The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  Behind them or next to them was the territory of the Caledonii. The likelihood is that their kings ruled the lands to the north and west of their confederates. Unlike them, their name has endured, and expanded its meaning to include all Scots.

  The treaty concluded by Virius Lupus did not last long. By 207 the warbands of the Maeatae and the Caledonii were mustering once more for raids to the south. The new Governor of Britannia, Alfenus Senecio, wrote an urgent despatch:

  . . . the barbarians had risen and were overrunning the country, carrying off booty and causing great destruction . . . for effective defence more troops or the presence of the Emperor was necessary.

  This request was not made lightly. No governor wanted the massive burden of an imperial visit and all the disruption – and scrutiny – involved. The Maeatae and the Caledonii had probably made serious inroads; their hardy little ponies would have been capable of long distances and would have thought nothing of making 50 miles a day over difficult country. The warbands had probably penetrated deep into the richest part of the province, bypassing or overrunning Hadrian’s Wall, staying clear of the main roads and the legionary fortresses.

  Severus made immediate preparations for a campaign in Britain. Some historians have suggested that his main motive was the usual desire for prestige, but it was far too late in Severus’ reign for him to bother about that. Britannia was probably in uproar, and Alfenus Senecio’s request desperate.

  The imperial expedition into Scotland and the heartlands of the insurgents was to be primarily focused on the east coast and heavily supported by sea. The fort at South Shields, at the mouth of the Tyne, was converted into a massive supply dump with no less than twenty-three granaries built to store food. It has been calculated that there was enough for an army of 40,000 men for three months in the field. Corbridge also saw new building, and at Cramond, west of Edinburgh, on the Forth shore, the old Antonine fort was refurbished.

  The intended target was Tayside, the territory of the Maeatae. It seems likely that the German fleet, and perhaps even the Danube river flotilla, were brigaded with the Classis Britannica as transports and supply ships. And in 208 Septimius Severus, the imperial family, a senatorial council, most of the enlarged Praetorian Guard, detachments from several legions and the whole administrative apparatus of the Roman Empire arrived in Britain. And the dark and shifting shadows of palace intrigue came with it.

  Based at the legionary fortress at York, Severus planned his campaign in the north. Contemporary historians recorded that part of the reason he came to fight in Britannia was to toughen up his sons, Caracalla and Geta, and to remove them from the fevered and unhealthy atmosphere of Rome. Probably because he did not trust him, the old Emperor decided to take Caracalla with him on campaign – where he could keep a wary eye on him. Severus’ judgement turned out to be sound. Geta was set in charge of the province (what happened to Alfenus Senecio is not recorded) so that he could gain experience of government. The Empress, Julia Domna, was also at the fortress in York. Having regained her influence at court, she was to continue to play a motive role in imperial politics for the following two reigns.

  When the huge Roman army rumbled northward, most of them marching up Dere Street, some on transports, all of them supplied and shadowed by the fleet, the kings of the Maeatae and the Caledonii will have shuddered. Severus’ sprawling strike force was strung out on the metalled road for at least 8 kilometres, well screened by cavalry, the eagles flashing in the summer sun, the menacing thud of marching feet and rattling carts audible for miles. The army was so huge that it took four days to cover the 60 kilometres between Newstead and Inveresk on the Forth. When the mensores were pegging out the ramparts of the next camp, soldiers had only just passed through the gates of the one before. As they halted each afternoon, enormous temporary camps were dug, the largest at 165 acres. Thousands of cooking fires will have lit the night sky. Scouts no doubt reported back and the native kings sent envoys to offer peace. The Emperor brushed them aside, and the might of Rome swept on into Scotland.

  At Carpow, on the southern shore of the upper Tay estuary, probably in the territory of the friendly Venicones, Severus’ legions built a base. It could be supplied and reinforced by sea, and it looked west into the glens of the Maeatae; Strathearn, Strathtay and Glenalmond all lay within marching distance. Across the estuary the fertile fields of the Carse of Gowrie and Strathmore to the north may also have been readily reached. A coin minted in 208 shows troops crossing a bridge, and the historian Herodian had heard of plans made by Severus’ commanders which anticipated water barriers to the advance. Perhaps the Tay was crossed by a bridge of pontoons from Carpow.

  In any event no pitched battles or decisive victories were recorded for the great army. Archaeologists believe that they penetrated far to the north, to the Moray coastlands, maybe as far as Agricola, but it seems that the Maeatae and the Caledonii would not be drawn into a set-piece. They probably scorched the earth and forced Severus and Caracalla to rely completely on their fleet. In turn that shortened any campaigning season. Instead of glory in battle, the emphasis may have to have been on great engineering projects – like a bridge across the Tay – how the Roman army could tame the landscape, and its inhabitants, with technology. A treaty appears to have been made and territory ceded. In 210 more coins were struck and victory in Britain was celebrated.

