The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  The garrison of the Wall had probably relied on native recruitment for many generations. As early as c. 150 the tombstone of a Brigantian who fought in the Roman army was set up on the Antonine Wall. With all of this background in mind, it seems that Theodosius did indeed set up buffer kingdoms beyond Hadrian’s Wall. To replace the duplicitous areani and the dangerously exposed outpost forts, the Britons would have to resist the ferocious Picts, and prevent them from overrunning their own territory in so doing.

  The evidence for this change of policy is slight but very intriguing. The earliest genealogies, the kinglists, for the Votadini show strikingly exceptional names around the end of the fourth century. Amongst all of the early and clearly Celtic kings, Aetern, Tacit and Patern Pesrut stand out. All they require is the terminal -us. Pesrut is particularly telling: an Old Welsh epithet which means ‘the man with the red cloak’. Was this a native Roman officer, perhaps from the Wall garrison, put in place by Theodosius? Or a native king given a Roman rank? Elsewhere there are more Celticised Roman names. Early rulers of the Damnonii are listed as Cluim, or Clemens, and Cinhil, or Quintilius, and in Galloway a powerful king was known as Annwn Donadd, or Antonius Donatus.

  There was nothing unsual in this enlistment of barbarians in the defence of the Empire, it was happening all along the Rhine and Danube frontier. In return for settlement and a grant of land inside the Empire, and no doubt the payment of subsidies, new peoples and their kings pledged loyalty to the Emperor and helped turn back others who threatened from outside. Two further scraps of evidence suggest that this sort of transaction had been concluded by Theodosius for the territories beyond the Wall. On the summit of the Votadinian hillfort on Traprain Law, in East Lothian, a large hoard of late-fourth-century Roman silver was discovered. Much of it had been cut up from cups and bowls and folded over for easier handling and transport. Probably collected from wealthy Romano-British aristocrats, some of it carried Christian images and symbols. In an age when currency had become debased, and with a miniscule content of precious metals, the Traprain hoard looks like bullion. It may represent the fruits of a successful raid, but a much more likely explanation is that it was a payment, a Roman subsidy for an ally prepared to fight in defence of the Empire.

  Theodosius may have been the creator of a fifth province in Britain. Named after the Emperor Valentinian, its location is uncertain – but what would have been the purpose of carving out yet another province from the four which already existed? Valentia was probably the new Roman name for southern Scotland, the territory between the two Walls controlled by the kingdoms of the Damnonii and the Votadini, and ruled by the likes of Cluim/Clemens and Paternus Pesrut. Its elevation was a way of bringing the northern allies inside the Empire, conferring romanitas (and perhaps their names) on them, and also incidentally celebrating a notable victory over the barbarians.

  KING’S RANSOM

  In a field near Kelso in the Scottish Borders hundreds of Roman coins have been found. Often ploughed, the King’s Haugh reveals more each winter through careful metal detection. The coins seem to be scattered, not part of a hoard. But they do not amount to a King’s ransom. Most are from the fourth century and are not silver-based, or gold, but small radiates struck from bronze. Far from being treasure, they are the small change of a money economy, only worth anything as a means of exchange. But Kelso is more than 70 kilometres north of Hadrian’s Wall, in the centre of the ancient territory of the Votadini. Was the Tweed Valley briefly inside the bounds of the Empire, in the province of Valentia? Many of the bronze radiates come from the period after AD 369 and Theodosius’ reorganisation of the north. The heaviest concentration is from the House of Valentinian (364–378) and there are more from the reigns of Arcadius and Honorius, shading into the fifth century. The find spot is very suggestive. At the confluence of the Teviot and the Tweed, the King’s Haugh is commanded by the remarkable, and unexcavated, fortress of Roxburgh Castle. Famous in medieval times, it certainly had a longer history before then.

