impressive in such casual, and accidentally and strangely discovered
vestiges of the great empire which ramified itself so far into the
wilderness; and we confess to the weakness that we never could see any
of these scanty relics of the uncertain frontiers of the empire, without
feeling much more interest and emotion than chambers full of marble
sculpture, pottery, and bronzes, could call forth in other places. There
is a character about them all, scanty as they may be deemed, which at
once, in the eye even of the uninstructed, removes them from anything,
either in an early or a late age, belonging to the indigenous
workmanship of the country. Occasionally our earth has yielded one of
the glittering relics which fallen empires leave as types of their old
lustre beneath the dust of their decay, and a gold or silver coin,
bearing the image and superscription of an Antoninus Pius, a Severus, or
a Caracalla, has been revealed by the plough of the hind, or the mattock
of the railway labourer. But, though he may take it to the nearest
change-house for criticism, the finder will not irreverently dream of
passing it off as a convertible medium, however it may bear a mysterious
resemblance to the current coin of the realm. There are indications that
both in early and recent times—among the learned, the peasantry, and the
citizens—a sort of unconscious homage has been paid to Roman remains, as
they have, from time to time, been revealed—an acknowledgment, as it
were, of their high rank among the fragmentary memorials of past ages,
and departed dynasties and races. Walking down the High Street of
Edinburgh, nearly opposite to Knox’s house, there may, on the other side
of the street, be seen, in fine preservation, two heads, cut in low
relief, indisputably Roman, from the simple severity of the sculpture.
The house in which they are imbedded is old enough to have seen many
historical events; but the sculpture carries tokens that it was taken
charge of, and valued, at a still earlier period; for between the two
heads there is inserted an inscription, in Gothic character, older
perhaps than any house in Edinburgh. And so this far, at all events,
seems evident of the medallions of the Roman emperor and his wife, that
they had decorated some structure still older than the old Edinburgh
house—probably in some one of the ecclesiastical buildings which fell to
pieces after the Reformation; and perhaps the builder of the house
adopted them as more artistic and modern-looking than the other relics
of Gothic masonry in the ruin—little dreaming that the builder of the
medieval edifice looked on them with mysterious awe as relics of some
early unknown school of art, with which he was incapable of competing.
In nothing, perhaps, is the immediate acknowledgment of superiority,
which fragments of Roman art have created in our country, more
remarkable than in the ecclesiastical seals which it has lately become
the pride of our archæologists to preserve. There, one may often see in
the midst of the rude Gothic tracery of the fourteenth century, an
outline scarce distinguishable on the surface of the mouldering wax; yet
evidently adjusting itself, as it were, by some capricious accident, to
the pure forms of older art, in a head, or nude figure, a lion or an
equipped Roman warrior. Examination shows that these are no ideal
creations, from worn outlines fancifully adjusted to artistic forms like
faces in the fire, but that old entaglio gems had been inserted in the
matrices of the seals; and that their beauty should have been
appreciated is the more remarkable, that they are in their rigid
simplicity so strongly in contrast even with the merits of that florid
decoration which the early seal-cutters took from the architectural
types of their age. We believe that a minute inquiry would bring forth
many fragments of Roman work incrusted into our older buildings; and we
could point to one instance where a piece of sculpture—of Priapeian
character—does duty, after some slight liberties having been taken with
it, as a representation of an illustrious national hero. Sandy Gordon,
as he is called by Monkbarns, when he prowled about Scotland grubbing in
various corners for the materials of his inimitable _Itinerarium
Septentrionale_, was ever finding Roman altars and sculpture imbedded in
obscure private houses; and it must be commendably said of their
builders that they did the best they could to save these relics from
destruction. Some of these have been lost or obliterated during the
century and a quarter elapsing since the publication of the
_Itinerarium_; but others have, through the influence of that work,
found a more public and secure place of deposit. Thus a sculptured and
inscribed stone, which Gordon pronounced one of the best in Scotland,
when found at Duntocher, was elevated to the dignity of decorating the
gateway of Kochney House, and has thence been transferred to the
Hunterian Museum of Glasgow. “At the house of Nether Croy,” says Mr
Stuart, “situated on the low grounds to the north of Croyhill, are two
pieces of Roman sculpture and a votive altar, which are said to have
been found in the immediate vicinity of the height in question. The
