but that, more or less, they held ground in Scotland—sometimes only
their forts and ramparts, at others, the wider fruit of recent
conquest—for a period approaching three centuries; and that the works of
Agricola, if he left any, must have been as much antiquities in the days
of Constantius, as the castles connected with Mary are in the days of
Victoria. Hence any vestiges of the manner in which they domestically
adapted themselves to the wild north, have a utilitarian interest beyond
that of mere association. After their villas and works of art, not the
least important vestiges of their career are those which are supposed to
indicate the use of their national luxury, the bath. Did the Italians
indeed attempt, in these inhospitable regions, to indulge in a meagre
imitation of those vast establishments, with their sudatories,
caledaries, tepidaries, and frigidaries, and other costly aids of
luxury, physical and mental, which in their remains astonish the tourist
wandering southward? If we may believe the inferences which men not
unskilled in archæology have drawn from discovered remains, the Romans
erected a substantial bath so far northward as the rocky promontory of
Burgh-head, stretching into the Moray Firth. That here there was a Roman
station—_castra stativa_; and that the Moray Firth, with its line of
lakes so far, and the highland mountains in continuation, formed the
_aræ finium_ of the Roman empire, is one of the matters which admit of
very pretty antiquarian criticism and debate. One curious argument on
the question we shall at once dispose of, as characteristic of the kind
on which archæological theories are sometimes founded. Thus antiquaries
find that the ancient name of the place was Torryton or Torrydun, and
give its northern etymology as meaning the town or fortress on the hill.
Now, the Greek geographers give a certain Pteroton stratopedon as about
the most northerly of the Roman stations in Britain. Here, then, they
say, is a natural adaptation of the native Torryton into Pteroton.
But—and it is seldom that etymology, which generally is allowed to run
riot, can be so satisfactorily pulled up—the Greek name is but a
translation of the Roman Alata Castra, or winged camp; and even an
etymologist will hardly hold that the ancients would go round about
through a Latin description, to find a Greek word resembling in sound
the native name. As to external evidence of occupation, there have been
Roman coins found in the neighbourhood; but money is a vagrant
commodity; and while there have been other relics, of a disputable
character, found as far northward as the entrance of Loch Ness, where,
indeed, Camden mentions that a little treasury of Roman antiquities was
discovered, yet there is no authentic inscription—the true test of
occupancy—which has been discovered in these northern districts. But
then there is the bath itself, which introduced this particular branch
of the subject to our present notice. We take a lively interest in it,
from having made, about a quarter of a century ago, a pilgrimage to
inspect it. An accommodating sailor, lounging among the windy rocks
which there jut into the ocean, took us through a narrow round-arched
entrance into a square stone chamber, where a solid platform, of a
couple of feet or so in width, surrounded the lower and narrower
compartment, in which clear water, as from a spring, rose to about four
feet from the platform. A slight incision or niche in one corner was
characteristic of Roman work, as intended for the reception of the deity
of the fountain. But otherwise there were no expressive marks of
classical origin, unless the clean cutting of the stones and their
accurate courses be so considered. The promontory was a favourite
fortress of the Northmen, to whom undoubtedly so workmanlike an edifice
could not be attributed. Scattered around the little fishing village
were remains of old fortifications, which the scientific General Roy and
others have set down as Roman. They are now, we believe, incapable of
bearing witness in the question, scarcely a vestige of them remaining.
But at the time to which we allude there were several fragments of
considerable mounds strengthening the position to seaward, and the still
fainter vestiges of ramparts, which, severing the promontory from the
low neck of sandy land connecting it with the fruitful plains of Moray,
had converted it into a petty Gibraltar. The site, however, is not like
those of Roman camps, which were generally on central plains attached to
a system of trunk highways, and the remains of mounds had none of the
fastidious neatness of their square works. On the whole, we could only
decide—and after consideration adhere to the decision—that the stone
chamber either is or is not a Roman bath.
Remains more distinctly indicative of the adoption of their native
luxury have been found near Inveresk, where the Romans were undoubtedly
in permanent position.
“In the year 1783, whilst workmen were engaged in the improvement of
some garden-ground, a short distance to the eastward of the church,
they came, at the depth of two or three feet, on the floors and
foundations of various buildings, which in course of their operations
were laid open over an extent of 60 feet in length by 23 feet broad.
