Rome in Caledonia: Eighteenth-Century Interpretations of Scotland’S Ancient Past
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chapter 7 Rome in Caledonia: Eighteenth- Century Interpretations of Scotland’s Ancient Past Alan Montgomery As many chapters in this book have eruditely demonstrated, eighteenth- century Europeans were captivated by the classical world. With the ancient Romans generally held up as paradigms of civilisation, high culture, and mili- tary success, the classical education and Grand Tours of early modern Britons were intended to recreate the glory of Rome in an age when Britain was de- veloping its own world- spanning empire.1 In England, this admiration for the classical era resulted in enthusiastic antiquarian investigations, with the aim of establishing the nation’s own position within the Roman world. Discoveries of Roman monuments, mosaics, inscriptions, and works of art were eagerly received, evidence, it seemed, of the classical roots of English civility.2 In Scotland, however, the situation was rather more ambiguous. For gen- erations, Scots had been trumpeting their position as one of the only nations to have successfully repelled Roman domination, celebrating their supposed ancestors as indomitable freedom fighters intent on preserving their liberty against foreign oppression. The idea that Caledonia (the name used by Tacitus, amongst other ancient authors, to refer to the northern regions of the British Isles)3 had kept the Romans at bay, which was bolstered by the writings of various medieval and humanist chroniclers, was to become one of the most popular tropes among patriotic early modern Scots, particularly in the context of more current threats to Scottish independence and sovereignty. Nevertheless, the eighteenth century produced a small but dedicated band of Romanist Scots who were determined to locate a classical heritage for their own nation. This chapter will focus on these men, and attempt to uncover the 1 For more on the early modern admiration for ancient Rome, see Philip Ayres, Classical Ideas and the Culture of Rome in Eighteenth- Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 2 These antiquarian endeavours are outlined in chapter five of Rosemary Sweet, Antiquar- ies: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth- Century Britain (London: Hambledon and Lon- don, 2004). 3 For example Tacitus, Agricola 10.3. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004412675_009 Rome in Caledonia 153 motivations behind their attempts to present Scotland not as a fiercely inde- pendent adversary to Rome, but rather as a settled and civilised Roman prov- ince. As will be demonstrated, some were driven by the pervasive eighteenth- century admiration for Rome, while others were clearly influenced by their support for Scotland’s emerging role as a constituent in a new British state, and indeed a larger British empire. In the end, this desire to demonstrate a classical legacy for Scotland was to prove unsuccessful, with Scots generally preferring to fall back on previous visions of the “noble savage,” an approach encouraged by the late eighteenth- century taste for Romanticism which would later evolve into nineteenth- century Highlandism and “tartanry.” Yet attempts to establish a “classical Caledonia” reveal much about early modern Scotland’s complex, often contentious attitude towards its own history and identity, and by extension, about the Scots’ struggle to establish a clear role for their nation within the wider world.4 The ancient texts available to early scholars of Scotland’s distant past fea- tured various Roman invasions of Scotland: one under Agricola, recorded in the biography by Tacitus; one under Antoninus Pius, alluded to in the Historia Augusta, “Life of Antoninus Pius” 5.4; one led by Septimius Severus, described in books seventy- five to seventy- seven of Cassius Dio’s Roman History; a fourth during the reign of the usurper Carausius in the late third century, mentioned in at least one manuscript copy of the ninth- century Historia Brittonum at- tributed to Nennius; and another by Theodosius, hinted at in Claudian’s pan- egyric to the emperor Honorius.5 While, unsurprisingly, such texts generally suggested Roman military success in the region, they remained remarkably unclear regarding the endurance or extent of Roman influence in northern Britain. Meanwhile, the growing interest amongst antiquarians in the material remains of ancient Scotland was uncovering extensive physical evidence of a Roman presence north of Hadrian’s Wall (an ancient frontier which was often conflated with the border between England and Scotland), and even north of the Antonine Wall, two monuments which were still widely regarded as pow- erful symbols of the limits of Roman power.6 4 For more on early modern Scottish uses of history in the formation of national and religious identity, see Chapter 6 by Kelsey Jackson Williams in this volume. 5 Carausius’s invasion is now regarded as a myth perpetuated and widely disseminated by the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth (P.J. Casey, Carausius and Allectus: The British Usurpers (Lon- don: Batsford, 1994), 168– 75). 6 For the reception of Britain’s two Roman walls, see Richard Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Laurence Keppie, The Antiquarian Rediscovery of the Antonine Wall (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2012)..