light on the land that was to become Scotland. For this was not to be a war fought in the half-light of ancient history but one which was recorded by a remarkable man. Tacitus wrote the Agricola only twenty years after the legions had waded across the Solway fords and, in its elegant and precise pages, Scotland’s history first comes alive.
3
As If Into a Different Island
FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, Publius Cornelius Tacitus had concealed his hatred for the Emperor Domitian, and concealed it very well. In AD 77 or 78, Tacitus married Julia Agricola, the daughter of a distinguished soldier and senator, and, soon after, began to climb the career ladder of Roman politics. When Domitian succeeded his brother Titus in 81, in suspicious circumstances, Tacitus continued to flourish, taking office as a quaestor, a magistrate with responsibility for public finances. Rising steadily in what the Romans called the cursus honorum (‘course of honours’), he became commander of a legion and then, almost certainly, governor of a province. Ironically, with his cognomen of Tacitus meaning ‘silent’, he acquired an unmatched reputation as an orator in the law courts and as a writer. As the plotters in the imperial palace whispered behind their hands and the spies listened for murmurs of treachery, silence may have served Tacitus well.
By 93, Domitian had retreated into increasingly vicious bouts of paranoia and Tacitus became involved in a series of purges of suspect fellow senators. There is more than a hint of self-disgust when, at last, he felt able to write of his own complicity:
[T]he senate-house [was] under siege, the senate hedged in by armed men, the killing of so many consulars in that same act of butchery, so many noble women forced into exile or flight . . . But soon we ourselves led Helvidius to prison, the faces of Mauricius and Rusticus put us to shame, we were stained by Senecio’s innocent blood. Nero at least averted his gaze: he ordered crimes to be committed but did not look on. A special torment under Domitian was to see him watching us, our very sighs being noted down against us, and all the while that savage gaze was able to mark down so many who had turned pale with shock, that flushed face that saved him blushing with shame.
Having been installed in the Senate by Domitian and probably designated as Consul by him, Tacitus must have stood in some danger when the Emperor was at last murdered in Rome in 96. But despite his involvement in the purges, so frankly admitted, he took up office and a year later wrote a remarkable biography of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola. Brief and concise, it is the first coherent written record of early Britain and, in particular, of North Britain.
The publication of books in Rome was usually marked by a public reading in front of an audience, probably invited by the author. One of Tacitus’ listeners is very likely to have been an interested party. Sextus Julius Frontinus had succeeded Petilius Cerialis as governor of Britain and been the immediate predecessor of Agricola. And he was living in Rome in 98. By that time Frontinus had become a grand old man and himself an author. Not only had he written a report on the state of the city’s aqueducts as Water Commissioner, a very prestigious office, he had also published a treatise on military science, the Strategemata. Frontinus’ own experiences in Britain are therefore likely to have been well known amongst the literate political elites and, while Tacitus may have been reporting events from the farthest ends of the empire, he will have known that an expert was listening and that rigour and accuracy were required.
After the reading of a new work, copyists then turned out several versions for sale or as gifts. Numbers must have been small for there is at least one example of an author recalling all the copies of one of his works in circulation so that he could make changes and corrections.
When Tacitus unrolled the first scroll of his De vita et moribus Agricolae and stood up to read from it, some time in 98, he must have relished the moment. Here, in a book, in a formal piece of history, was his opportunity to break his silence and speak his mind on recent events. The meat of the narrative is Agricola’s successful campaigns in North Britain, his defeat of the Caledonians at the famous battle at Mons Graupius and a triumphant expansion of the boundaries of the empire. But the political background to all these achievements is often touched on. Here is an early passage:
We have indeed provided a grand specimen of submissiveness. Just as the former age witnessed an extreme in freedom, so we have experienced the depths of servitude, deprived by espionage even of the intercourse of speaking and listening to one another. We should have
lost our memories as well as our voices, were it as easy to forget as to be silent.
A few paragraphs later, Tacitus rounds off his extraordinary introduction:
Nonetheless, it will not be an unpleasant task to put together, even in a rough and uncouth style, a record of our former servitude and a testimony to our present blessings. For the time being, this book, intended to honour Agricola, my father-in-law, will be commended, or at least excused, as a tribute of dutiful affection.
All history is partial and the Agricola was certainly written by a winner, a distinguished member of the Roman imperial aristocracy. But Tacitus’ motives, the sense of setting down a proper history, of clearing the air after the cruelties and corruptions of the evil reign of Domitian, have bequeathed at least a degree of objectivity. Agricola is never criticised but the Roman Empire certainly is and the narrative feels uniquely balanced. The barbarians of North Britain are not portrayed as witless savages and Rome is not seen as the fount of all good.
Two more possibilities lend weight to this view of Tacitus’ work. Agricola’s cognomen means what it sounds like, ‘the Farmer’. And it hints at an old jibe at provincialism. At the outset, Tacitus states that the great general came from Forum Julii, modern Frejus in Provence. The town lay in the province of Gallia Narbonensis and several very learned scholars believe that Tacitus’ family also originated there. And, in the letters of the Younger Pliny, there is a probable reference to Tacitus speaking with a Celtic accent.
What should also inform a reading of the Agricola is the likelihood that the young man accompanied his father-in-law when he was appointed governor of Britain in 77 or 78. It was usual for powerful men to help in the advancement of the careers of their close relatives and Tacitus may have been appointed as a military tribune.
What all of this adds up to is an unusual sympathy for the subject matter of this short history. Accuracy may have been enhanced by some first-hand reporting and description of North Britain and its culture made more vivid by an understanding of a more distant Celtic milieu, that of Gallia Narbonensis. Gaulish was beginning to wither by Tacitus’ time, as Latin slowly became the popular language, but he may have heard enough and observed enough to make better sense of what North British society was like.
The North British were very likely to have known a good deal about Roman society or, at least, the Roman army. Although no written records of their views have survived, it is impossible to believe that those who ruled the peoples of the north were ignorant of the greatest empire the world had yet seen. Perhaps some of these kings accompanied the Orcadians when they arrived at Colchester to submit to the Emperor Claudius in AD 43. The triumphal arch raised in Rome in AD 51 carries an inscription which counted eleven British kings bowing in subjection. One was almost certainly absent – a king who had sent warriors south down the hill trails to fight against the legions as they moved the imperial frontier up to the Cheviots.
As Roman provincial administration established itself in southern Britain in the decades after the Claudian conquest, an alliance was made with the Brigantes, the peoples of the Pennines, parts of west Yorkshire, Lancashire and possibly Cumbria. Tacitus called them ‘the most populous state in the whole province’. Their queen, Cartimandua, was amenable to Roman diplomacy but her consort, Venutius, led a rebellion in the 70s AD. At Stanwick Fort, near Scotch Corner, Petilius Cerialis’ legions overran the breakaway Brigantians. Tacitus reported that they had ‘help from outside’ and that can only be a reference to allies in the north.
These were almost certainly the Selgovae. Tacitus did not attach a name to the kindred which sent a contingent of warriors to man the ramparts at Stanwick (in fact, he supplied maddeningly few names) and they first appear on a map drawn by Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek geographer of the mid second century AD. He drew on information gathered before and during the invasion of the north. Agricola had sent ships to circumnavigate Britain, make contact with native kings and gather as much intelligence as possible. When Ptolemy came to compile his map, it is striking that the inland territories of kindreds and the general level of detail is much more precise and dense south of the line of the Forth–Clyde isthmus. To the north, names are plotted in coastal regions and there is a look of sparseness in the inland areas. Which implies a reliance on the information collected by the Agricolan ships.