The whole of this space was paved with a kind of mortar, known by the
name of _tarras_, and was intersected at intervals by distinct traces
of stone walls, among which might be observed the enclosures of two
separate chambers, the evident remains of a Roman bath. The largest
room measured 15 by 9 feet, the other 9 by 4½; and the floors of both
were composed of a coating of _tarras_ two inches thick, laid, in the
case of the first, upon a layer of lime, gravel, and pieces of brick
five inches deep, which again rested on a basement of irregular
flag-stones—the whole being supported on rows of pillars two feet in
height, some of them formed of stone, and others of brick; but in the
smallest chamber the coarse substratum of lime and gravel was ten
inches in thickness, as if this part of the building had been required
to sustain a greater degree of heat than the other—a supposition
extremely probable, from the circumstance that the pillars below bore
evident marks of having been much injured by fire. A quantity of
charcoal was found beside them, in good preservation, as if placed
there to renew the glow of a furnace which had been suddenly and for
ever extinguished. Under the first apartment the heat had been
conducted by means of flues formed of clay, which were found quite
perfect when the discovery was made; the partition-wall between the
two rooms was pierced near the ground by a hole three inches in
diameter, through which a pipe of some description had no doubt led as
a conduit for water from the one to the other.
“Such were the most perfect of the ruins brought to light at the
period referred to; but all around them were to be seen the remains of
other chambers which had evidently been of a similar construction.
Taken in the aggregate, they unquestionably marked the position of an
establishment of no mean importance in its day—the public baths of the
Roman Inveresk. Of their high antiquity there can be no doubt; for
every particular mentioned proclaims them Roman—the very cement
covering the floors was of a quality unequalled by the skill of later
times, and was formed of exactly the same materials as the _tarras_
which lined the capacious sewers of the ‘Eternal City.’”
Still it is open to doubt if such remains indicate the poor northern
substitute for the gorgeous _thermæ_ of the south. Mr Bruce, in his
scholarlike and interesting book on the Roman Wall—of which we would
fain take an opportunity of speaking more at length ere we resign the
subject of the Romans in Scotland, with which it is intimately
connected—in mentioning one of these oven sub-floors or hypocausts,
suggests that, instead of being intended to heat water or produce a
sudatory, they were merely an ingenious method of creating a comfortable
degree of indoor warmth for the southern inhabitants of our stormy
region. “At present,” he says, speaking of the remains near Chesters,
“the floor of the principal apartment is nine inches thick, and when its
upper surface was overlaid with a tasteful concrete or mosaic pavement,
it would be an inch or two more. It would require a very powerful
furnace to raise this mass of matter to a considerable temperature. On
the other hand, if the production of a genial and uniform warmth were
the object in view, no contrivance could be more suitable. The heated
air from a small furnace permeating the underground flues and the walls
of a suit of apartments, and not passing off until in its lengthened
passage it had given out the larger part of the warmth it had derived,
would, in the lapse of some hours, give to the whole building a
comfortable temperature which it would not readily lose. Any inattention
to the furnace, either by causing it to burn too fiercely or too feebly,
would not be felt. The thickness of the floors would prevent the air
from being scorched, and producing the disagreeable sensation which is
experienced in rooms that are heated by the stoves in common use. It is
not improbable that we may return to this method of warming our churches
and public halls, even if we do not adopt it in our private buildings.”
Here we have got at something very practical indeed. But, in fact, the
Romans knew a vast deal about the art of sustaining life and making it
endurable; how otherwise could they have organised so vast a population
within the walls of the imperial city? When the Board of Health were
recommending tubular drainage, they received specimens of glazed pipes
constructed on the best modern principles, which had been excavated from
the Coliseum. Curious tubes have been found both in the English and the
Scottish walls, and the tradition of the country people in the
neighbourhood of both has singularly coincided in assigning them as part
of a tubular system of communication from end to end of the wall. The
Romans were able sanitarians, and knew the art of safely, and, without
inconvenience or risk to discipline, condensing a large number of men
within a narrow space. The camp, under the Polybian system of
castrametation, was crowded beyond anything that a deputy-quartermaster
could readily believe, and there was still greater condensation under
the Hygenian system—which, by the way, has no connection whatever with
the Hygeian system of the quack doctors who call themselves the British
College of Health.
This slight digression from the domestic circle to the camp seems to
invite the question, if there are not nobler objects of association with
the mighty Roman name than warm baths, heated parlours, and soil-pipes?