former are placed in the wall of the building—the latter stands in a
green plot immediately adjoining.” In the funny little museum in the
semicircular building at Perth—the sybilistic Latin inscription on which
has sometimes driven curious travellers frantic to discover its
purport—there is a stone slab with sculpture as mysterious. It may,
however, be guessed from the triumphal car and figure, and the leopards,
that it represents a Bacchus. This vestige of ancient polytheism long
occupied the uncongenial position of a hearthstone in a peasant’s
cottage in Strathmore. But whether it was so preserved from respect to
its artistic interest, or from the convenience of its form, may be
doubted. In the middle of the sixteenth century, some Roman remains were
discovered at Musselburgh; among them an altar dedicated to Apollo by a
certain proconsul Quintus Lusius Sabiniarius, no doubt a highly
respectable man and efficient officer, though history has failed to
commemorate his merits. The excitement and attention created by this
discovery are curious, and show, in a remarkable shape, that interest
which has ever attached to the vestiges of the Roman presence in
Scotland. In Queen Mary’s Treasury Accounts for 1565, there is an entry
of twelve pence, “to ane boy passand of Edinburgh with ane charge of the
Queene’s Grace, direct to the Baillies of Mussilburgh charging thame to
tak diligent heid and attendance, that the monument of Grit antiquitie
now fundin be nocht demolisit nor broken down.” Randolph, the English
ambassador, influenced, perhaps, by the fuss he saw made about the
matter, deemed the discovery worthy of a special note stuck into the
midst of matters of a very different character; and so he writes to
Cecil, who probably was a little surprised at finding his cunning
correspondent occupied with such a trifle, that “the cave found bysyd
Muskelbourge seemeth to be some monument of the Romaynes, by a stone
that was found with these words graven upon hym,” &c. This altar was
noticed by the all-observing Camden, and more philosophically
commemorated by Napier of Merchiston, as appropriate to the idols of
Pagan Rome, in his commentary on the Apocalypse.
And having noticed these instances of respect paid to the vestiges of
mighty Rome, perhaps the picture will only be rendered the more complete
by telling of the retaliation which followed a signal action of
disrespect to a relic of the illustrious strangers. Who has not heard of
Arthur’s Oon on the Carron in Stirlingshire? now, alas! obliterated. It
was fortunately seen by Sandy Gordon, who, in his matter-of-fact
engravings, has evidently preserved its appearance—lapidatim, if we may
use the term—though not in the best of perspective. It was a dome,
following on a small scale the form of the Pantheon, with a circular
opening at the top. It was a diminutive building twenty-two feet only in
height, with an outer circumference of some thirty yards or so, and an
arched door about nine feet high. Keeping these dimensions in view, it
does not resemble any other Roman building that we remember to have
heard of. In dimensions and structure, it has features in common with
the curious beehive houses to be found in some of the ancient Irish
burial-grounds; but then, these are of the roughest of unworked stones,
while Arthur’s Oon was laid in courses accurately hewn. Granting an
eccentric and peculiar building to be Roman, the usual solution of its
purpose is to count it a tomb, for the Romans were eccentric, like
ourselves, in the commemorations which they raised over the dead, and
often departed from systematic characteristics. Of course there has been
abundance of conjecture as to the origin and object of so peculiar a
building. Its name, Arthur’s Oon, has been read as a corruption of
Arthur’s oven, as if it were the circular baking-place where that
hospitable prince appropriately prepared the viands consumed at his
round table by the chivalrous company there assembled; but this is a
theory to which the more learned antiquaries of late times give little
encouragement. Diodorus Siculus tells us, on the authority of a writer
venerable in his day, whom he calls Hecatæus, that there is over against
Celtic Gaul an island as large as Sicily, inhabited by the Hyperborians.
The tradition of the natives says that Latona was born there—whence they
have a partiality for the worship of Apollo. To this their favourite
deity they dedicated a wonderful temple, of a round form, intrusting the
custody of it to the descendants of Boreas, with a fitting establishment
of priests and bards, who are represented as constantly doing duty
within the sacred precincts. If we should maintain that here we have the
original history of Arthur’s Oon, we defy any one to disprove it; and
this kind of negative impossibility is, we have generally found, the
main strength of archæological theories. It would be eminently
satisfactory too, as carrying the structure back into an unknown
antiquity, far before the Roman invasions. It requires, however, the
peculiar capacities of the Irish antiquary to fight out a theory of this
sort, simple though it may seem, and we shall therefore content
ourselves with a tacit assent to those who believe the structure to have
been Roman.
