Legions of Rome

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  The general’s speech was met with a “wild burst of enthusiasm,” and the troops hurried off to arm themselves. [Tac., Agr., 35] Before long, a camp gate opened, and the Roman army marched out to meet the Caledonians. Agricola had given explicit orders for the positioning of his troops. The auxiliary light infantry went first—8,000 auxiliaries in 16 cohorts. They formed the first battle line. The 3,000 cavalrymen of 6 auxiliary alae filed out of the gate next, on foot, leading their horses, then mounted up and divided, with 1,500 troopers swinging out to occupy each wing of the Roman line. Last of all, Agricola’s legionaries marched out, to form a second battle line with their backs to the camp ramparts. [Ibid.]

  The complete 9th Hispana Legion was here, with all its cohorts now that the detachments from Domitian’s Rhine campaign had returned in the spring. Tacitus says that Agricola had “legions” here, so there would have been cohorts from one and probably two other legions in the battle line. With the 2nd Augusta Legions based in Wales, the two other legions in Britain, the 2nd Adiutrix and the 20th (Valeria Victrix), had their bases closer to the northern frontier and both possibly contributed vexillations of four cohorts of some 2,000 men.

  Mounted and in full armor, the general and his staff also came out of the camp together with the men of the gubernatorial bodyguard, and positioned themselves between the two battle lines with all the legion standard-bearers. Close by the general were his mounted trumpeter, and, also on horseback, his own standard-bearer, holding aloft the pole bearing the general’s large, square personal banner with his name and title displayed on it in purple letters.

  Flavianus Arrianus, a consul in AD 130 and governor of Cappadocia during the reign of Hadrian—known as Arrian to later generations—had 200 legionaries and an unspecified number of auxiliary spearmen in his gubernatorial bodyguard. [Arr., EAA] Agricola can be expected to have employed a similar escort. It is known that, around this time, the 1st Tungrian Cohort provided forty-six men to serve with the governor of Britain’s infantry bodyguard. [VWT] Several other cohorts are likely to have also contributed men to the escort. As for the mounted members of the bodyguard, the equites singulares, it is known from a letter that at least part of Agricola’s escort was provided by Gauls of the Ala Gallorum Sebosiana. [Tom., DRA]

  Tacitus says that Agricola’s auxiliary light infantry units came from Germany and Gaul and included two Tungrian cohorts and at least four Batavian. [Agr., 35] The two Tungrian cohorts were the 1st Tungrorum and the 2nd Tungrorum. Both had been raised in Gallia Belgica in AD 71 following the Civilis Revolt and brought to Britain by Petilius Cerialis. [Hold., RAB, App.]

  Nine Batavian units, Cohorts I to IX Batavorum, were created in Batavia, modern Holland, in AD 71, from the remnants of Civilis’ surrendered rebel army, and all were also taken to Britain by Cerialis. [Ibid.] At least four of those cohorts now served in Agricola’s field army; one was the 1st Batavorum. [Hold., DRA, ADRH] Tacitus also indicates that there were British auxiliaries serving in Agricola’s army. [Agr., 32] There is no record of any British auxiliary unit serving in Britain until very late in the Roman period. [Hold., RAB, App.] Until that time, units recruited in Britain were shipped off to serve in other parts of the empire. If Tacitus was correct, the only conclusion can be that some British replacements were added to Gallic or German units that had been stationed in Britain for many years.

  The men of the Tungrian and Batavian cohorts in Agricola’s army were mature and experienced soldiers. Not only had they served thirteen years in the Roman army by this point, a number would have previously served with the auxiliary units that had taken part in the Civilis Revolt. This put many of them in their forties, and even older in some cases. “These old soldiers had been well drilled in sword-fighting,” Tacitus said of them. [Agr., 36] From the way Agricola was to employ the men of these six units in the upcoming battle, he clearly considered them his toughest auxiliaries.

  As for the six cavalry wings in Agricola’s army, the Ala Gallorum Sebosiana, the unit which supplied part of Agricola’s bodyguard, would have been one. Named after an early commander of the ala, the unit had been raised in Gaul before the reign of Tiberius. It had fought for Vitellius during the war of succession, and would also have been brought to Britain by Cerialis. [Hold., RAB, App.] The identities of Agricola’s five remaining cavalry wings are unknown. There were some fourteen cavalry alae serving in Britain at the time, units from Gaul, Spain, Pannonia and a Thracian ala whose members were recruited from far and wide.