  If the Picts and the Scots were discouraged by these new alliances, they had only to take to their ships to reach the tempting plunder of the south. But, despite their best efforts, they did not bring about the end of Roman Britain. Under pressure from the kingdoms to the east, especially the Huns, the Goths were pressing hard on the European frontier along the Danube. Valens, the eastern Emperor, allowed one group to settle in the province of Moesia, modern Bulgaria. But in 378 they rebelled after some harsh treatment and, at Adrianople, the Gothic army inflicted a crushing defeat and Valens was killed in the fighting. It was a turning moment. After Adrianople the Empire began to shudder and, in the west, to shake itself to pieces.

  Meanwhile Britannia appeared to have rallied once Theodosius’ measures had been put in place. The Pictish threat persisted, but it was contained by a dynamic new Duke of the Britains. A Spanish officer, known as Magnus Maximus, assembled an army and led it to victory in the north in 382. So successful was the campaign and so warm the glow of its prestige that Maximus was encouraged to make a bid for the Empire. Crossing into Europe, he took Spain and Gaul under his control and he ruled in the west until 388. Brought to battle at Aquileia in northern Italy by the legitimate emperor, Theodosius I (son of the saviour of Britain in 369), Maximus was defeated, captured and executed.

  There were many usurpers at the end of the fourth century and their struggles for power weakened the Roman Empire just at the point when external pressures threatened as never before. But Magnus Maximus was remembered in Britain, and indeed his memory still lives. A sixth-century poem in Old Welsh, ‘The Dream of Macsen Wledig’, recalls his triumphs and it is likely to have been composed by the bards of the kingdoms of southern Scotland, known as Yr Hen Ogledd, the Old North; the courts of these kingdoms were the fount of much of the earliest Welsh literature. The survival of ‘The Dream of Maximus the General’ is perhaps understood by the success against the Picts of a native army raised in the Old North by a competent and ambitious Roman commander. Perhaps some of the warriors of the Damnonii and the Votadini went to Europe with Macsen on his quest for empire, to fulfil his dream.

  THE NOTITIA DIGNITATUM

  Compiled during the fourth century, this fascinating document, loosely translated as ‘The Ascertaining of Ranks’, had as its primary purpose the setting down of the chain of military command in North Britain (and elsewhere) by listing officers, staffs and the units under their control. At face value it is impressive. Eleven regiments of cavalry and infantry appear to be based in Durham and Yorkshire and three others west of the Pennines, and then the entire garrison of Hadrian’s Wall is set down with their forts in the correct geographical order. The overall impression is of continuity; some of the same units appear to have been soldiering on the Wall for almost three centuries. But what appears on paper almost certainly had no more than a nominal existence on the ground – no more than a shadow of ancient power.

  Theodosius’ young son and heir, Honorius, was nominally Emperor after 395, but his armies in the west in reality lay under the command of Stilicho the Vandal. The son of a barbarian soldier, he proved adroit in maintaining the balancing act which imperial government had become. Stilicho withdrew troops from the British garrison to plug gaps and shore up weaknesses in Europe, and it must be significant that the large-scale import of coins into Britain ceased in 402. This was likely cash to pay the army and the imperial administration, and after that date there may have been little left of either.

  In the winter of 406 nature took a decisive hand. The Rhine froze over and many thousands of barbarians flooded into the Empire. Vandals, Alans and Suebi rampaged into the province of Gaul, looting, killing and causing chaos. Three years later their warbands crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and eventually the Strait of Gibraltar. After 429 the remarkable Vandal kingdom of North Africa came into being.

  Britain found itself ever more embroiled in the ferment of imperial ambition. In 406 no fewer than three usurper emperors attempted coups with sup
port from the province. In 407 more troops were withdrawn, and the following year, as if prompted, a series of serious barbarian attacks caused great damage. This time the Romano-British themselves, probably with the help of the kingdoms in the north, rebelled and expelled the representatives of the most recent usurper, Constantine III. Here is a concise account from the historian Zosimus:

  The barbarians across the Rhine attacked everywhere with all their power, and brought the inhabitants of Britain and some of the nations of Gaul to the point of revolting from Roman rule and living on their own, no longer obedient to Roman laws. The Britons took up arms and, braving danger for their own independence, freed their cities from the barbarians threatening them; and all Armorica and the other provinces of Gaul copied the British example and freed themselves in the same way, expelling their Roman governors and establishing their own administration as best they could.