Here there would be a steady enough foundation in the unanimity with
which all the earlier annalists attribute the lost structure to Roman
origin, were they not so diverse in the specific period to which they
refer it. Still, the early period at which it was held to be an
interesting Roman antiquity is remarkable. That questionable gentleman
Nennius tells us as explicitly as possible that Carausius built on the
banks of the Carron a round house of polished stone, as a triumphal arch
in memory of his victory, while he rebuilt the wall between the Forth
and Clyde, and fortified it with seven castles. John Major is as
distinct in his assertion that it was built by Julius Cæsar, adding the
strange gloss that it was an imitation of Hercules when he placed his
triumphal pillars in the south of Spain. That inveterate old
story-teller Hector Boece is not less specific in stating that it was
raised by Vespasian in honour of his predecessor Claudius, and that it
covers the ashes of the highly respected and distinguished officer Aulus
Plautius. Hector, however, mentions some other little particulars,
which, if true, are decidedly to the point;—as that in his day the
effigy of a Roman eagle was visible, cut in the pavement, and there
stood within the building a stone sacrificial altar. Sir Robert Sibbald,
the naturalist and historian, probably having his imagination heightened
by this statement—declared that with a lighted link he could trace the
outline of an eagle’s head, and that he could also trace something
extremely like the figure of a Victory. Moreover, he saw certain letters
which, with a diffidence unprecedented and unimitated in the antiquarian
world, he declared to be to him (Sir Robert) quite unintelligible.
Thus, Arthur’s Oon—a building so diminutive in itself that a fac-simile
of it, identical in dimensions, formed a cupola for the stables of that
zealous antiquary Sir James Clerk of Penicuik—became one of the wonders
of the world. So it was esteemed when the proprietor of the estate in
which it stood, not having the fear of the antiquarian world before his
eyes, but desiring some good hewn stone for the purpose of flagging a
mill-dam, and believing that he could do what he liked with his own,
took Arthur’s Oon to pieces. The mill-dam which he built was carried off
by a flood—a just judgment, as it was deemed, on its sacrilegious owner;
and the hewn stones of Arthur’s Oon have for nearly a century been
buried in silt, or tossed about and rounded by the water of the stream.
The antiquarians were loud in their wail, and propagated their indignant
grief far around. They had even resort to the medium—uncongenial for
their usual purpose—of caricature, and the destroyer of the circular
temple was represented as the victim of every kind of ludicrous
retaliation, which the invention of gentlemen whose artistic line,
however, lay chiefly in crockets, mouldings, and fragmentary sculpture,
could devise. Posterity and other nations took up the cry. We remember
that, when the representative of the original victim stood for a
Scottish constituency after the passing of the Reform Bill, it was
stated against him, with mysterious emphasis, that he was the descendant
of the destroyer of Arthur’s Oon; and we saw the whole delinquency
specifically described as a sort of celebrated crime in the work of a
German historian, published within the past five years. We are the more
anxious to draw attention to this instance of heavy and protracted
retribution, that we would desire it to stand forth as an example,
warning others, as the Scottish indictments do, against committing the
like crime in time coming. Let all and every person or persons, body
corporate or politic, see what it is thoughtlessly or obstinately to
destroy any portion of the country’s treasury of antiquities.
“Oh be its weight like lead to lead
Upon its dull destroyer’s head,”
was Sir Walter Scott’s minstrel’s malison against such an offender; and
we cannot help remembering that at this moment one of the finest
specimens of Gothic architecture left by the destroyers of a former age,
lies in a carefully preserved and arranged heap, ready to be put
together again if its restoration may be permitted. We must admit that,
in general, the Scottish gentry have shown a praiseworthy anxiety to
preserve all remains of the mighty Romans, justly judging the interest
attached to them to be very high, however insignificant their relics may
appear. Nor are they all, by any means, of a kind that would be deemed
insignificant, even in the richer mines of Roman antiquities nearer the
seat of empire. For instance, the following description of a sculptured
slab found in a farm, near the Duntocher station, on Antonine’s Wall, is
full of promise to the artist as well as the archæologist:—
“In a certain freedom of execution and simplicity of design, we have
seen nothing superior, throughout the entire assemblage of our Roman
inscriptions. A plain raised border surrounds the stone, within which,
in the lower centre of the field, appear two winged Victories, each
resting one foot upon a globe, and jointly supporting, with their
raised hands, an oblong tablet bearing the inscription. On either side
of the Victories stands a Roman soldier—the one holding a spear, and
leaning on his _scutum_, or long-shaped buckler—the other supporting a
small standard with his right hand, and carrying what appears to be a
sheathed sword in his left. The former is no doubt intended for one of
the Hastati or Principes, who carried long spears and oblong
shields—the latter for a _Vexillarius_, with his Ensign displayed. In
the first, the _lorica_ or cuirass covering the body is perfectly
distinct, and he stands before us in the full equipment of battle; the
standard-bearer seems more lightly accoutred, while something like the
fold of a scarf descends from his left shoulder. The head-dress of the
two figures is rather singular, bearing a much greater resemblance to
the bonnets of our Highland regiments than to the Roman _galea_ or
helmet. As, however, the legionary soldiers had a decided _penchant_
for adorning the crests of their morions with feathers, we have here
perhaps a specimen of the length to which, in this respect, their
tastes would sometimes lead them.”