Was it for this that the eagle, seeking universal dominion, was borne
northwards through fields of slaughtered barbarians into realms beyond
the line which those who entered them had been taught by their parents
to believe as the utmost limits of the earth? Is there nothing in the
relics of almighty Rome to tell of her conquests and victories—her
mingled impetuosity and endurance—her lofty scorn of the barbarian—her
proud defiance of man, of the elements, and of fate itself? Yes. Her
military works are indeed still the great leading memorials of Rome, and
warlike relics are her principal vestiges. Standing within the ramparts
of the fortified camp at Ardoch Bridge, we are conscious in the
permanent stability of the earthen works—many of them still smooth and
clean as the glacis of a modern fortress—how daring and aggressive, yet
how systematic and careful, was the Roman invasion of the North. It is
the boast of the antiquary—or the archæologist, as he now calls
himself—that he is no longer the fusty custodier of
“A fouth o’ auld nick-nackets,
Rusty airn caps and jinglin jackets,
Waud haud the Lothians three in tackets,
A towmont guid;
And parritch-pats, and auld saut backets,
Before the flood.”
He is now the scientific analyser of the wrecks which time has left,
erecting out of his researches, by rigid induction, so much of the
history of the past as his materials will afford. And for this there is
still a wide field—a wide blank field, but a small portion of which we
can ever hope to see filled up—in the three centuries of struggle
between the Romans and the inhabitants of Scotland. The beginning of the
contest is illuminated by the brilliant light of Tacitus; but after this
all is dark and indistinct. We know that nearly a century later Lollius
Urbicus penetrated far to the north—that he probably reached those Aræ
Finium which we have already spoken of in Moray and Inverness, possibly
built that dubious stone chamber in Burgh-head, and bathed in it. About
his journeys and conquests—about the building of the Scottish Wall and
its forts—their repeated relinquishment and recapture, and the final
expulsion of the invaders, still deemed so after the lapse of centuries,
how much must there be which the spirit of historical inquiry would
devour with avidity—how little that can actually be submitted to its
intellectual appetite.
Nay, of the very beginning of the narrative as set forth by Tacitus, how
little do we actually know. The bright light dazzles us, and we think it
reveals everything, but on examination we can make out but little with
clearness. What are we to believe about the battle of the Grampians and
Galgacus? Who reported that fine speech of his, containing so many
capital hits at the condition of the court of Domitian and the policy of
the Prætorian guards? Is it not odd that the Romans, who do not
condescend to afford us the slightest hint of the character or structure
of the language of their Celtic and Gothic contemporaries, should have
got hold of an entire speech of the kind, and translated it so well?
That the Romans found it the hardest of all their conflicts to establish
themselves in Scotland is clear enough; but it is beyond a doubt that
the number and organisation of their adversaries were exaggerated by the
historian, to enhance the merit of his brother-in-law and fellow Romans.
How are we to believe that thirty thousand trained warriors were
gathered under the command of one leader, with such means of subsistence
as Scotland can have then afforded? We know that the islands of New
Zealand, having an area co-extensive with the United Kingdom, could just
produce about that number of men able to bear arms, were every one, in
all the remotest corners of the islands, brought to join the general
muster; and it is difficult to suppose that Scotland was much more
populous than a track of New Zealand similar in extent would be now. How
much more interesting than the grandiloquent Roman’s account of the
chariot charge, and the showers of darts, would have been some actual
account of the character and appearance of the mountain warriors who
braved the power of Rome; but we derive no more distinct impression of
them than that their swords were very long. It would be something to
know even the name of the chief called Galgacus, and an accurate sketch
of his appearance would be worth a picture-gallery. Modern art has by no
means supplied the defect. We have before us a representation of
“Galgacus addressing the Caledonian army before the battle of the
Grampians,” which, we are informed, is engraved in steel, in the finest
style of the art. The chief has unexceptionable mustaches, and is
arrayed in the full uniform of some one of the Highland regiments. His
ostrich plume is very rich and full, and he addresses the meeting in the
attitude which may be found in the frontispiece of “the Speaker’s
Guide.” His chariot—but for the material, which is basket-work—might
have come out of Longacre. We cannot say much for the anatomy of the
horses, but their grooming is excellent, and they are admirably matched.