  Led by Romano-British aristocrats, backed by the warriors of the Old North and augmented by the Wall garrison (such as it was), the rebellion against the Empire appears to mark an end-point. The conventional signal for the passing of Britannia is usually seen as around 410 when a letter written by the chancery of Honorius advised the cities of the province to look to their own defences. It seems as though they were doing it anyway.

  8

  After Britannia

  Nothing happened. At least, nothing much. Hadrian’s Wall was not suddenly deserted, the gates of the forts left swinging in the wind. The money, the pay chests full of coins, stopped coming, and orders from any central Roman authority in Europe dried up. But after the troops were removed by Stilicho and Constantine III, no one else went anywhere. Along the Wall the garrisons, even the old units with fancy names from Syria and Spain, had long since been local, recruited on a hereditary basis, many of the soldiers following their fathers into what had become a family army. Others had been conscripted from the farms and villages round about. If the rank and file was hereditary and local, it is very likely that command was too. Over the last decades of the fourth century, as Roman control slackened all over the western Empire, the individual units probably more resembled the warbands from the north, their loyalty to their leaders outweighing any other. And if that loyalty was reinforced by a long Roman military tradition, perhaps with a set of standards preserved, old weapons and armour still in existence, then it would have been very strong.

  In addition to cash and orders, what also came to an end was the wider role of the Wall. If Britannia had seceded from the Empire, then the meaning of the Wall was much diminished. No longer an international frontier, it retained only a regional significance. In essence the Wall garrison had lost its job.

  It may well have gained another role. Written Roman records for the beginning of the fifth century in Britain are virtually non-existent. Historians have been forced to turn, often unwillingly, to the genealogies and traditions of the Old Welsh-speaking kingdoms of the North, Yr Hen Ogledd. Their stories survived because they were slowly transmitted to Wales and absorbed, especially in the kingdom of Gwynedd. Shadowy figures can sometimes be glimpsed flitting through the poems and the kinglists, men who may have had their origins in the lands between the two Walls.

  Coelius, known as Coel Hen, or Old Cole, by the bards may have been the last Roman-appointed Duke of the Britains, based at the legionary fortress at York. In a bizarre historical memory, he is probably the figure behind the nursery rhyme, Old King Cole. At least eight dynasties list him either as a founder or an early king. The Welsh genealogies are heavily corrupted in places and Coel’s wife is named as Stradwawl, which translates as ‘Wall Road’, and his daughter was Gwawl, or ‘The Wall’. These sound like a confusion of areas of command with members of a family. The genealogies were transcribed by Welshmen distant in both time and space from the events after the end of Roman Britain. Coel’s name lent credibility, his association with the power and legitimacy of the Empire added to the prestige of those dynasties who claimed him as an ancestor.

  If he was indeed the last Duke of the Britains, then the commanders of Wall forts may have owed him allegiance. But, for that to be possible, evidence of continuity after the end of the province is needed. At Birdoswald just such evidence has been uncovered. After 395 a large timber building was erected on the foundations of the granaries near the west gate of the fort. It was then replaced by an even larger version. Archaeologists have been able to visualise a tall timber hall with a steep-pitched thatch roof and a porch-style door along one of the long sides. There was a hearth at one end, and finds have suggested that people of substance sat around it as the fire blazed, perhaps the commander of the fort of Banna and his captains. A good literary/historical analogy is the sort of hall immortalised in the great epic poem Beowulf. The seat of a king or a chieftain’s power, it was where he and his warriors ate, talked, drank, celebrated, planned and governed the land around. Beowulf gives a pungent impression of what these halls were like, King Hrothgar’s in particular, and here is part of Seamus Heaney’s recent translation:

  . . . So his mind turned

  to hall-building: he handed down orders

  for men to work on a great mead-hall

  meant to be a wonder of the world for ever;

  it would be his throne-room and there he would dispense

  his God-given goods to young and old –

  but not the common land or peoples’ lives.

