Hadrian’s Wall marked the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire.
Eighty Roman miles long, it marched over the stony hills and green fields of northern Britannia,
roughly paralleling the modern frontier between England and Scotland.
Though not strong enough to repel a full-scale invasion, Hadrian’s Wall could deflect raiding
parties.
It controlled movement in and out of the province.
And – perhaps most importantly – it served as a symbolic statement of Roman might, intimidating
those beyond and reassuring those within.
Hadrian’s Wall, in short, marked the boundary between Roman territory and a region that
the Romans raided and patrolled, but never quite managed to conquer.
Between 79 and 84 AD, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, governor of Britannia, campaigned throughout
what is now Scotland, stationing garrisons nearly as far north as modern Aberdeen, and
sending a Roman fleet to the Orkney Islands.
But before he could consolidate his gains, Agricola was recalled to Rome.
A few years later, his garrisons were withdrawn as part of a large-scale redeployment to the
Danube, and the Roman frontier receded to the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall.
More than a century later, Septimius Severus, frustrated by Caledonian raids across Hadrian’s
Wall, mounted another campaign to conquer Scotland.
Assembling the largest Roman army ever seen in Britain, he crossed the Firth of Forth
on a bridge of 500 boats, and overwhelmed the Lowlands in a single campaign season.
After one of the newly-annexed tribes rebelled, the emperor ordered its complete extermination.
His ruthlessness stirred the other tribes to revolt, and the campaign devolved into
brutal guerilla warfare, which continued until Septimius Severus died of illness at York.
His son Caracalla, eager to return to Rome, then ended the conflict as quickly as he could.
Agricola’s conquests might have been lasting, had his garrisons not been withdrawn.
And if Septimius Severus had lived a year or two longer, he might have managed to subdue
all the Caledonian tribes.
A more interesting question, however, than why these two campaigns failed is why – over
three and a half centuries of occupation – the Romans made only two attempts to conquer Scotland.
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The most basic explanation for the Roman failure to conquer Scotland is geographic.
Roman armies could advance easily into the relatively fertile and populous Lowlands.
But the mountainous and thinly-populated Highlands represented a serious logistical challenge
to any large army, and made it easy for local tribesmen to melt into the hills.
Mountains, however, hadn’t stopped the Romans before.
Early in their history, they had battled the Samnites in the foothills of the Apennines.
They had fought in the mountains of Greece, the mountains of Spain, and the mountains
of Armenia.
In Britain, they had subdued the rugged hill country of northern Wales.
The Romans conquered Dacia – roughly modern Romania – despite having to deal with terrain
as rugged as anything in the Highlands.
But then Dacia, from a Roman emperor’s perspective, was far more valuable than Scotland.
Under the Republic, when Rome’s enemies had been wealthy, and there had been little
concern about administering annexed territories, wars of conquest had been a useful means for
the Roman elite to gain glory and riches.
But ever since the reign of Augustus, who had pushed the Roman borders to large rivers
and deserts, the emperors had taken a cautious attitude toward expansion.
For most emperors, annexing a new territory was only worthwhile if it presented a legitimate
threat to imperial security, if it promised to produce plenty of taxable income, or if
it could provide a hearty helping of prestige with minimal military heartburn.
On those terms, the Roman Empire had effectively reached its natural frontiers by the end of
Augustus’ reign.
In North Africa, the Sahara prohibited southward expansion everywhere but Egypt, where Roman
expeditions penetrated as far as the Sudd Swamp, in what is now South Sudan.
In the east, although Augustus sent an expedition to Arabia Felix – what is now Yemen – the
only really viable target for expansion was the Parthian Empire, and in particular the
fertile lands of northern Mesopotamia.
Most of Rome’s wars with the Parthians and their Sassanian successors focused on this
region, though only Trajan attempted to annex it completely.
Dacia was the only region north of the Danube that had any appeal as a conquest.
It was, first, the only true state in the region, a kingdom whose armies – when united
– posed a real threat to the neighboring provinces.
Equally importantly, it controlled very productive gold mines.
Augustus attempted to conquer Germany up to the Elbe, and briefly succeeded, before the
disaster at the Teutoburg Forest drove the legions back.
The memory of that defeat, and the simple fact that there wasn’t much worth conquering
in Germany, kept the frontier at the Rhine.
And then there was Britain.
Julius Caesar had made two landings there, but it was only in the reign of Claudius,
and only because that emperor was in desperate need of military laurels, that the Romans
finally invaded Britain.
Although Britain had important natural resources – most notably, tin and iron – it was
never a wealthy province.
Financially speaking, in fact, it may have been a liability, since the costs of paying
Britain’s large garrison probably exceeded tax revenues.
And to Roman eyes, it was a profoundly remote and unappealing place, misty, damp, and stranded
in the bitter, all-circling stream of Ocean.
What was true of the rest of Britain was especially true of Scotland.
Cold, rocky, impossibly distant, it would never be a productive part of the empire.
Conquering the region might bring security to the rest of the province, but it would
never make the conquerors rich.
And that, beyond the exigencies of imperial strategy and the inhospitable terrain, was
the real reason that Scotland never became part of the Roman Empire.
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