  PALATINE PALACE

  The English word ‘palace’ derives from the name of the hill in Rome where the emperors had theirs. Originally the location of Augustus’ house, it developed quickly into a large imperial compound. Domitian greatly enlarged the Palatine and by the time Septimius Severus became emperor, he was forced to have a platform built on the flanks of the hill and his residence plonked on top. To hide it, Septimius’ architects built an ornamental screen which came to be known as the Septizonium. On another platform, this time on the north-western side, Elagabalus had his temple to the Syrian sun-god erected. The Palatine was not defended by walls but closely patrolled by the fearsome Praetorians. And it was handy for the Circus Maximus, the arena used for chariot racing. There was a passageway from the palace leading directly to the imperial box.

  The treaties held for a year. In the summer of 211 the kings of the Maeatae and the Caledonii mustered their warriors once more and attacked the Roman garrisons. Severus was too ill to lead the legions north, and Caracalla went in his place. This time the strategy was brutally single-minded, nothing less than the annihilation of the warbands and the society which sustained them. But bloodshed seems to have been prevented by a single death. In the fortress at York, Septimius Severus died and Caracalla seems to have broken off his campaign to turn his immediate attention to the succession. In addition to paying the army, the old Emperor had exhorted his sons to act together. But his judgement of Caracalla was good. Seeing his chance with the army under his command on Tayside, he tried to persuade his senior staff to use their men to acclaim him as sole emperor. They would not, and Caracalla was forced to hurry south to York, or possibly London, to confer with his brother, Geta, and his mother, Julia Domna. There might be other claimants from outside the imperial family and it was best to present a united front, for the moment. Severus had intended his sons to succeed him as joint emperors and that was the legal position. At Carpow, detachments of the II Augusta were left, probably a significant presence. They were certainly still on the Tay in 212. An undignified retreat, a complete abandonment of the war in the north, would have made Caracalla look weak.

  By 212 he looked strong. Having disposed of his brother, Caracalla reigned as sole emperor and he quickly set about reorganising Britannia. In order to reduce the risk of governors making an attempt on the throne with the backing of the entire garrison of three legions, the province was divided in two. Because it lay further from Rome, the north was renamed Britannia Inferior, or Lower Britain. It included the VI Legion at York and probably the garrison of the Wall. Britannia Superior, or Upper Britain, comprised the south and
the legions based at Chester and Caerleon.

  Caracalla strengthened the frontier. The fabric of the Wall itself was altered slightly: some turrets in the central sector were abandoned, the curtain repaired, and new, grander bridges crossed the North Tyne at Chesters and the Irthing at Willowford. At milecastles the double gateways to the north had probably been little used by carts and horsemen and they were blocked up and replaced by small postern gates. Elsewehere many forts saw refurbishment and even some new building.

  The most striking aspect of Caracalla’s frontier strategy could be seen forward of the Wall. In the west, two outpost forts were reinforced. Netherby, in the Esk Valley north of Carlisle, was known as Castra Exploratorum, the Fort of the Scouts. And it seems that the new emphasis was on patrolling and intelligence gathering. At Bewcastle, north of the Wall at Birdoswald, the fort was essentially better adapted to suit its site. Now it can only be reached by a single-track road and feels as though it stands in the middle of nowhere, with grey and dun-coloured moorland stretching away to the Bewcastle Fells. But in fact the fort lay astride a well-ridden route taken by raiders for millennia. In the sixteenth century Elizabeth I’s government used Roman stone to rebuild what amounted to a small, squat castle to hold a troop of light cavalry. Their purpose was to police the hill trails followed by reivers from Liddesdale down into the Irthing Valley. The Romans probably built Bewcastle with a similar purpose in mind.

  In the east, the fort at Bremenium, now High Rochester, commanded Dere Street as it climbed up towards the watershed at the Carter Bar. The reconstructed walls of the fort and three of the original gateways can be seen from considerable distances by those travelling along the line of the Roman road. Between it and the Wall, the fort at Habitancum, now Risingham, was really formidable. A milliary cohort of 1,000 mixed cavalry and infantry was based there along with a unit of scouts and a detachment of spearmen from Raetia, modern Switzerland. The fort is too small to accommodate all of these soldiers, even allowing for below-strength numbers, and it seems likely that some were either outposted elsewhere or that patrolling was constant and undertaken in force, or both. Traces of third-century Roman activity have been found at Jedburgh and at Tweedmouth, south of Berwick.

  Caracalla’s strategy worked. The evacuation of Scotland and the thickening of the frontier zone discouraged incursion, and for seventy years the Wall held firm. But successful Roman retrenchment would have been seen differently by the bards of the Maeatae, the Caledonii and the Selgovae. The great Empire had been driven back, the turf wall overrun, and even though they had the effrontery to patrol, the Roman scouts rode through a hostile land. Most of them cowered behind their Wall!

  In the reign of Caracalla it became an even more meaningful divide. In 212 he proclaimed that all free men who lived within the bounds of the Empire would become citizens of Rome. Cives had real legal standing, rights which could offer protection and redress. If the miserable Brittunculi of Vindolanda lived on the right side of the Wall, they were now as Roman as the senators who strolled around the Forum. What this meant in practice is of course another matter, and social class and economic clout will have continued to outweigh all other considerations.