  Far and wide through the world, I have heard,

  orders for work to adorn that wallstead

  were sent to many peoples. And soon it stood there,

  finished and ready, in full view,

  the hall of halls. Heorot was the name

  he had settled on it, whose utterance was law.

  Nor did he renege, but doled out rings

  and torques at the table. The hall towered,

  its gables wide and high.

  The Roman masonry of the west gate lay immediately beside the great hall and, despite the stark differences in building styles, the continued passage of people, horses and carts under its arches underlined the legitimacy of whoever’s utterance was law. There is more than a metaphor in this juxtaposition. A native structure built inside the rectilinear streets and walls of a Roman fort by men who probably spoke Old Welsh but regarded themselves as part of the armies of the Empire. Clearly life on the Wall had been changing long before the end of the province and the break with Rome.

  ECHOES OF ROME

  Until the early 1970s those who wished to matriculate at one of the four ancient Scottish universities required an Attestation of Fitness. Nothing to do with corporeal health, it was a document issued from Kinburn House in St Andrews which certified that applicants possessed O-Grade passes in Mathematics and Latin. Without it, not even the most brilliant could pass through the portals of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow or St Andrews. When the certificate was abandoned, the teaching of Latin in schools suffered a steep decline. But in 2007 the rot appears to have stopped. Under the aegis of Project Iris, a revival programme run by Lorna Robinson, Latin is making a comeback. Twenty primary schools in London, and more in Oxfordshire, are introducing lessons in Latin. A Latin grammar was a recent bestseller. The revival will help with an understanding not only of Rome and its inheritors but also of language in general. And the latter can be profound precisely because Latin is a dead language. Its structure can be explored because none of that tedious business of learning how to ask where the bus station is or ordering lunch is involved. Perhaps once again intellectual fitness will be attested by a knowledge of Latin.

  The gifts given by kings like Hrothgar became even more important after the decade from 420 to 430. Around that time coinage ceased to circulate, and mass-produced pottery, whose production depended on a cash economy, also disappeared from the archaeological record. Along the central sector of the Wall, where the garrison could only be maintained by Rome or some other central authority with an interest in defending such a long frontier, the bustle and business of so
ldiering melted away quickly. At Housesteads the already diminished units were replaced by perhaps twenty or at most thirty people farming the field system beyond the walls, or tending their beasts inside the precinct. Nature began to reclaim the Wall, and wind-bent trees grew once more along the Whin Sill. Where the military zone had been cleared, scrub took root in the sheltered places, the ditches and in the Vallum, and grass crept over the metalled roads and streets. As each summer passed and leaves blew around the deserted milecastles and turrets, it looked less and less likely that Rome would return. Despite the victories of the consul, Aetius, and Syagrius in Gaul, barbarian kings ruled where once the Emperor’s writ had run. Rome was fading. From his vantage point in Constantinople, the sixth-century writer Procopius observed:

  the Romans were never able to recover Britain, but from that time it remained on its own, under tyrants.

  By tyrants he meant local kings, or usurpers of the imperial power.

  By Procopius’ time, the Celtic kingdoms of southern Scotland and northern England had formed and begun to flex their ancient power. In the west Rheged expanded around the shores of the Solway. Galloway, Dumfriesshire, Cumbria and perhaps the lands around Morecambe Bay were all ruled by its most famous king, Urien. Urien’s name probably derives from Urbgen, which meant ‘born in the city’, probably the old civitas of Carlisle, what became the hinge of his kingdom. To the north the Damnonii developed into Strathclyde, with its capital place at the old fortress of Altclut, the Rock of the Clyde, at Dumbarton, which means the Fort of the British. And in the east the Votadini had become the Gododdin.