  Agricola was prepared to let his foreign auxiliaries take the brunt of the fighting; that was why he put them in his front line. His reason was simple. As his son-in-law Tacitus pointed out: “Victory would be vastly more glorious if it cost no Roman blood.” [Agr., 35] Many Roman generals showed little faith in their auxiliaries, putting them in the rear or on the wings and assigning the front line and the hard fighting to their legions. Agricola, a student of Roman military history, knew that successful generals had put their auxiliaries in the front line to blunt the enemy attack, reserving their legions for the killer blow. According to Tacitus, Agricola felt that if the auxiliaries were repulsed by the Caledonians after they went forward to the attack, “the legions could come to their rescue.” [Ibid.]

  From his saddle, Agricola watched approvingly as his units were marshaled by their centurions and optios into tight formations facing the enemy. “To impress and intimidate its enemy,” the Caledonian army had occupied the distant hill, with its first line on the plain below it. “The other ranks seemed to mount up the sloping hillside in close-packed formations.” [Ibid.] Tacitus called this hill Mons (Mount) Graupius and the battle here would take its name from it. In modern times Mons Graupius was taken to refer to the Grampian Mountains, which slant down the middle of Scotland, with the battle thought to have taken place “at the foot of the Grampian hills,” as eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon wrote. [Gibb., I] More recent opinion has put the battle site in a variety of locations in the northeast of Scotland, with no site yet reliably fixed.

  “The flat space between the armies was taken up by the noisy maneuvering of the chariots,” said Tacitus. [Tac., Agr., 35.] This would be the last time that an imperial Roman army faced war chariots in battle. Vegetius was to write that when the Romans first encountered the chariots employed by eastern armies, such as those of Mithradates the Great in the first century BC, they were terrified. But, he said, they later came to laugh at them. [Vege., III] Arrian, who must have seen them first hand while serving in Britain in his youth, said that British chariots were light and so could be operated in all kinds of terrain. [Arr., TH, 19] Vegetius felt that the main problem with a chariot was that if it did not operate on level ground “the least obstruction stops it.” [Vege., III]

  Arrian wrote that the Britons—the term used by Romans to describe all the native inhabitants of Britain including the Caledonians—normally used pairs of “small and scruffy” horses to draw their chariots. Despite their looks, these horses were capable of “harsh labor.” [Arr., TH, 19] Yet, as Vegetius was to remark, there was a sure-fire way to render a chariot useless as a weapon of war: “If one of the horses is either killed or wounded, [the chariot] falls into the opponent’s hands.” [Vege., III.] Similarly, it was probable that Agricola’s troops had orders to aim their missiles at the horses, not at the chariots.

  “The terror inspired by the horses and the noise of the wheels are enough to throw their opponents’ ranks into disorder,” Julius Caesar had written of his encounter with chariots in southern Britain 130 years earlier. “In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field, hurling javelins.” [Caes., GW, IV, 33]

  Here were the Caledonian chariots now, perhaps several hundred of them, racing up and down on the flat between the two armies with pounding hooves and churning wheels, their yelling crews shaking spears in the air as their vehicles careered along. “The nobleman drives; his dependents fight in his defense,” said Tacitus. [Tac., Agr., 12] In Caesar
’s day, British chariots had made their way through their own cavalry to deliver one or two fighting men to the battle front, and these men jumped down to engage the opposition on foot, with the chariots waiting to carry them out of the fray if the tide turned against them. [Caes., GW, IV, 33]

  Tacitus does not identify a role for Caledonian cavalry at Mons Graupius, but it is likely some were present. “There are very many cavalry,” said an officer of Agricola’s 1st Tungrian Cohort, possibly Julius Verecundus, the unit’s prefect, in a letter about the natives of northern Britain. “The cavalry do not use swords, nor do the wretched Britons mount in order to throw javelins.” [VWT] In hit-and-run skirmishes, the mounted Caledonians, like the chariot-borne noblemen, would merely use their horses as a means of rapidly delivering them to the fight. There they would dismount and launch their javelins before riding away again.

