Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge

by Derek Williams

  So, unaware of being on a collision course with the imperial psyche, 83 and 84 see Agricola advancing through Strath Allan, Strathearn and out into the broad corridor of Strathmore, setting the pattern for all subsequent invasions by skirting the Highlands in a right-flanking movement toward Aberdeenshire. The navy’s role was crucial to this east coast strategy. By constant contact with its warships and supply vessels at the Tay, Montrose, Stonehaven and Aberdeen, the army could be fed and supported. Agricola’s handling of combined operations proved to be his strongest card, more successful in the light of others’ failure. Fleet support had been the weak link in Caesar’s British forays.97 We will recall Germanicus, the drownings in the Waddensee and shipwrecks on the Frisian Islands. During the conquest of north-west Spain a comparable strategy seems to have lapsed owing to fear of the open Atlantic.

  Agricola was the first to use the navy as part of his armoury; and it made a stirring sight as it brought up the rear. So the offensive was carried by sea and land simultaneously. Many a time the infantry, cavalry and sailors would meet over a shared meal, capping each others’ stories: the one about forest and hilltop, the other about wind and wave; conquest of the land on the one hand and of the ocean on the other. For their part the British were stunned by the fleet’s appearance. It was as if their seas and shores were being stripped of secrets and their ultimate bolt-holes barred.98

  Attempts have been made to trace the campaign through its marching camps. Indeed the terrain has yielded little else. This ubiquitous instrument of Roman mobility is worth describing in broad terms. Marching camps were usually square or rectangular. Internal layout reflected the order of march, with the commander at the centre, the vanguard in the front and the main force behind. Since everyone’s tent and each tent’s place were always the same, a standardized pattern was intended to soothe tired men and speed them to their rest. All soldiers bore its blueprint in their minds and could recreate it perhaps in a couple of hours, using the trenching tools which were standard equipment. An advance party under the praefectus castrorum (camp boss) selected and marked out the site. While the main body dug the ditches and threw up the spoil into perimeter mounds, the rearguard unloaded the pack animals and the leather tents were erected in precise pattern within. Every infantryman carried a pila muralia (wall spear), which was driven into the rampart so that it bristled like a porcupine.

  However, camps were not wholly stereotyped. The praefecti had their quirks and latitude was allowed in external proportions or the design of gateways, with their various inturned or outturned extensions, intended to impede or deflect attack. For example, one of Agricola’s camp bosses favoured a peculiar sickle-and-hammer-shaped opening. In theory such variants allow us to plot a progression of camps, distinguishing them from other campaigns or periods.

  Ancient sources tell of camp construction every evening and destruction every morning; the unit refilling the ditches before it marched away. If a camp were left intact the enemy could occupy it, perhaps to lie in wait for a tired Roman force expecting to use it again. But in practice, due to laxity or successive occupancy, demolition was not always carried out. Had it been, Britain would not have inherited so many fine examples. There are also instances of camps superimposed, or of small built into the corners of large.

  A camp’s size gives an idea of numbers. Since wasted space meant defending a larger perimeter, sprawling layouts would be avoided. Occupation density sub pellibus99 (under canvas) has been calculated as about 300 men per acre.100 Spacing between camps tends to be about fifteen Roman miles, the standard day’s march for fully laden troops. This is a reasonable distance in view of the additional chores of making and striking camp, packing and unpacking, foddering animals, cooking one’s own meals and so on.

  From the Firth of Forth to the Moray Firth some fourteen marching camps associated with Agricola’s campaign curve northwards in a 150-mile arc. Near their beginning is the great base of Ardoch,101 where six overlapping camps, three clearly visible, show it as the hub of northbound traffic. Of this long line Raedykes, behind Stonehaven, is probably the most rewarding to visit. The furthest known is at Bellie, near the Moray Firth. The furthest visible on the ground is Ythan Wells, Aberdeenshire, whose gorsey dyke signals with yellow flag the empire’s northernmost upstanding work: 1,300 miles as the crow flies from Rome, three months’ march at standard pace. The Moray Firth may be seen as the limit of a thousand-mile swath, cut by Rome into the Celtic and British worlds.