The Selgovae appear to have inhabited the hill country of the upper Tweed Valley and stretched west to Annandale and south to the Cheviot ranges. Like several others noted by Ptolemy, their name means something. Derived form the Celtic root seilg, it meant ‘the Hunters’ and may have been a reference to an ancient way of life in a wilder part of the north. As hill peoples, they were probably stockmen who ran herds of sheep and cattle and continued the traditions of the hunt. It is more than coincidence that one of the greatest medieval hunting grounds, the Ettrick Forest, lay in the lands of the Selgovae.
In the heart of this ancient kingdom, at the foot of the steep slopes of Horsehope Craig in the Manor Valley near the modern town of Peebles, a shepherd was working his dogs in the spring of 1859. They were ingathering ewes, bringing them down off the hillsides at lambing time. It was a sunny morning and amongst the scatter of the scree at the bottom of the craig, the dull glint of metal caught the shepherd’s eye. Lifting some smaller stones away from the base of a large boulder, he pulled out a beautifully made, socketed axe head and some small metal rings. Having marked the spot, the shepherd put the strange objects in his pocket and walked down the Manor Water to Glenrath to find the farmer, Mr Linton.
When both men returned that afternoon to the scree, they moved aside more stones to discover a large hoard of bronze objects. Another axe head came to light, many more metal rings, various metal bands and some small mountings with designs of concentric circles inscribed on them. Mr Linton and his sharp-eyed shepherd found twenty-nine objects in all and, apart from the axe heads, they were recognised as the components of a miniature wagon or cart, something made as a gift or for display, too small to be practical. A provisional date of 750 BC was attached.
* * *
The Yarrow Stone
High in the hills of the Ettrick Forest is a fascinating place. Near the farm of Whitehope is a surviving string of standing stones and one of them has a Christian inscription on it. It reads:
Here an everlasting memorial.
In this place lie the most famous princes, Nudus and Dumnogenus,
Two sons of Liberalis.
Whitehope is deep in the ancient territory of the Selgovae but this sixth-century gravestone hints at political annexation. ‘Liberalis’ is almost certainly a reference to the first powerful Strathclyde king, Rhydderch Hael. Hael means ‘generous’ and in Latin that translates as liberalis. Perhaps the lands of the Selgovae had come under Rhydderch’s sway. Nudus and Dumnogenus, with their Romanised names, may not have been his sons but his underkings.
* * *
The Horsehope Craig finds appear to have been a ritual deposit, an offering made to the old gods by a society which valued well-crafted metalwork and whose elites premiated horses, harness and horse-drawn transport. The early kings of the Selgovae and their men rode to war either on horseback or in chariots pulled by ponies. Other finds dating after 500 BC and later confirm the intimate link between the war bands of the Cheviots and Southern Uplands and their ponies and, even later, a generation after the Agricolan invasion of their territory, written sources from the Roman fort of Vindolanda agree that ‘there are very many cavalry’ amongst the kindreds to the north of the Stanegate frontier, the line which later became Hadrian’s Wall.
The charioteers and the warriors they drove into battle spoke a Celtic language. It was an ancestor of modern Welsh, what language historians call P-Celtic or Continental Celtic. Tacitus would have heard its cousin dialects in Gallia Narbonensis, in Gaul itself and as far east as Dalmatia, even to the banks of the Danube. Place names, kindred names, like Selgovae, and the few personal names recorded by Ptolemy and other anc
ient geographers and historians support the notion of a wide distribution of Continental Celtic.
The language appears to have spread through trade and technology. In central Europe, north of the Alps, metalworking developed to a highly sophisticated degree and the first hard and very sharp iron spears and swords were hammered out by smiths who spoke Continental Celtic. As their much sought-after output moved along trade routes so did their language. And how they moved those goods was also important. Latin generally borrowed little from Celtic languages and the cultural traffic seems to have flowed in the opposite direction. But in the first millennium BC it seems that a clutch of vocabulary around the technology of wheeled vehicles was transferred. The words carrus for ‘a handcart’, raeda for ‘a coach’, carpentum for ‘a carriage’ and many other related Latin terms are derived from Continental Celtic. In this at least, it seems that the Romans had something to learn from the Celts.
The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland Page 5