  The Caledonians had “reddish hair and long limbs,” said Tacitus, which he felt indicated they were of German origin. [Tac., Agr., 11] There is no mention of painted faces or limbs among the Caledonians at Mons Graupius or during any of Agricola’s seven British campaigns. The first reference in Roman literature to Picts of Scotland—from pictus, meaning “colored” or “tattooed”—would not be for another 200 years. The Pict name, and the habit of the warriors of Scotland painting themselves for war, were still a long way off when the tribes of Caledonia assembled to fight Agricola’s army.

  “The Britons are unprotected by armor,” said the 1st Tungrian Cohort officer. [VWT] Neither did they wear helmets. For weapons, apart from spears, Tacitus says that the Caledonians carried small shields and “unwieldy swords” with rounded ends. [Tac., Agr., 36] While no archaeologist or farmer has to date dug up examples of any especially large Caledonian swords from this period, Tacitus was adamant that the swords used by the Caledonians in this battle were “huge.” [Ibid.]

  When Agricola stepped up on to the tribunal in the Roman camp, he estimated that the Caledonian army numbered in excess of 30,000 men. [Tac., Agr., 29] As he addressed his troops, warriors had continued to flood to Mons Graupius, enlarging the Caledonian army even more. The Caledonian numbers seem to have taken Agricola by surprise. Only later, from prisoners, would he learn that the previous year the tribes had set aside old differences that had them frequently at war with each other. They had sent envoys around the tribes, a treaty had been signed and ratified by sacrificial rites. Then, the men had sent their women and children away to places of safety, and had vowed to band together to fight Rome. [Tac., Agr., 27]

  This uniting of the tribes may well have been the work of a Caledonian chieftain by the name of Calgacus, who was the chosen war chief of the tribes, “a man of outstanding valor and nobility,” according to Tacitus. [Tac., Agr., 29] It was later reported to Agricola that Calgacus delivered a stirring speech to the assembled warriors at Mons Graupius, in which he had reportedly said to his countrymen, “Which will you choose? To follow your leader into battle? Or to submit to taxation, labor in the mines, and all the other tribulations of slavery?” The future of the Caledonians would be decided here, on this battlefield, said Calgacus. “On then, into battle! And as you go, think of those who went before you, and those who will come after you.” [Ibid.]

  Answering the Caledonian call to arms were “all the young men and famous warriors,” the latter wearing decorations they had earned in previous battles, including, no doubt, trophies from skirmishes with the Romans. By the time that Agricola’s army had formed up, the Caledonian numbers had grown to such an extent that the Roman general “now saw that he was greatly outnumbered,” and, fearing that the tribesmen had sufficient numbers simultaneously to make a frontal attack on him and outflank both his wings, he ordered the ranks of his troops to open up so that his lines extended further across the plain. Agricola then dismounted, sent away his horse and took his place in front of the standards. [Ibid.]

  With the tribesmen on the hill and the plain singing and yelling, and the Roman troops tense but perfectly silent, battle commenced. “The fighting began with an exchange of missiles,” said Tacitus. The Caledonian chariots charged forward, and passengers jumped down to launch their javelins. At the same time, the centurions of the auxiliary front line ordered their men to let fly with their spears. “The Britons showed both steadiness and skill in parrying our spears with their huge swords or catching them on their little shields.” [Tac., Agr., 36]

  One hundred and thirty years before, Caesar’s cavalry had destroyed the British cavalry sent against him. Now Agricola, keeping four squadrons in reserve, followed Caesar’s example, as he ordered most of his cavalry to charge the Caledonian chariots. His trumpet sounded, and the trumpets of the cavalry units repeated the call. With a roar, the troopers on each Roman wing urged their horses forward, quickly reached the gallop, and charged into the Caledonian chariots, which appear to have begun withdrawing to the Caledonian wings.

  As the cavalry engaged the chariots, Agricola gave another order. Trumpets again sounded. The standards of six auxiliary cohorts in the front line inclined forward. Yelling their battle cry, the 3,000 men of the two Tungrian cohorts and of four Batavian cohorts leapt forward and charged the Caledonian infantry, quickly surging into the opposition line on the plain. The auxiliaries’ commanders rode into battle; Aulus Atticus, young Roman prefect of one of these six cohorts, either driven by youthful impetuosity or carried on by an uncontrollable horse, pushed too far into the tribal ranks and found himself isolated. The Roman officer was quickly hauled from the saddle by Caledonians and slaughtered.

