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318 OCEANUS DUECALEDONIUS A.A. R. HENDERSON o 0 Orcades ~ p ~~ ~~ Thule t 40m 319 AGRICOLA IN CALEDONIA: THE SIXTH & SEVENTH CAMPAIGNS Since Ogilvie and Richmond published their commentary on Tacitus· biography in 1967, a great deal of work has been done on the five Scottish campaigns of Agricola (III-VII, numbered by the years of his governorship of Britain). lOur understanding of these operations has been enormously increased by discoveries in the field. Relatively few new ideas have been generated by study of Tacitus' text, which has never seemed to offer much hope to the investigator. As a biographer and literary artist Tacitus suppressed many geographical and similar details that he felt would bore or distract his readers. The archaeologists, for example, have disposed of the belief, still strong when Ogilvie and Richmond wrote, that Agricolan installations underlay all or most of the forts of the Antonine Wall, built two generations later. In fact the praesidia mentioned by Tacitus in ~. 23 (year IV) as marking the temporary terminus of the province on the Forth-Clyde isthmus, coincide with the latter sites at a maximum of three places; and unlike the Wall, the Agricolan system starts S of the Clyde in the W (Barochan Hill) and continues S of the Forth on the E as far as Edinburgh (Elginhaugh). 2 Only the third of Agricola's Scottish expeditions (V) continues to resist all 11 am entirely persuaded by the arguments of Professor A.R. Birley for the earlier dating of Agricola's governorship, Le. 77-83/4, instead of the traditional 78-84/5 (liThe date of Mons Graupius, II LCM 1 [1976] 11-14). Cf. B. Dobson, "Agricola's Life and Career," Scot. Arch. Forum 12 (1980) 10. - 2See W. S. Hanson and G. ~;axwell, Rome's North-West Frontier: The Antonine Wall (Edinburgh 1983) 39-40, 121; Rar.son, "Agrrcola on the Forth-Clyde: Isthrr.us, II Scot. Arch. Forum 12 (1980) 55-68; Hanson 320 A.A.R. HENDERSON efforts at elucidation. Despite the reservations of the most recent writers on the subject, the fighting described in ~. 24 is best explained in the context of a crossing of the Clyde; but archaeological evidence to support this will be particularly hard to find, in view of the nature of the terrain in S. Argyll and Kintyre. 3 The campaign that has attracted most attention is without doubt the last (VII), chiefly because of the Scarlet Pimpernel-like character of the battlefield of (or at) mons Graupius, where Agricola crowned his long period of service in Britain with a crushing victory over a Caledonian army (~. 29-38). The quest for the elusive mons and accompanying marching camp (33. 1, 35.2) has gone on now for at least 277 years; nigh on a dozen theories have been published, some lunatic, some plausible. 4 Since the Second World War there have been four, the latest of which, that of Professor J. K. S. St. Joseph, is circumstantially very convincing, and has won widespread and authoritative support. 5 Most of the proffered identifications depend and Maxwell, "An Agricolan prae,;dit19 on the Forth-Clyde isthmus (Mollins, Strathclyde)," Britannia 80) 43-9. 3See Hanson and Maxwell (above, n.2) 40-1; N. Reed, liThe fifth year of Agricola's campaigns," Britannia 2 (1971) 143-8. 4The earliest known to me is Sir Robert Sibbald's proposal that Ardoch (fort) was the Romans' camp before the battle, put forward in his Commentarius in ea uae Tacitus habet de Gestis A ricolae of 1707 (Edln urg: n rew ymson. e contrl utlons 0 t e eVe James Playfair to the Old Statistical Account, vols. 9, 17 and 19 (1793, 1796, 1797) typify the wi Ider shores of the subject. 5See J.K.S. St Joseph, "Aerial reconnaissance in Roman Britain, 1973-76,11 JRS 67 (1977) 141-5; id~, liThe camp at Durno and Mons Graupius,''lrritannia 9 (1978) 271-88. Cf. A.L.F. Rivet and C. Smith, The Place-names of Roman Britain (London 1979) 45: lithe most plausible [suggestIon] IS that of Professor J.K. St Joseph ll ; ibid. 371 [GRAUPIUS MONS]: "probably Bennachie - the suggestion of J.K. St Joseph...

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