This extract is taken from the work of one who devoted a thoughtful and
inquiring mind to the classification and elucidation of the Roman
remains in Scotland. It was the misfortune of a little circle of
friends, who seem to have been deeply attached to him, to lose him from
among them after the first edition of his work had achieved success, and
while he was preparing an edition more extensive and complete, and more
in accordance with his enthusiastic conception of the interest of the
subject. Friends attached to his memory have filled up the little gaps
which the author had left until some day that never was destined to dawn
on him, and have edited the work for the benefit of his early left widow
and children; and a pleasant book it is. Not that it contains a rapid
and succinct history of events, or a brief and rigidly archæological
investigation into the character of our Roman remains. Though it can
stand inquiry for scholarship and full investigation, it is on the whole
a dreamy and discursive book, and the dreaminess is of that sad, gentle,
and somewhat plaintive kind, which might be supposed to come from one in
whom the seeds of early dissolution had been sown. This is by no means
uncongenial to the subject. Turning from imperial Rome, in her
progressive rise and all-conquering greatness, as we stand in Italy and
picture her spreading her power over the world—yet the view from the
extremities which recalls to us how the Roman soldier, reared under the
blue sky of Italy, among the vines and olives, amid temples and groves
alive with sculpture, had been driven by imperious duty to spend long
periods of life on desolate moors, swept by the bleak damp winds of
Scotland, is one suggestive of saddened reflections. To a mind like Mr
Stuart’s, and to other minds too, if they wander meditatively among
these farthest relics of departed empire, their structure and nature,
ever recalling the home characteristics and associations of the
colonists, impart many touching appeals to sympathy. The prætor or
centurion who had to take up his abode in some wild heath in the
half-conquered dependency, would have as gaily tesselated a floor as the
materials of the district would afford, to imitate as near as possible
his villa by the warm shore of pleasant Baiæ. A few statues, however
meagre and rude they might be, would still show the characteristic types
of those dear to his sight in the streets of Rome or Pompeii. The
structure of his villa followed the rich architecture which his fathers
had adopted from the simpler Greek, and in his exile he forgot not to
dedicate altars to his native deities—as many inscribed blocks of stone,
with the sacrificial focus, flanked by the usual scroll decoration, can
testify. Many of these curious and eloquent memorials were discovered in
the cuttings of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which, like the Union
Canal, followed the same line of country as the Roman engineer had
adopted for a rampart and chain of forts. One of these, an insignificant
slab near Castlecary, announces that the soldiers of the sixth
legion—victorious, pious, and faithful, natives of Sicily, Italy, and
Bavaria—pay their vow to the god Mercury.
“From the appearance of this altar, the form of the letters, the
character of their combinations, and the number of arbitrary marks or
dashes which it contains, we should suppose it to have been executed
at a much later period than any of the stones which refer to the
construction of the Wall. We have frequently had occasion to mention
the _Legio Sexta Victrix_, but never with any particular knowledge of
its history, until this little antique came forth from its long
concealment, to tell us of the various nations which had contributed
to swell its ranks. From the banks of the upper Danube, the plains of
Megara or of Agrigentum, and from the bounteous fields of Italy
herself, the young and the stout-hearted had been called, it would
appear, to experience a long, if not a perpetual exile, in the
comparatively inglorious and harassing service of defending the
Caledonian frontier. As the Sixth legion is supposed to have remained
for several centuries in Britain, it is most probable that numbers of
those men, drafted from the south of Europe to recruit its ranks, were
fated to pass their whole existence in this remote corner of the
world. To many, such a prospect was perhaps far from repulsive, as
they may have looked forward to the possession of some of those grants
of land which were bestowed on the Roman soldier when his period of
service was expired: still, the recollections of home and country had
not, as we see, been altogether eradicated from among them, and often
may the thoughts of the legionary veteran have rested upon the
associations of his earlier days, when, as on the stone before us, the
name of Sicily or Noricum was presented to his view.”