Castlehill Point, Rockcliffe, Dumfries & Galloway, the site of a Roman fort
The Roman empire made at least three attempts to conquer what would become Scotland, and their successive failures to hold onto our wee bit hill and glen dominated their impressions of this most north-westerly corner of Europe. We were indomitable, a people so wild and free that not even Rome’s mighty army could hold us in their claws. The truth, of course, is far more prosaic: politics and the cost of holding onto a bunch of bogs and hills were simply not worth it.
The networks of roads, forts and fortlets across Scotland map the Roman empire’s strategic aims north of the Forth: to control the harbours of the Forth and Tay, the farmland of Fife, and the minerals of the Ochils. Within Scottish Roman studies there has always been a far greater focus on the roads and forts than the coastal instillations of the navy. The main reason for this is that archaeologists can only find what remains, and Scotland’s coast is more heavily-developed than its interior. It is clear that the navy was involved: Tacitus records that his father-in-law Agricola’s 1st-century force involved both land and sea forces: the whole of Scotland was circumnavigated and soldiers and marines shared camps. Memorably the Caledonian leader (with a speech straight from Tacitus’s imagination) complained of being ‘menaced by the Roman fleet’. There are clear suggestions that Old Kilpatrick on the Antonine Wall had a harbour. Finally, the two key installations of the Severan invasion of the early 3rd century are on the coast at Cramond on the Forth and Carpow on the Tay.