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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
When a tag from a colophon usurps the place of a title, a word of apology may be in season. In this instance, then, the motive for the choice was a desire to allay at the outset any alarm that might be felt lest the Journal should be caught in the maelstrom of a never-ending controversy. Those who are apprehensive on that score may rest assured that, unless fresh facts of real moment come to light, this will be my last word upon the subject. Indeed, it is with the greatest reluctance that I have intervened now. Thanks to the indulgence of long-suffering editors, my views have already been set out so fully, partly in these pages and partly elsewhere, that I had believed myself free to stand aside and await the verdict of informed opinion. But I was too sanguine. My arguments, as reflected in ‘The Fate of Agricola's Northern Conquests’, are sometimes so grievously distorted and obscured, doubtless through my own failure to state them clearly, that one more effort to be intelligible is imperative. The obligation is all the stronger because my critics announce that they are ‘reserving fuller treatment for another place’; it would be unfair to leave them in any dubiety as to the case they have to meet. Unfortunately one cannot be explicit without some expenditure of words. I will do my best, however, to be economical in that respect and, as an earnest of my good intentions, I will refrain from touching upon the various ‘general grounds’ to which the opening pages of the article that has set my pen in motion are devoted. They are too nebulous for brief debate. I cannot, however, leave unchallenged the attempt to rule out my interpretation of a crucial phrase.
1 Horace, Sat. i, i, 121.
2 By Pryce, T. Davies and Birley, E. in JRS xxviii, 141Google Scholar ff.
3 JRS xxvii, 93 ff.
4 JRS xxviii, 142. By way of contrast, and for the sake of the quotation it contains, I venture to reproduce a specimen of the letters referred to above. It was sent to me quite spontaneously by a Continental correspondent, with whom I had had no previous acquaintance: ‘I read with interest your article in the Journal of Roman Studies on “Britannia statim omissa”. I am sure that you are right. The meaning is obviously what you take it to be. May I bring some grist to your mill? There is another passage in Tacitus (Ann. i, 36) which supports your view and which seems to me even more to the point than the two you cite from the Histories. When Germanicus had to face rebellion from the legions on the Rhine, “augebat metum gnarus Romanae seditionis et, si omitteretur ripa, invasurus hostis.” The meaning is beyond dispute and, in my opinion, leaves nothing more to be said.’
5 Roman Wall in Scotland 2 2 f. Cf. Proc. Class. Assoc. xxix, 7 ff.
6 JRS xxvii, 96.
7 JRS xxviii, 142 f.
8 JRS xxviii, 144 ff.
9 PSAS lii, 255 ff., lviii, 326, lxviii, 28. A further supplement which I hope to publish shortly will bring the total up to 44, the newcomer being a Domitian from Upper Teviotdale, described as being ‘as fresh and beautiful as the day it came from the Roman Mint’.
10 PSAS lii, 206 f. The principle—more than hinted at by Haverfield in Antonine Wall Report p. 161, and made the basis for arranging the list of coins which follows—seems obvious enough, once it has been laid down. But I well remember how gratified I was when the veteran Ritterling wrote me that I had given him a new angle from which to look at similar evidence from Roman Germany. Mommsen had long before this pointed out that Roman denarii formed the current coin of non-Roman Germany in the third and fourth centuries (Hist, de la monn. rom. iii, 121).
11 PSAS lii, 204. Cf. Tacitus, Germ. c. 5: ‘argentum quoque magis quam aurum sequuntur, nulla adfectione animi, sed quia numerus argenteorum facilior usui est promises ac vilia mercantibus.’
12 Fynden av romerska mynt i det fria Germanien (Lund, 1926)Google Scholar. There is a very full summary in RGKB xix, 86 ff., where see particularly the second table on p. 113.
13 Newstead 387 ff. In the supplement referred to supra, p. 9, n. 9, I shall be able to add a Tiberius.
14 Num. Chron. 5 xiv, I ff.
15 One or two of the denarii of Trajan were in almost ‘brilliant’ condition, and one of these had been struck beween A.D. 103 and A.D. III.
16 JRS xxviii, 145.
17 See, for instance, Mattingly, Roman Coins, 125, and Bolin in RGKB xix, 130. Mr. Mattingly is entitled to the credit of having been the first to point this out (Num. Chron. 5 vi, 266).
18 Dio lxviii, 15.
19 JRS xxviii, 145. I do not know on what grounds it is there suggested that the troops of Platorius Nepos were the earliest Romans to discover the divinity of Coventina. On the assumption that they were, however, one might still ask whether bad sixpences never find their way into the offertory bag. Cf. Num. Chron. 4 v, 10 ff.
20 Newstead 401 ff.
21 ‘The results obtained from the Newstead excavations go to show that the outpost was unoccupied from about the beginning of the second century down to the construction of the Antonine Wall in A.D. 140’ (AA 3 vii, 205). A year later ‘about the beginning’ was explained as meaning ‘the first or second decade’ (op. cit. viii, 258).
22 Op. cit. viii, 258.
23 They propose (JRS xxviii, 146) to extend this absence to ‘other Scottish military sites’ and indeed to ‘Scotland as a whole’, but do not say whence they draw their evidence. It is not to be found in my own coin-lists, which are much more complete than any yet published.
24 See Newstead 386 f., with its reference to Banner Jahrb. cxiii, 240, where Dragendorff drew the same conclusion from the coin-finds at Haltern and Hofheim.
25 AA 3 vii, 205.
26 JRS xxviii, 147.
27 JRS xxv, 196 f. On re-reading the Slack Report, I feel that in fairness, the excavator's total of 145, which I quoted, ought to be somewhat, though not very appreciably, reduced, to allow for the pieces which they call ‘indecipherable’.
28 JRS xxviii, 147.
29 PSAS lxv, 432 ff.
30 One of the sherds reckoned as ‘late’ under this self-denying ordinance was actually found in an ‘early’ pit at Newstead.
31 Roman Wall in Scotland 2 460, n. 1.
32 PSAS had, 386 f., where details of the various alterations are given.
33 JRS xxviii, 147 f.
34 ‘The Agricolan Occupation of North Britain’ in JRS ix, 111 ff.
35 From AA 4 xv, 268, I have learned, not without surprise, that a different view is ‘now widely accepted’. A statement of the evidence for this would have been welcome.
36 JRS xxviii, 148 f.
37 The Roman Forts on the Bar Hill (1906), 51 ffGoogle Scholar.
38 Mr. I. A. Richmond tells me that the much fainter indications of the defences at the neighbouring fort of Strageath suggest to him that it has experienced a similar change,
39 PSAS xxxv, 329 ff.
40 JRS xxvii, 93.
41 JRS xxviii, 149.
42 Satire iv, 35.
43 JRS xxvii, 93 f.
44 JRS ix, 137 f.
45 Watson, , Celtic Place-names of Scotland, 8Google Scholar.
46 JRS xxviii, 149.
47 Agricola 17 ff.
48 It is not entirely novel, having received a preliminary airing in AA 4 xv, 266, where a tiny scrap of decorated Samian ‘seems to confirm the assumption, to be made from passages in the elder Pliny and Silius Italicus, that the first Roman governor to occupy Corbridge and many other sites in the north of Britain was not Agricola but Petilius Cerialis, the conqueror of the Brigantes’. See infra p. 24. n. 60.
49 NH iv, 30, 102 ff.
50 Bunbury, , Histoty of Ancient Geography ii, 404Google Scholar.
51 NH iv, 30, 102.
52 That is, according to Pliny's own reckoning. To him what we call Book I was merely a Table of Contents.
53 Epp. iii, 5.
54 NH, praef. 17.
55 The words ‘triginta prope jam annis’ suggest an even earlier date and this seems probable on general grounds. It is desirable to allow Pliny as long a time as possible for the completion of the NH, as it was written in odd hours (praef. 18) and more particularly as he was at the same time engaged on his history ‘a fine Aufidi Bassi’ (praef. 20, and Pliny, Epp. iii, 5, 5 f.). But I am giving Messrs. Davies Pryce and Birley the benefit of the doubt.
56 See, e.g., Tozer, , History of Ancient Geography, 264Google Scholar.
57 C. 25, 3.
58 Phars. vi, 68.
59 pun. iii. 597 f.
60 See supra, p. 23, n.48. This must be the passage of Silius referred to there, for nowhere else does the poet mention Caledonia or the Caledonians.
61 De IV. Cons. Hon. 26.
62 Thus, ‘Ciminius interim saltus in medio, ante invius plane quasi Caledonius vel Hercynius, etc.’ (Florus, Epit. i, 12(17), 3). The analogy with the ‘Hercynius saltus’ or ‘Hercynia silva’ is illuminating in more ways than one.
63 Geogr. ii, 3, 8. Cf. Watson, Celtic Place-names of Scotland 20.
64 ‘Reversus igitur in Galliam classe maiore auctisque copiis in eundem rursus Oceanum eosdemque rursus Britannos. Caledonas secutus in silvas unum quoque e regibus Casuellanum in vincla dedit’ (Epit. i, 45 (iii, 10), 18 f.).
65 JRS xxviii, 150. Incidentally, I have not ventured to be so precise. I argued that the withdrawal could not have taken place before A.D. 104, when Book I of the Histories was published, and that therefore ‘the earliest possible date’ was A.D. 104–106 (JRS xxvii, 94).
66 JRS xxviii, 150.
67 Wheeler, The Roman Fort near Brecon 71 f.
68 Kanovium: Collected Reports (1938), 10Google Scholar.
69 JRS xxvii, 98.
70 JRS xxviii, 152.
71 Ibid. 144.