  Here, then, Tacitus’ text, the marching camps, and the lie of the land, are the sum of evidence. None is overhelpful. Tacitus is unspecific on geographical detail, though he gives the useful hint that Agricola ‘divided the army into three’.102 The camps resolve into two main sizes. The larger, around 110 acres, shows the army marching as one. At 300 men to the acre, this is consistent with a total force of 32,000: four understrength legions of about 4,000 each and an equivalent number of auxiliaries. The smaller, around thirty acres, is roughly compatible with division into three. But there are many imponderables. Missing or undiscovered camps, multiple use, varied unit groupings and the likelihood that some camps were built during return journeys, make this a dubious guessing game. It may, however, be pessimistic to say that the story will never be told. Archaeology and aerial survey are a potent partnership; and the camera’s eye is sharpened by drought, which increases colour differences in herbage, caused by soil disturbance. Remarkable detail can be wrung from these inscrutable bivouacs, such as the location of rubbish pits, where dateable material might be found. Recent years have been exceptionally dry. Of the ten hottest summers on record, six were in the 1980s. ‘Global warming’ brings some recompense.

  If details of Agricola’s march are obscure, his strategy is not. First he must avoid entanglement in guerrilla warfare, which meant avoiding the hills. Second, he must bring the enemy to him, forcing a battle on favourable ground. The accepted way to provoke confrontation was rampage: destroying crops, burning houses, butchering animals and even people. North-eastern Scotland, a tract of lowland in a highland setting, is well suited to such grim tactics. Its rich lands could be devastated while their agonized tenants watched from the hilly grandstand where they had taken refuge. By putting the following sentence into the supposed speech of Calgacus, the British commander, Tacitus allows himself a veiled comment on this sinister aspect of the pax Romana: ‘What they call “empire” is theft and butchery; and what they call “peace” is the silence of death.’103 Barbarity was not, it seems, a barbarian monopoly.

  Nevertheless, the policy worked: drawing the enemy toward a rendezvous at Mons Graupius, somewhere along the line where plain and mountain meet. Where is Graupius? Though it has given its name to Britain’s biggest massif, the battle site was probably at the foot of a single hill. This must have been big enough to hold a substantial British host, close to a Roman camp, with some flat ground adjacent and rising ground behind. Tacitus describes it briefly: ‘The Britons were drawn up in a striking and frightening way: their front rank level with ours while the rest, on rising ground, appeared to tower up behind them; the chariots rushing noisily to and fro across the fields between.’104 These vague clues could apply to almost any hill near almost any marching camp along a Highland front of nearly 200 miles. Here was a veritable Teutoburg Forest of a puzzle, combining hints from a great historian with clues from a romantic landscape. What could excite scholarly Scotland more? The result was centuries of learned (and sometimes not-so-learned) debate, with everyone adding his piece, including Sir Walter Scott: ‘Our Scottish antiquaries have been greatly divided about the local situation of the final conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians. Some contend for Ardoch in Strathallan, some for Innerpeffry, some for Raedykes in the Mearns and some are for carrying the scene of action as far north as Blair in Athole.’105

  So, between about 1725 and 1975, the sharpest eyes of Romano-British scholarship ranged up and down the line where grass and heather meet, its prestigious pens pr
oducing theories neither provable nor disprovable. But at the latter date debate subsided. J. K. St Joseph (1912–94) longtime director of the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Photography, whose work in Britain (from 1930) had revealed forty-three forts, twenty fortlets, fourteen signal stations and 235 camps, played a strong card.106 A photographic sortie of 26 July 1975 revealed a new marching camp at Durno, six miles northwest of Inverurie and twenty-three north of Aberdeen. At 144 acres this is the largest known encampment beyond the Forth, big enough to accommodate Agricola’s entire force with room for prisoners of war besides. Might this imply that, although forward units had already reached the Moray Firth, all were now recalled and recombined to meet some exceptional event? Above Durno towers the bulk of Bennachie107 (1,733 feet), a plateau four miles long and two wide, linked by a ridge to the body of the Highlands and commanding views southwards to Stonehaven and eastwards to the North Sea. Pending discovery of weapons, graves, or other finite evidence, this is presently the strongest candidate for the identity of Mons Graupius.