At their head stands a figure arrayed in tartan, whose shape and
attitude would seem much more natural were he accoutred in cords and
tops, with a green frock and shoulder-knots. Another attempt, evidently
more ambitious in the adaptation of costume and coincidents, is not much
more successful. The scene is laid on the slope of Arthur Seat as a
suitable piece of mountain scenery. Galgacus is more rough and hairy
than in the other attempt. There is a greater portion of bare limb and a
smaller amount of tartan. He wears on his head a skull-cap with a spike
in it, such as dragoons wore in the seventeenth century. In his hand he
carries a Lochaber-axe, such as that which made the City Guard of
Edinburgh so formidable in the days of poor Ferguson. The chariot is not
so well got up as in the rival plate; we question if it would go a
couple of yards on a turnpike road, not to speak of its capacity to bowl
along the scaurs and precipices of the Grampians. A scythe projects from
either axle in a way which makes one wonder how the group around can pay
so much attention to the oratory. If the machine move a few inches, the
leg of a venerable gentleman very intent on the oration will be
amputated. As to this personage,—his head, with its high brow, aquiline
nose, and profuse white beard, is taken from some apostle in some
painting by some great master. The costume is of the peculiar kind
invented by Benjamin West. The old man carries in his hand an instrument
like an Irish reaping-hook; only it is made of gold, and he is going to
cut the misletoe with it. He is the type of those mysterious personages
called Druids in the histories perused by our youth at school, and his
function in modern phraseology is that of army chaplain. From neither of
these representations do we derive a very satisfactory notion of
Galgacus and his followers; and, indeed, it would be difficult to say
which of them seems the more distant from the probable truth.
Another question is in itself of a far more simple character, yet has
caused a sufficient amount of complex dispute—Where was this battle of
the Grampians fought? The Grampian mountains are well enough known in
modern geography. The Mons Grampius of Tacitus is as great a
geographical vagrant as the source of the Niger or the place where
Hannibal passed the Alps. The etymologists find that the word Grampian
is decidedly of Gaelic origin; but etymologists, and Celtic ones
especially, can always find what is wanted. Our own belief is that the
name of the Grampian mountains is derived from the words _Mons Grampius_
of Tacitus, and we have no doubt that he gave that name to the
battle-field with true Roman caprice and contempt. Where then was it?
When Tacitus speaks of the army having passed the Bodotria, and the
natives being driven, as it were, into another island before the battle,
we seem to have the fact pretty clearly ascertained that it occurred
north of the Forth and Clyde, and of the line of forts subsequently
erected. But over the extensive ground thus opened to them antiquaries
have moved about the battle like a chessman over every available square,
from Lochore in Fifeshire, where Scott rather encouraged them to place
it on account of his son’s marriage with the heiress, to the hills of
Aberdeenshire. A hard fight was made at Ardoch, with its fine fort and
camps, in full view of the Grampian range, if not on them; but the
champions of the other spots would not admit themselves to be defeated.
In the midst of such a contest, in which such men as Sibbald, Horsley,
Gordon, Stukeley, Whitaker, Chalmers, Pinkerton, Roy, and Ritson were
engaged so unsuccessfully, it is pleasant to see a real giant come forth
and hew the pigmies down with an unhesitating sword. Some thirty years
ago there appeared an “Account of interesting Roman Antiquities
discovered in Fife,” by the Rev. Andrew Small of Edenshead. In a
chapter, giving “an account of the battle of Meralsford on the Lomond
hill, which Tacitus has mistaken for Mount Grampius,” he affords a model
to the class of antiquaries who have generally dealt with these
subjects, since he carries to the highest perfection their peculiar
method of reasoning. His view is, that Tacitus had made a topographical
blunder, since a battle which Mr Small knows to have taken place at
Meralsford, “appears obviously to have been that great battle described
by Tacitus as having been fought at the foot of Mons Grampius. But it is
clear to a demonstration, that he had mistaken Mons Lomundus for Mons
Grampius, as it is nigh the north brae of the West Lomond Hill that the
battle was fought.” Such reasoning is conclusive. His method of
describing the whole affair is equally clear and convincing. We have the
operations of the Romans step by step thus:—“At Burnside they were
within less than a quarter of a mile of the Caledonians, having only to
cross in a north-east direction the south-east angle of the farm of
Bonnety when they entered upon the lands of Edenshead, and there they
came first in contact with the Caledonians, where a large cairn, erected
upon the march betwixt these two lands, straight east from the
farm-steading of Bonnety, which stood about these twenty years back,
evidently points out the extremity to where the left wing had extended.”
Here it seems the Romans at the commencement of the affair were
repulsed, an event which Tacitus naturally passes over; and the exulting
Mr Small, who is a truly national writer, talks of “the warm reception
they met with, and the sound drubbing they got from the brave
Caledonians when the battle commenced;” while he further finds that the
unfaithful Tacitus “carefully conceals their retreat across the river
Eden, because he considers it disgraceful to the Roman arms.”
It is a pity that people will not be satisfied with such comprehensive
solutions of difficulties, but it must be admitted that the battle of
the Grampians is still in want of a site. A curious element of
perplexity was added to the dispute, by the introduction in the midst of
it, about a century ago, of the itinerary of Richard, the monk of
Cirencester, who had left behind him a manuscript giving a full and
minute account of the geography of Britain in the time of the Romans,
taken from Roman sources. His itinerary went as far north as the Moray
Firth, and wherever he set down a station, there some remains or some
identity of name immediately proved the accuracy of his materials. Never
was such joy in the antiquarian world. The writers on Roman British
archæology, who followed the discovery, alluded to their groping
predecessors as astronomers might to those who wrote in ignorance of the
Copernican theory. The magnificent work of General Roy on the military
antiquities of the Romans, was but a commentary on the itinerary of
Richard. Whitaker treated it as an undoubted authority for the state of
Britain in the middle of the second century, “a period when we have
scarce any information concerning the island from the Roman historians,
and the Roman Empire among us was in its greatest glory and its farthest
extent.” Even Gibbon gave the work entire credit.
Yet there were some anachronisms or anatopisms, if we may coin a word,
which cast suspicion on the performance; and among these, after having
taken the inquirer by the ninth Iter beyond the boundaries of
Aberdeenshire and the wild uplands near the source of the Don, here all
at once he found himself at the “Mons Grampius.” No ingenuity could
reconcile this with the account of Tacitus, and the antiquaries had to
resort to the bold operation of believing that this did not profess to
be the site of the battle, but was a station named in honour of it, as
we now say Waterloo Bridge, and Trafalgar Square. But there was
something very suspicious in the unwonted circumstance of a monk of the
fourteenth century having occupied himself with Roman topography; and
the suspicion is not removed by a preliminary dialogue, in which Richard
argues the matter with his abbot, who tells him that man has but a short
time to live in this world, and it is a sad thing to see a rational
creature occupying so brief an interval in setting down a useless list
of places which have ceased to exist, and were in their best days only
the abode of benighted heathens.
There is, indeed, some reason to believe that the itinerary of Richard
is a hoax; but if it be, it is a very complicated and elaborate one. The
existence of the MS. was first notified to Stukeley the antiquary, who
received an account of it as a discovery made in Copenhagen by Mr
Charles Julius Bertram, who enclosed a specimen of it. This so excited
the interest of the antiquary that he insisted on having a copy of the
whole. Mr Charles Julius Bertram held the responsible place of English
Professor in the Royal Marine Academy, and if it be the case that,
having tried by the specimen and description to “take a rise,” as it is
termed, out of the solemn antiquary, and finding that he must support
the story or find himself in a position which it would be unpleasant for
an instructor of youth to occupy, that of a perpetrator of practical
jokes—it must be admitted that he bore the task he had brought on
himself bravely, and relieved himself from his predicament very
successfully. We see that a translation of Richard of Cirencester has
been published by Mr Bohn in his six old English chronicles. We would
like well to see a critical inquiry into its authenticity, conducted
with the light of modern archæological science. To the subject, as well
as to the wider field of the Roman vestiges in Scotland, we must in the
mean time bid farewell.
ATHENS IN 1853.[7]
Wordsworth, whose elegant and scholarly work on Greece is now familiar
to most drawing-room tables, in his more erudite-looking but scarcely
less elegant volume on _Athens and Attica_, published in the year 1836,
gives a description of the then waste and desolate condition of the city
of Pericles in the following terms:—
“The town of Athens is now lying in ruins. The streets are almost
deserted; nearly all the houses are without roofs. The churches are
reduced to bare walls and heaps of stones and mortar. There is but one
church in which service is performed. A few new wooden houses, one or
two of more solid structure, and the two lines of planted sheds which
form the bazaar, are all the inhabited dwellings that Athens can now
boast. In this state of _modern_ desolation, the grandeur of the
ancient buildings which still survive here is more striking—their
preservation is more wonderful. There is now scarcely any building at
Athens in so perfect a state as the temple of Theseus. The
least-ruined objects here are some of the ruins themselves.”