  ROMAN AFRICA

  Money brings power and, by the end of the second century, the economy of Roman North Africa was booming. Septimius Severus was the first – but by no means the last – African to come to great prominence in the Empire. The old Carthaginian empire had drawn its wealth from the fertile fields of what is now modern Tunisia and the green coastal strips to both east and west. Rainfall was regular and irrigation opened up new areas for the cultivation of olives and corn. Only Egypt produced more of the latter. The cities of North Africa prospered, and at El Djem stands a huge amphitheatre. Throughout the entire Empire only the Colosseum in Rome was larger. All of this abundance was protected by geography. In the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert to the south, relatively few people lived and therefore the cost of defending the provincial frontier was nothing like as heavy as in Britain.

  Caracalla was murdered in 217 by one of his bodyguards, evidently a man with a personal grievance to settle, and was succeeded by another African emperor, Macrinus, but he managed only a year. The army intervened once more and, loyal to the family of Septimius Severus, the Syrian legions backed Elagabalus. He was only fourteen years old and the hereditary high priest of a local sun-god cult at Emesa. His unlikely promotion to the purple is explained by the shadowy machinations of the old Empress, Julia Domna. Before her marriage, she had been a Syrian princess, and Elagabalus was the son of her great-niece, and almost certainly her puppet.

  The cult of Emesa, complete with its sacred black stone, was uplifted and relocated to a temple on the Palatine Hill in Rome. While Elagabalus celebrated strange and sexually exotic rituals in the worship of the sun-god, the Senate were at first puzzled, then embarrassed at the antics of the young Emperor, and finally hostile. He was insisting that his Syrian god be installed as the supreme god of the Empire. And then everyone would have to cavort around like Elagabalus. Symbolic marriages, divorces, remarriages and adoptions followed in rapid sequence, and the young Emperor was finally murdered in 222 and replaced by Severus Alexander. Although he lasted a good deal longer, until his assassination in 235, both his and succeeding emperors’ total dependence on the support of the army began a damaging cycle. Between the death of Alexander and the end of the third century, there were fifteen emperors and many more candidates supported by various legions. The lowest point came in 260 when the Emperor Valerian was defeated and captured by the Persian king, Shapur I. Miserable and humiliated, he died a prisoner.

  Insulated and remote, Britannia appeared to be little affected by the seething convulsions of imperial intrigue and infighting. The Wall garrison had been increased by a third, from just under 9,000 men in the reign of Hadrian to 12,000 under Caracalla. And the units began to settle, with few changes and almost certainly more and more local recruitment. After Septimius Severus permitted soldiers to marry, there seems to have been an attempt to house them differently inside the forts. Instead of the old barrack blocks with communal sleeping quarters for each platoon, or contubernium, new chalet-style rooms were built. At Vindolanda, Wallsend, Great Chesters, Risingham and High Rochester, this sort of accommodation has been detected, while at Housesteads the earth rampart backing onto the fort’s walls was removed and new buildings erected.

  The vici, the civil settlements, probably also expanded as a result of Severus’ edict, and archaeologists see the third century as a period of some vigour along the Wall. But there appears to have been very little fighting. The continuing turmoil in Rome may have persuaded governors of Lower Britain to buy off the northern kings with more bribery.

  Against a background of some security, Carlisle began to develop as an urban centre. Luguvalium, a name incorporating the Celtic god, Lugh, was little more than a fort built by Petilius Cerialis during his campaign of 71 to 74 in the north. After the establishment of the frontier along the line of the Wall, and the fort across the Eden at Stanwix was built, Carlisle slowly began to develop. Its site was attractive. Cerialis had had the fort built on the promontory where the castle now stands, and it was bounded on three sides by rivers and marshy ground but accessible from the south, up a gentle slope. That was where the vicus first developed, and keyhole archaeology has found early wooden buildings around the area of Blackfriars Street.

  By the middle of the third century Carlisle had grown sufficiently to merit promotion. Named as the Civitas Carvetiorum, it became the principal urban centre in the lands of the Carvetii, the Deer People, what appears to have been the Eden Valley, North Cumbria and the lower Irthing Valley. Literally meaning a city-state, a civitas was run by the ordo, a council of decuriones, men of property drawn from the region as well as the town: more a county council than a town council. At full complement, the ordo of a civitas had 100 members with property over a certain value but in a relatively less wealthy part of Britanni
a; not all owned grand houses in Carlisle. Many probably had estates in the landward area.

  Based on the ancestral lands of the Carvetii, the civitas was probably run by decurions who were mostly native aristocrats that had become partly Romanised, or at least wished to participate in Roman-style local government. They were expected to endow civic projects personally, just as Roman aristocrats were in the habit of doing, and also they probably paid a fee for the privilege of being a decurion. Two senior and two junior magistrates were elected to administer justice, oversee local tax-gathering and manage civic amenities such as the water supply, planning and road-building.

  Most towns in Roman Britain had an engineered water supply, and Carlisle’s must have been solidly built. As late as 685, it was still working. After the ambitious Northumbrian kings had brought the western end of the Wall and Galloway into their power in the seventh century, they appointed reeves to administer their growing royal estates. Carlisle was theirs, and when St Cuthbert came to visit, with the Northumbrian queen, in 685, Bede recorded remarkable Roman survival: