89 For details, see Salway, Roman Britain, pp. 96-107.
90 Suggested by in the invented speeches placed in the mouths of Calgacus and Boudicca by Tacitus, Agricola,
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territory – extended from the south of the island, through York and the lands around the Wall
before reaching a terminus on the Forth/Antonine Wall.91 Paradoxically, however, Roman
ethnographic tradition articulated first by Tacitus and reprised, as we shall see, by Dio,
situated Britishness – that is the traits apparent to ethnographic observers that served to define
the Britons – amongst the barbarian groups beyond the Forth.
Imperial cult was an additional mechanism which might have been used to induce a
sense of British identity through encouraging ‘tribal’ solidarity at an intra-regional level. This process is exemplified in Gaul where the Altar of the Three Gauls, Tres Galliae, based at
Lugdunum, Lyon, was inscribed with the names of the sixty Gallic peoples.92 A similar effort to foster provincial loyalty in Britain might be seen at the establishment of an imperial cult at
Camulodunum, Colchester, the oppida of Cunobelinus, ruler of the powerful southern confederacy based amongst the Trinovantes. Here, the appropriation of Camulodunum as an
imperial cult centre was perhaps an attempt to reconfigure Cunobelinus’ power into an expression of southern Britannic regional solidarity, clothed in imperial garb. This transition
may not have been as dramatic as first appears, as southern kingships had utilised the
symbols of romanitas and an association with the empire prior to the conquest.93 That this
process was contested, however, is indicated by the destruction of the imperial cult at
Colchester during the Boudiccan revolt.94
Even if there was success in reconfiguring Cunobelinus’ power, the sense of solidarity
amongst the peoples of southern Britain may have been limited to those peoples previously
under his overlordship; indeed, there is little reason to expect groups further north to have
91 See above.
92 D. Fishwick, ‘The Sixty Galli Tribes and the Altar of the Three Gauls’, Historia 38 (1989), 111-112; idem,
‘The Temple of the Three Gauls’, JRS 62 (1972), 46-52, at 50-1.
93 Creighton, Coins and Power, pp. 80-5, 101-25. 94 Tacitus, Agricola, 16.
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accepted the idea of Britishness as based upon adherence to a southern provincial centre.
Despite Colchester’s potential function as a provincial capital and imperial cult centre, its role in the creation provincial Britishness appears to have been limited, and the town may have
been marginalised by the emergence of London as the political and economic focal point
within southern Britain, as suggested by the inscriptions to provincia Britannia from the
town.
Under the Severan emperors in the early third century Britannia was sub-divided into
two provinces: Britannia Superior (central southern Britain), governed from London; and
Britannia Inferior (northern Britain), administered from York.95 Inscriptions record the activity of Britannia Superior’s officials in the lower province at Greta Bridge and
Chesterholm,96 while a single inscription also from Chesterholm records the activities of the
propraetorian legate of Britannia Inferior.97 Britannia Inferior appears, however, to have
been referred to locally as Brigantia – the personification and deification of the land of the
most powerful northern people, the Brigantes. As with the placement of the imperial cult at
Colchester, the creation of the Brigantia cult represents a reconfiguration of local power in
order to stimulate provincial affiliation, especially important in a formerly troublesome
region which lay, on the whole, beyond the urbanised areas of Britain.
That Brigantia or Britannia Inferior was not confined by the Wall is suggested by an
inscription from Birrens,98 an outpost fort north of the vallum. Brigantia is also recalled at the
hinterland fort at Corbridge, demonstrating the military association of this deity.99 Another,
now lost, inscription from the vicinity of Castlesteads dedicated to the ‘goddess-nymph
95 Herodian, History, 3.8.2. 96 RIB, 745, 747, 1696. 97 RIB, 1706. 98 RIB, 2091. 99 RIB, 1131.
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Brigantia’ (Deae nymphae Brig) shows quite clearly the cultic aspects of this
personification.100 Indeed, both Brigantia and Britannia were female entities, suggesting links
to fertility and well-being. The heartlands of the Brigantia cult appear, however, to have been
in what is now central Yorkshire, with D(eae) Vict(oriae) Brig(antiae) inscriptions known
from Greetland101 near Halifax and Castleford,102 with a third to the ‘goddess Brigantia’ from
Adel, near Leeds.103 That the Greetland inscription was set up by one Titus Aurelius
Aurelianus, magister sacrorum, ‘master of sacred rites’ suggests that the worship of Brigantia
was a cult of some importance requiring its own priesthood, though whether it was
worshipped solely by the military community and other foreigners is unclear. Aurelius was a
name often assumed by families granted the citizenship prior to the Edict of Caracalla and
thus Titus Aurelius Aurelianus may have been a representative of a powerful local family
participating in imperial affairs.
The structuring and restructuring of Britain’s provinces and the establishment of cultic elements including the personification of the island and her regions suggests that the
Romans were indeed attempting to integrate the Britons into the provincial framework which
constituted the empire. However, problems remained for the island remained divided between
provincia and barbaricum and the peoples of the far north still considered the enemies of the state.
100 RIB, 2066. Cf. T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Native political organisation in Roman Britain and the origin of
middle Welsh brenhin’, in M. Mayrhofer et al (eds.), Antiquitates Indogermanicae (Innsbruck, 1974), pp. 35-45.
101 RIB, 627. 102 RIB, 628. 103 RIB, 630.
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Cassius Dio
It was not until the third century that Roman narrative sources again provided a detailed
account of the Britons. This is not to say that Cassius Dio’s description of the Britons, discussed below, is an accurate depiction of the northern Britons – it is another ethnographic
construct, an image of the barbarian. Nonetheless, it will demonstrate that the Caledonians
were, from an ethnographic perspective, the most visible of the British peoples. Tacitus’ narrative had of course ensured this; as had the dispersal of this tradition into other forms of
Roman literature such as the poetry of the second-century poet, Martial:
Quinte Caledonios Ovidi visure Britannos et viridem Tethyn Oceanumque patrem.104
Quintus Ovidius, you are going to visit the Caledonian Britons and green Tethys and Father Ocean
Here there is no sense that the Caledonian Britons are a threat – rather they are wonderment
comparable to the deified personifications of the Ocean and the mysterious isle of Tethys.
But for other authors the Caledonii of northern Britain, now a people, represented the very
essence of Britishness. It is indeed once again in Roman narrative history that we find the
ethnographic concept of Britishness located in the northern reaches of Britannia. This comes
in the Roman History of Cassius Dio, a Greek-speaking senator and member of the powerful
Cassii family of Nicaea in Bithynia.105 Written in Greek around A.D. 230, Dio’s work
contained an account of Roman history from its foundation under Aeneas to the reign of
Septimius Severus. Indeed, Dio’s concern was to the extent to which Roman greatness had decline under Severus and his sons, Caracalla and Geta, from the halcyon days of the
104 Martial, Epigrams, 10.44.
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Antonines.106 Thus Dio’s account of the Severan campaigns in northern Britain during 208-
11,107 including his classic ethnographic description of the Britons, must be read in light of
such negativity:
There are two principal races of Britons, the Caledonians and Maeatae, and the names of the others have been merged into these two. The Maeatae live next to the cross-wall which cuts the island in half, and the Caledonians are beyond them. Both tribes inhabit wild and waterless mountains and desolate and swampy plains, and possess neither walls, cities, or tilled fields, but live on their flocks, wild game, and certain fruits; for they do not touch the fish which are there found in immense and inexhaustible quantities. They dwell in tents, naked and unshod, possess their women in common, and in common rear all the offspring. Their form of rule is democratic for the most part, and they are very fond of plundering; consequently they choose their boldest men as rulers. They go into battle in chariots, and have small, swift horses; there are also foot-soldiers, very swift in running and very firm in standing their ground. For arms they have a shield and a short spear, with a bronze apple attached to the end of the spear-shaft, so that when it is shaken it may clash and terrify the enemy; and they also have daggers. They can endure hunger and cold and any kind of hardship; for they plunge into the swamps and exist there for many days with only their heads above water, and in the forests they support themselves upon bark and roots, and for all emergencies they prepare a certain kind of food, the eating of a small portion of which, the size of a bean, prevents them from feeling either hunger or thirst…Such is the general character of the island of Britain and such are the inhabitants of at least the hostile part of it.108
106 Barnes, ‘The Composition’, 252-3.
107 For details, see Fraser, Caledonia, pp. 22-9; Salway, Roman Britain, pp. 173-81. 108 Dio, Roman History, 77.12.1.
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Here the two principal races of Britons are presented as the very antithesis of the
Mediterranean ideals of urbanism and civic virtue. Living naked, in swamps and on
mountainsides, the Maeatae and Caledonii survive on hunting the fruits of the earth. As with
the Caesarean Britons, the Caledonians and Maeatae share women in common; moreover,
they are warlike, living off plunder and robbery, the standard barbarian ‘economic system’.
This imagery compounded the earlier constructs found in Caesar and Tacitus, reiterating the
barbaric nature of the Britons. A similar picture of the Britons was painted by Herodian,
another Greek author, who documented the reign of Severus.109 But Dio wrote in
contradistinction to his predecessors, arguing that the inhospitable nature of the landscape
and the barbarity of its inhabitants rendered superfluous Severus’ feeble efforts to conquer northern Britain. While from an ethnographic perspective, the northern Britons had not
progressed from the Tacitean description, it is nonetheless important that this imagery
perpetuated the anonymity of Britain’s provincial inhabitants; indeed, the British peoples of
literary interest remained those unconquered peoples dwelling at the ends of the earth.
Where did Dio locate the Caledonians and Maeatae – that is, from where did his
concept of Britishness begin? First, we must retrace our steps as important developments in
the Roman pacification of Britain had preceded the Severan campaigns of the early third
century: the construction of the Walls of Hadrian and Antonine. Hadrian’s Wall, which ran between Carlisle in the west and Wall’s End in the east, was constructed, perhaps to
Hadrian’s own specifications, in the years following A.D. 122.110
Following Hadrian’s death
in 138, however, his adopted son and successor, Antoninus, perhaps in order to increase his
personal glory, moved the imperial boundary once again to the site of Tacitus’ northern
109 Herodian, History, 3.14.6-8.
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terminus on the Forth-Clyde line where, according to the late fourth-century Historia Augusta,
Britannos per Lollium Urbicum vicit legatum alio muro caespiticio summotis
barbaris ducto.111
through his legate Lollius Urbicus he [Antonine] overcame the Britons and, after driving back the barbarians built a second wall, one of turf.
Antoninus Pius celebrated a British victory on coins issued between 142 and 144 and the
building of the upper Wall, which took place at this time,112 has been seen as an advancement
of the frontier.113 What contemporaries made of the situation is less clear: readers of Tacitus
might have imagined that the lands up to the Forth had always been Roman territory. The
Antonine Wall was nevertheless abandoned by the early 160s and the Hadrianic frontier re-
established114 – that is, by the time Dio wrote his Roman History in 230, the line of
demarcation between organised imperial space and barbaricum stood once again on the
Tyne-Solway line.
Nonetheless, Dio’s statement that regarded the Maeatae as living next to the cross- wall which cut the island in half has caused difficulties. Archaeological evidence in the form
of coin-hoards and Roman campaign fortifications ‘points to the home of the Maeatae in Fife,
Strathearn and Menteith’.115
That Dio referred to the upper Wall is seemingly confirmed by
place-names Myot Hill, south of the Forth at Falkirk, and Dumyat (‘the fort of the Maeatae’),
111 ‘Life of Antonine’, 5.5.
112 Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 88-96.
113 Whittaker, Frontiers, p. 36; Hanson and Maxwell, Rome’s North West Frontier, pp. 59-74. 114 Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 128-133.
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north-east of Stirling.116 However, these names were coined in Gaelic and may therefore
delineate the northern edge of Maeatan territory. Moreover, given that Tacitus’ Caledonia had
begun from the terminus on the Forth, there is little reason why the coin hoards or
fortifications in this area were not located in southern Caledonia.
Is it, furthermore, accurate to perceive the upper Wall as cutting the island in half?
Earlier in his narrative, Dio, in recounting Commodus’ great struggle with the Britons (βρετταυικός), stated that barbarians had crossed the Wall which separated them from the
legions, destroying a general and his troops.117 Though this has been seen as ambiguous, the
contradistinction between enemy and imperial space would suggest the Hadrianic Wall was
meant. But more important is a passage which follows Dio’s description of the northern Britons, one largely ignored by those who situate the Maeatae around the upper Wall. Here,
Dio outlines the island’s length as 7132 stades, stating that ‘we hold a little less than one half’.118
In conjunction with Dio’s earlier statement in regards to the location of the Maeatae,
the lower Wall seems the more likely location from which this barbarian federation began.
Hence the peoples subsumed under the name Maeatae may have included the intramural
groups such as the Votadini, Dumnonii, Selgovae and Novantae, even if they retained a sense
of identity within the larger confederation.119
The intramural zone remained, however, an area in which Roman activity, military
and diplomatic, continued into the fourth century; the position of these groups in relation to
the empire is thus problematic and discussed further over subsequent chapters. The
116
F. T. Wainwright, ‘The Problem of the Picts’, in idem (ed.), The Problem of the Picts (London, 1955), pp. 1- 53, at pp. 23-4; Fraser, Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 15-17.
117 Dio, Roman History. 73.8.1-2. 118 Dio, Roman History, 73.12.5.
119 Fraser, Caledonia to Pictland, p. 41; Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, pp. 34-6. Cf. P. Heather,
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prominence accorded to the Caledonians in Dio’s account, particularly in the exchange between beyond the Maeatae nonetheless reinforced the fact that they occupied furthest
Britain and thus the Caledonians maintained their dominant ethnographic position as the
British barbarians par excellence.
Perception of the frontier zone in Roman society was probably influenced by a strong
oral discourse disseminated amongst returning soldiers and officials; however, literary
accounts remained significant, particular amongst the educated caste and the imperial court
for structuring knowledge of imperial frontiers and the peoples beyond.120 The Wall was a
manifestation of imperial prestige in a region visited rarely by the emperor. Recent
scholarship views the Wall as a zone of interaction designed to control rather than prevent
movement through the landscape.121 Despite notions of imperium sine finibus, the Wall from
a cognitive perspective, as suggested by Dio’s account, could amount to a line of demarcation between imperial and barbarian space; indeed, Dio’s comment that Severus wished to
conquer the entire island makes little sense otherwise.122 Some ambiguity, then, perhaps
existed in the minds of third-century Romans as to precisely where Roman territory ended
and barbaricum began.
In this regard, the Wall’s monumental status had the ability to play a determining role in the creation of provincial Britishness, providing a physical symbol differentiating between
the provincial Britons and the barbarians from beyond the limes. That the Wall assumed such
a role amongst the provincial population is suggested by the production of commercial
120
F. Millar, ‘Emperors, Frontiers and Foreign Relations, 31 BC to AD 378’, Britannia 13 (1982), 1-25, at 18; A. D. Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman foreign relations in late antiquity (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 32-48; R. Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life (Oxford, 2012), pp. 16-18; R. G. Collingwood, ‘Hadrian’s Wall: A History of the Problem’, JRS 11(1921), 37-66, at 39-45.
121 Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 56-60. 122 Dio, Roman History, 77.13.1.
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artefacts – the Rudge Cup, the Ilam Pan and the Amiens patera –which reveal this monument
had been popularised in the provincial imagination. These items – which list the names of the
western Hadrianic forts from Bowness-on-Solway to Birdoswald or Great Chesters – were all
found at significant distances from the Wall, in the ‘civilian’ zones of Roman Britain and northern Gaul. For instance, the Rudge Cup was found at a possible Roman villa at Rudge
Coppice near Froxfield, Wiltshire; the Ilam Pan in the parish of Ilam, Staffordshire; and the
Amiens patera within a Roman house in Amiens, northwest France.123 Various dates have
been suggested for their production, with the late Antonine age (161-92) finding favour.124
Whatever the precise date of these objects, the Hadrianic Wall seems to have operated as
something of a tourist destination in the Roman period: perhaps visitors were overcome by
the sense that they stood at the very end of the earth, or at least its civilised part.
A memento of such a visit might have been worth acquiring as a keepsake; on the
other hand, it is possible that these artefacts were mass-produced and available elsewhere as
items that invoked the Wall’s ‘spirit’, whether or not the owners had been to the Wall.125
While it is hazardous to measure ‘spirit’, it seems possible that possession and dissemination of these objects within the provinces would have had the effect of stressing the delineating
functions of the Wall. This then would perhaps have encouraged provincials to have
developed an oral discourse which stressed the functionality of the Wall as the dividing line
between empire and barbaricum, Briton and barbarian. Indeed, if raiding across the Wall was
now affecting, as suggested in the accounts of Dio and Herodian,126 the livelihoods of the
123 D. J. Breeze, ‘Catalogue of the British Pans’, in idem (ed.), The First Souvenirs: Enamelled Vessels from Hadrian’s Wall (Kendal, 2012), pp. 1-8.
124 E. Künzl, ‘Enamelled Vessels of Roman Britain’, in Breeze (ed.), The First Souvenirs, pp. 9-22, at pp. 18-22. 125 One is reminded of seeing an ‘I Love London’ tee-shirt in the Lanes of Brighton.
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disarmed provincials, even greater emphasis might have been placed on the differentiation
between groups on either side of the frontier.
Citizenship
If these attitudes were developing within sections of provincial society in the late second
century, it was an empire-wide development of the Severan era which provided the provincial
Britons a method to securely differentiate between themselves and the barbarians. Following
his assumption of sole rule, the son of Septimius Severus, Caracalla, issued in A.D. 212 the