had slept in willow walls on a bed of skin, vying with each other in the whiteness of their folded togas, and in the grace of their marble porticoes.

In

His second campaign (79 A.D.) was spent in the subjugation. of several tribes in north-western Britain, and in studding the conquered districts with strong castles. This year's fighting brought him close to what is now the Scottish Border. year 80 he carried the Roman eagles to the estuary of the Taus, or Tara, which is generally considered to be the Tay. The following summer (81 A.D.) saw a chain of forts

stretching from Clota (the Clyde) to Bodotria (the Firth of Forth), across the narrowest part of the island,* so that the Caledonians might be pent up in their native woods, whither they were soon to be followed. Then, with a view to an

invasion of Ireland, one of whose princes had sought his help, he passed in 82 into Galloway, where traces of his camps may still be seen. During his sixth campaign (83 A.D.), passing the fortified line which he had drawn from sea to sea, he advanced to a position some distance south of the Ochil range of hills, where his advanced guard-the Ninth Legion-was nearly cut to pieces by the fierce woodsmen † in a night attack. In a general engagement which followed he succeeded in beating back the hordes; but could do nothing else before winter compelled him to withdraw to Fife. There, with the sea on two sides, and with flat land in front, he lay secure until the opening spring enabled him again to take the field.

Last and greatest of Agricola's campaigns was that of the year 84. Following the valley of the Devon for a while, he passed with his army of thirty thousand through the Ochils, and on the moor of Ardoch (probably), at the foot of the Grampian wall, he found a host of Caledonians marshalled under the leadership of Galgacus, one of those representative men who shine out in a perilous time, at once the type and embodiment of the spirit of their age. The men of the woods fought with the same long cutting sword and small round target which their Highland descendants bore for many a day

*The Romans divided Britain into six districts:-

1. Caledonia, or Vespasiana, north of Antonine's Wall.

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2. Valentia, between that wall and the wall of Hadrian and Severus; called Valentia by Theodosius in 368, in honour of the Emperor Valentinian.

3. Maxima Cæsariensis, between Hadrian's Wall and the Humber and the Mersey.

4. Flavia Cæsariensis, between the Humber and Mersey and the Thames.

5. Britannia Secunda, west of the Dee and the Severn, including Wales,

6. Britannia Prima, south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel

Only the last four provinces were completely reduced.

The southern Celts called the inhabitants of the north Caoill daoin that is, people of the woods; and Roman tongues shaped out of the compound the name Caledonia.

after; but as had happened in Kent and Hertford, so on this Perthshire moor, the short knife-like sword of the Romans won the day. In vain the Highland rush and wild hurrah came sweeping down the hill. It was the battling of waves against a rock; and ten thousand Caledonians fell on the bloody field. The ditch of a Roman camp-many weapons, both British and Roman, which have been dug up on the moor-and the presence of two huge cairns on the neighbouring hill, probably raised above the bones of the ten thousand, seem to mark out Ardoch as the most probable site for the great battle of Mons Grampius.*

The fleet of Agricola, which had kept pace with his northward movements, was despatched by him from the Firth of Tay to cruise along the coasts to the north. Visiting the Orkneys and rounding Cape Wrath, his ships ran down the western shore, turned the Land's End, and arrived safely at a port, which was probably that of Sandwich. Britain had always been called an island before, but this voyage established the fact, for the first time, beyond a doubt.

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After eight years spent in subduing the British tribes-son by the arts of war, others by the gentler force of kindnessAgricola was recalled in 86 A.D. from a province whose people, so far at least as they were submissive, he had blessed with lighter taxes and cheaper bread. Foolish jealousy of his success induced the Emperor Domitian to recall Agricola to Rome on false pretences, and doomed his genius to rust in the forced inaction of private life. He died in 93 A.D., poisoned, some say, by an imperial order.

* The best manuscripts of Tacitus read, not Grampius but Groupius. The name Grampian is no help to the locality, as it was transferred to the mountains from the pages of Tacitus at a much later period.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMAN WALLS AND ROADS.

Hadrian's Wall-Antonine's Wall-The Roman streets-Old Severus-His march through Scotland-His death at York.

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FTER the departure of Agricola, the history of Britain is a comparative blank for many years. We know that among the Cheviots and the Lowthers fierce tribes dwelt, and waged incessant war on the Roman outposts. The scanty story of this troubled time may be gathered up in a few facts relating to the great works of engineering by which the Romans tried to secure the conquests they had won, or to open the way to new dominion. Such works were the ramparts of earth and stone known as the Roman Walls, and the great military roads, which were called in the Latin language strata (English street).

The Emperor Hadrian came to Britain in the year 120 A.D., and although we have no account of his achievements, it is reasonable to suppose that the northern tribes felt, for a time at least, the smart of his weighty sword. He left behind an enduring monument of his visit in the great wall, seventy-three miles in length, which he built over the Northumbrian hills, from Bowness on the Solway Firth to Wall's End on the river Tyne. It consisted of an earthen rampart, double, and in some places triple, and of a stone wall eight feet wide and twenty feet high, which ran parallel to the rampart on its northern side, and at a distance from it of sixty

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and in some parts of eighty yards. There was a deep ditch on the northern side of the wall, and there was another foss beside the rampart. Twenty-three stationary forts, connected by military roads which ran between the works of stone and clay, dotted the line at intervals; and these intervals were subdivided by mile-castles and watch-towers. For the defence of

the entire line a force of ten thousand men was needed.*

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The name of Lollius Urbicus, Roman governor of Britain under Antoninus Pius, who assumed the purple in 138, is associated with a second wall, built in 139 on the site of Agricola's chain of forts, which crossed the upper isthmus. From Caer-riden on the shore of Forth to Aleluyd (Dumbarton) on the Clyde, a distance of about thirty-one miles, he raised a great bank of turf upon a stone foundation, studding the line with several forts, and adding along its southern side a military road, by which the defenders might easily pass from post to post. The object of this wall was to defend the districts north of Hadrian's rampart from the inroads of the wild mountaineers. It marks the gradual advance of the Roman dominion toward the north; but the tract between the walls-nearly corresponding to the Lowlands of Scotland and the shire of Northumberland-was always in a troubled and unsafe condition during the Roman occupation. The work just described was called the Wall of Antonine. Its local name of Graham's Dike is probably a modern transcription of the older and more correct name Grimes Dike-that is, the "boundary wall."

Walls like these would have been of little use had not the Romans possessed means of pouring their legions with speed into any part of the conquered province. Such means they had in their great military roads, which cut the island from side to side, and from end to end. It has been rashly assumed that

* The earthen vallum of this great work has been ascribed to Severus; but the best authorities now believe that Hadrian erected all the works, both of earth and stone. Sketches of the walls of Hadrian and Antonine are subjoined.