  Before the battle, Agricola addressed his army, emphasizing the feat of exploration and the pride in trailblazing: ‘You have outshone previous armies and I previous governors. Britain’s bounds are no longer rumour and guesswork, but as factual as our forts and our strength. We have brought Britain both to light and to heel.’108 The encounter itself was a tragic preview of Culloden: tribal motley facing trained troops, the unwieldy against the compact, wild passion versus professional calm, 10,000 clansmen slaughtered for the loss of 360 Roman auxiliary soldiers. The legions did not even engage. However, the Britons were so numerous that the majority could not come to grips. Twenty thousand were able to scramble back up the hillside or disappear into nearby forest, where nightfall covered their retreat. With so many left to fight again and the Highlands yet unpenetrated this could hardly be called a decisive victory. At most it was a promising start. Beyond lay an interior made for guerrilla warfare, unsuited to the formal encounter, hopeless for cavalry and demanding a dangerous dispersal of force. Wales, a mere fifty miles wide, had required thirteen offensives. The Highlands are over 120 miles and behind is an even wilder world: a jigsaw of sea and land; as if carved by the hand which had tried to make Greece and tossed it, as a reject, into Europe’s opposite corner.

  So far, however, the Scottish campaign had gone well; perhaps too well. Before long rumours of glorious Graupius would reach a Roman public more interested in the glamour of battles than in their long-term inferences. Agricola now marched on to the Moray Firth and a rendezvous with his fleet. The Boresti are thought to have given their name to Forres, near Elgin.

  For the victors the night was bright with celebration and looting. For the vanquished the weeping of men and women mingled as they dragged off the wounded and searched for survivors, abandoning their homes and even setting them alight in their rage. The morning revealed the aftermath of victory: everywhere the dismal silence, the hilly solitude, the smoking ruins. Since our scouts met no one it was apparent that the enemy was not regrouping. Accordingly, since the summer was too far advanced for the war to be enlarged, he marched the army down into Borestian territory. There he gave orders to his naval commander to circumnavigate Britain.109

  These orders doubtless included probing for a Highland back door, which exists in the shape of Loch Linnhe. The army’s obvious next step, the Great Glen, would require new thinking and a fresh start. Little could now be done until the April of 85. The battle had been fought at too late an hour on a day too late in the year.

  The same spring, which had seen Agricola entering north-eastern Scotland, also saw Domitian’s army crossing the Rhine at Mainz. The emperor led in person. His nominal aim was to chastise the Chattans, a troublesome tribe. Perhaps he also intended to enlarge the Roman hold on Germany’s south-west corner. Without venturing deeply into barbarian territory, it was tempting to seek a short cut between the Rhine and Danube frontiers, reducing the long re-entrant via Basle. The improvement would in due course be made and Domitian’s campaign was a significant step toward it. This was, however, incidental to the emperor’s purpose. Domitian knew that fame would not be won by road improvements but by a victory, like that of his brother at Jerusalem (strikingly shown on the sculptural panels of the Arch of Titus, where they may still be seen). Such éclat could now be matched by a rousing success in Germany.

  However, the Chattan expedition would merit no arch. The enemy simply retreated into his forest. Ground was gained, but memories of Quintilius Varus forbade a penetration of more than fifty miles beyond the Rhine. So, after two or three seasons of exhausting and frustrating effort, there were no notable battles, no striking successes and few captives or trophies to parade through the Roman streets. Domitian then dashed to the lower Danube, perhaps grateful for a diversion from his German stalemate and a second chance of glory. The ambitious and malicious Decebal, king of Dacia (today’s Romania) had used the imperial preoccupation to descend from the Carpathians, cross the river and savage Rome’s Balkan provinces; an attack which cost the life of Moesia’s governor, Oppius Sabinus. Domitian summoned the Praetorian Guard from its comfortable quarters on the Tiber to meet him on the Danube. An expedition into Dacia was hastily mounted, doubtless backed by inadequate staff work, in which the praetorian prefect, Cornelius Fuscus, was routed and killed, prompting Juvenal’s sneer:

  Fuscus, who did his soldiering in banqueting halls,

  Little dreamed himself a banquet for Dacia’s crows.110

  Dio would be scathing about Domitian’s role in this campaign:

  He took no part in the fighting, remaining in one of the Moesian cities and living it up, as usual; for he was lazy as well as cowardly; and dissolute toward women and boys besides. So he sent others to fight his battles, claiming any successes for himself and blaming someone else for the reverses. He even celebrated a Triumph, as if he had won a victory; in which, instead of captured spoils, he paraded ‘props’ drawn from the government furniture store!111

  A second attempt led to a Roman victory at Tapae, only thirty-five miles short of the Dacian capital. Success at last. But news of a mutiny on the Rhine eclipsed Domitian’s moment of glory and sent him scurrying north. This was the rebellion of Antoninus Saturninus, who blackmailed the legionaries of the Mainz garrison into supporting him by sequestering their life savings, deposited in the regimental strongroom. However, the rest of the Rhine army stayed loyal and the rising collapsed. For a second time Domitian marched against the Chattans, who had dared support Saturninus. At this unfavourable juncture the Danube again erupted with the Marcomanns or south Germans, probably prompted by Decebal, attacking from today’s Slovakia.

  Domitian had now reigned nine years in an accelerating nightmare of reverses, rushing between Rhine and Danube in a manner prophetic of the later empire. Rich in promise, his wars had been poor in results, with no prizes to assuage his insecurity or soothe the envy which corroded his spirit. He had backed the wrong horse. He could, like Claudius, have chosen to visit Britain and reap the triumph of Agricola’s 600-mile advance, crowned by victory on the ancient world’s northernmost field. Instead the setbacks tipped him into darkness, creating, during his last six years, a time when Rome spoke in whispers, senators chose to potter on their estates and writers pretended their muse had forsaken them.112 ‘He was suspicious of all mankind’ (commented Dio, from the safety of a later age).113 Dio also described114 how he invited senators and knights to banquets conducted in near-darkness, with the guests’ places at table written on imitation gravestones, served by black-painted slaves, with black tableware and the accoutrements of a funeral feast; the host droning on about topics related to death while his guests reclined in shivering silence. Informers were ubiquitous, show-trials frequent, murders and enforced suicides a daily event. Domitian was even said to have executed a man because he had a map of the world painted on his bedroom wall and could be accused of ‘dreaming dangerously’!115

  What of Agricola, com
mander of the only successful front who, in six years, had doubled the area of Britain under Roman control? His successes had coincided with Domitian’s early disappointments, fortunately not quite as dangerous a time as these later years. Here was a dutiful but ingenuous soldier, nearing the end of a long and hazardous mission during which every congenial voice had fallen silent and every friendly door had closed.

  These achievements, though played down in Agricola’s despatches, were received by Domitian with a mixture of pretended pleasure and disguised disquiet. He knew that his own recent Triumph over the Germans had been a fraud and the subject of ridicule. In place of captives he had purchased slaves who could be kitted out to look like prisoners of war. By contrast here was the genuine article: thousands of casualties inflicted and a decisive victory for all to see. The very thing the emperor most dreaded: that a private citizen’s name should outshine his own!116

  It was time for Agricola to return, entering Italy on tiptoe lest his coming should be greeted with a warmth Domitian himself had been unable to inspire. Then, ‘so that his entry into the city might not excite attention, he avoided all friends, slipping into Rome by night and by night visiting the palace, as required. There, after a perfunctory peck and not a word spoken he quickly melted into the crowd of creeps round the throne.’117

  Willy-nilly our general was a national hero. Triumphal ornaments were awarded and the regulation statue put in hand. Spite bided its time. Though only forty-five, Agricola would never work again. Prudently he withdrew to Fréjus and obscurity, dying there at fifty-four (three years before Domitian), probably poisoned by an imperial courier. ‘For the remainder of his life Agricola lived not only in disgrace but in actual need, just because the things he had accomplished were too great for a general. That is why Domitian finally had him murdered, despite giving him the triumphal ornaments.’118