  Roman auxiliaries behind the prefect maintained formation as they drove into the tribesmen. “The Batavians, raining blow after blow, striking them with the bosses of their shields and stabbing them in the face, felled the Britons posted on the plain and pushed on up the hillsides.” [Ibid.] Now the 5,000 remaining Roman auxiliaries were sent charging forward to join the fight. Meanwhile, the Roman cavalry had swiftly overwhelmed the Caledonian chariots, massacring their drivers and passengers. With the noblemen of all the tribes piloting these chariots, the Caledonians were deprived of many of their leaders. The Roman troopers now turned their attention to the infantry mêlée.

  The Caledonian ranks on the slopes held firm against the impact of the Roman cavalry, and the rough ground made it hard going for horses. As a result, the Roman cavalry came to a standstill, and the troopers had to fight for their lives as the lanky tribesmen pressed forward around them. Roman auxiliaries, meanwhile, found themselves crushed up against the horses’ flanks. Occasionally, said Tacitus, a driverless chariot or a panic-stricken riderless horse would come crashing blindly into the mass of fighting men.

  Higher up the hill, many Caledonians had yet to become engaged in the battle. An astute chieftain, perhaps Calgacus, seeing an opportunity to surround the outnumbered Roman auxiliaries, now sent these as yet unbloodied men rushing down the sides of the hill to outflank the Romans and attack them from the rear. Hundreds of yards away, Agricola, still standing outside the Roman camp with 9,000 stock-still legionaries aching to enter the fight behind him, saw the tribesmen come down off the hill and sweep around to the rear of his auxiliaries. The general gave another order. In response, his four reserve cavalry squadrons galloped off and thundered across the plain, smashing into the Caledonians attacking the rear of the Roman auxiliary cohorts.

  This cavalry charge turned the battle. The Caledonians, intent on attacking the auxiliaries, did not see the cavalry coming, and many were cut down from behind. Survivors from this group of Caledonians broke off the fight and ran for their lives, with Roman cavalry chasing them across the moorland. Overtaking tribesmen, Roman troopers would force them to disarm, taking them prisoner—they would bring a good price from the slave merchants who had followed the army north. But then, said Tacitus, troopers saw more Caledonians fleeing their way, and to prevent their first prisoners from escaping, they killed them, and then galloped off to make fresh captives of the latest terrified tribesmen on the run. [T
ac., Agr., 37]

  The sight of the slaughter of their countrymen on the plain robbed the Caledonians still fighting on the hill of their spirit. The battle disintegrated into a rout. Large groups of warriors, while retaining their arms, deserted the hill fight and ran for the protection of distant forests. Auxiliaries gave chase. Agricola now ordered the legions forward, to mop up on the hill as he himself joined the pursuit by the auxiliaries.

  As Caledonian dead littering the battlefield were being stripped by legionaries, Caledonian clans regrouped in the forests, and cut down the first rash Roman pursuers who ventured into the trees after them. Agricola ordered the auxiliary infantry to surround the forests, then sent the cavalry into the trees to finish the day’s work. “The pursuit went on until nightfall and our soldiers were tired of killing,” said Tacitus, who numbered the Caledonian dead at “some 10,000.” Agricola, he said, lost just 360 auxiliaries in the fighting. Not a single legionary had died, while the young prefect Atticus was the most senior of the Roman casualties. At nightfall, the Romans returned to their marching camp, exhausted but victorious.

  “For the victors, it was a night of celebrating over their triumph and their booty,” said Tacitus. For Caledonian civilians, it was a night of searching the battlefield and the mounds of stripped bodies for their dead and wounded, and carrying them away. The Romans heard both men and women wailing in their grief that night. In the far distance, farmhouses glowed orange after being put to the torch by their owners, who fled with the survivors of the battle. [Tac., Agr., 38]

  Next day, with the naked Caledonian dead lying where they had fallen, “an awful silence reigned everywhere.” [Ibid.] The hills were deserted. Smoke rose lazily from the ruins of distant farmsteads. Agricola sent cavalry scouts ranging for miles around. They found not a living soul. [Ibid.]