• Corpus ID: 162683423

Caledonia and its occupation under the Flavians

@inproceedings{Hind1983CaledoniaAI,
  title={Caledonia and its occupation under the Flavians},
  author={J. G. F. Hind},
  year={1983}
}

• J. Hind
• Published 1983
• History

Tacitus mentions Caledonia and its inhabitants (incolentes populi; civitates), whom he calls Britons, four times in his De Vita Agricolae. Each time it is the area north of the line between the Forth and Clyde estuaries which is so designated (Agricola 10; 27). A number of separate peoples made up the inhabitants (Agricola 25; 29.4, to be taken together with 31.5). The picture is clear and internally consistent, and not inconsistent with the other sources, given that they are either very general and poetic in tone, or topographical and list-like in form. The writers of the 1st century AD seem to have thought of Caledonia vaguely in connection with forests (Pliny, NH 4.102; Silius Italicus, Punica 3, 597-8); wild seas (Lucan, Pharsalia 6.37), and wild bears (Martial, Sped. 7), and with a very remote people (Martial 10.44.1). In his Agricola Tacitus notoriously offers little by way of topography, yet he does give three place-names relating to this area. The Forth (Bodotria, if that is the correct form, for Ptolemy gives Boderia, and the Ravenna Cosmographer, Bdora) and the Clyde (Clotd) are said to be the delimiting estuaries to the south of Caledonia. Mons Graupius, or Craupius, was the site of the culminating victory of Agricola over the peoples of Caledonia. Wherever this was precisely, it presumably was in the hands of one of the constituent tribes of Caledonia, which, we learn from Tacitus, included the Boresti, and, we can infer from Ptolemy, included the Vakomagoi, Taizaloi, Venikones and perhaps the Dumnonioi (fig 1). In Tacitus, our most circumstantial source, Caledonia is a region of Britannia, almost another island, and its peoples, though Britanni, are physically somewhat different from the rest (rutilae Caledoniam habitantium comae, Agr. 11). They appear to have formed a confederation of tribes, at least in time of war (civitates trans Bodotriam sitas, Agr. 25; Caledoniam incolentes populi, Agr. 25; legationibus et foederibus omnium civitatium vires exciverant, Agr. 29) 'peoples situated beyond the Forth'; 'peoples inhabiting Caledonia'; 'they had brought out all the peoples in strength by sending envoys and invoking treaties'. Tacitus estimated their total strength in battle at some 30 000 fighting men, of which they lost a third in casualties at Mons Graupius. There is no way of checking this figure, but it tallies with the view that several tribes were involved. Later, Florus knows of a saltus c. and silvas c. (i.12, 45); Cassius Dio speaks of two peoples, Maiatai and Kaledonioi (the Greek form), of which the former lived nearer to the Wall (ie Hadrian's Wall), and the latter further to the north (Cassius Dio, 75.5; 76.12; 15). The emperor, Septimius Severus, campaigned against the Kaledonioi, probably in AD 209 and against both peoples the following year. Late in the next century Ammianus Marcellinus knew of two branches of the Picts, one of whom he calls Verturiones and the other Dicaledones (A.M. 27.8.5; Mann 1974, passim). These latter are clearly descendants of the Kaledonioi of the early 3rd century, and the former may be descendants of the Maiatai. A similar prefix, Due-Caledones, had appeared