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00:00:0778 AD. The most powerful army in the world arrived here. A land of strange
00:00:17tribes and savage beasts. A place they called Caledonia.
00:00:24They would have terrorised the locals.
00:00:27They believed that they had a divine right to rule.
00:00:33The mighty Roman legions had conquered all before them by warfare, repression, bribery,
00:00:42genocide. But when they got to here, they stuttered to a halt. For over 300 years, the tribes
00:00:50of Northern Britain proved the most frustrating and formidable of adversaries.
00:00:58I'm Dr Fraser Hunter. I'm an archaeologist. I've spent 20 years uncovering our earliest
00:01:06histories. The Roman invasion fascinates me. How a voracious superpower took on the tribes
00:01:16of Iron Age Scotland. A conflict from ancient history. But a conflict that resonates with
00:01:27our own world. This was a battle of empire against insurgency. A battle of control, of division,
00:01:39of conquest, of conquest. Tales from the edge of empire. The story of Rome's final frontier.
00:02:00Our story begins here, in the heat and dust of North Africa, at the ancient Roman city of
00:02:07Volubilis, in Morocco. The south-west corner of the empire.
00:02:20From here, it's 2,500 miles to the eastern edge of the empire in Syria.
00:02:241,500 miles north to the land they called Caledonia. And strange as it may seem, these ancient ruins
00:02:33hold a unique and fascinating piece of evidence about the history of Scotland.
00:02:41This arch was built to celebrate the self-styled conqueror of the Caledonians, the Emperor Caracalla.
00:02:49He and his father, the Emperor Severus, had led massive military campaigns into third-century
00:02:55Scotland. A great statue of Caracalla once stood above the arch.
00:03:04So what we see today is impressive, but although it's restored, but it's only a fragment of how
00:03:10it would have looked, because the inscription that sits there at the moment would have been
00:03:14built into a much larger structure. And on top of that, you have this enormous great bronze statue.
00:03:23A fragment of cloak from Caracalla's statue has survived, housed in the archaeological museum
00:03:29of the city of Rabat. It includes an early depiction of that great national stereotype,
00:03:37the long-haired Caledonian warrior.
00:03:42And here he is. The giveaway is the Czech leggings. First-over depiction of Tartan. And the shields, too.
00:03:56They're Celtic in style. This guy's a Caledonian. You can see his head cloak over the shoulders.
00:04:04But look at the arms. They're bound behind the back. This guy's a captive. He's a prisoner
00:04:11from the vicious campaigns of Severus and Caracalla.
00:04:18And some of these men would have been force-marched for months on end to all parts of the empire,
00:04:25living trophies of the emperor's success. Some might have been traded as slaves in the great markets.
00:04:34Others were even less fortunate.
00:04:38This mosaic from Tunisia shows how one unfortunate Caledonian met his end.
00:04:47Captured. Marched for months to this desert province.
00:04:51Sent to the amphitheatre. Killed by wild animals as exotic entertainment for the locals.
00:05:03We've long had a curious, rather cuddly relationship with the Romans.
00:05:08Hot baths, straight roads, all very Monty Python.
00:05:12In the Western world, we often see ourselves as inheritors of Roman values and Roman culture.
00:05:18But this evidence from North Africa reminds us the Romans were invaders.
00:05:25Colonisers.
00:05:27Their strategies encompassed everything up to and including genocide.
00:05:32For the local tribes, the Roman arrival in what we call Scotland must have been absolutely terrifying.
00:05:44That arrival came around the year 78 A.D.
00:05:5135 years after landing in England, the Roman armies turned their attentions to conquering the North
00:05:58and marched into modern-day Scotland.
00:06:06Here at Pennymuir, they built a temporary camp.
00:06:10A massive enclosure to protect 20,000 men on the move.
00:06:19To the locals, this must have seemed like an army from a different planet.
00:06:24More people than they'd ever seen in the one place together.
00:06:28An army with weapons that could kill you at a great distance.
00:06:33This was first century shock and awe.
00:06:41The Caledonians would have been amazed.
00:06:44An army of some 20,000 men, all of them armed to the teeth.
00:06:50An advancing column of soldiers, five miles long.
00:06:55Thousands of horses and pack animals.
00:06:58The creek and crash of wagons full of supplies.
00:07:02The colourful flags.
00:07:04The gleaming helmets.
00:07:05The bright, brassy harness.
00:07:07The sound of an alien tongue.
00:07:11The Roman Empire had arrived.
00:07:17The emperor Vespasian had ordered the invasion.
00:07:20To be led by the governor of Britain, Agricola.
00:07:24And Agricola's life story survives.
00:07:28Written by his son-in-law, Tacitus.
00:07:31So not the most unbiased of sources, nor always the most reliable.
00:07:36Tacitus records that over the next few years, the forces of Agricola drove deeper and deeper into Scotland.
00:07:48Repeated and successful battles had conquered tribes up to that time unknown.
00:07:57Agricola's invasion of Scotland was an uneven battle.
00:08:01Between a highly disciplined army with every technological advantage.
00:08:06And local tribes unused to the scale of threat.
00:08:11In modern military jargon, it's called asymmetric warfare.
00:08:16Powerful regimented armies against unpredictable small militias.
00:08:23Major General Andrew Mackay led British forces in Afghanistan.
00:08:28He knows from experience the challenges Agricola would have faced.
00:08:35He's got to start gaining a bit of intelligence.
00:08:38He's got to figure out who are the ruling elites?
00:08:42Who can I do the deals with?
00:08:45Who am I going to be...
00:08:46Who's going to be opposing me?
00:08:47Who are going to be the more difficult customers?
00:08:50Who am I going to have to squash?
00:08:52Who am I going to have to deal with in a more amicable way?
00:08:58The Romans would be looking to use all the kind of equipment and training and doctrine that had got them
00:09:06so far in creating such an enormous empire.
00:09:14Tacitus continued his account of Agricola's invasion.
00:09:19Tacitus continued his account of Agricola's invasion.
00:09:21The natives were harried as far north as the estuary of the tale.
00:09:25Overawed by terror, the enemy did not venture to annoy our army.
00:09:30Though it suffered from shopping weather, time was found also for the planting of forts.
00:09:40Forts were built as permanent bases for holding down the country.
00:09:45This is Ardagh, just outside the village of Braco in Perthshire.
00:09:54Ardagh is remarkable because so much survives.
00:09:58This is the best preserved earthwork fort in the whole Roman Empire.
00:10:02And even after almost 2,000 years, we still get a fantastic picture of how the Roman army protected itself.
00:10:12At the bottom of these ditches would have been the Roman equivalent of barbed wire.
00:10:17Sharp thorny bushes, nettles and other unpleasant things.
00:10:22An extra line of defence was the rampart of turf and timber.
00:10:28And you'd only enter the fort through narrow causeways like this.
00:10:33Forts were just one part of a massive logistical operation to conquer Scotland.
00:10:41The fort at Ardagh was surrounded by enormous temporary camps.
00:10:47These provided overnight accommodation and a safeguard against attack.
00:10:54Dr Rebecca Jones is an authority on these formidable Roman constructions.
00:11:00We've got a fort here and that would have been occupied by about 500 men in timber buildings
00:11:07who are garrisoning the territory, newly conquered territory and actually placing themselves,
00:11:11occupying it, staying here for 10, 15, perhaps 20 years.
00:11:16To the north of the fort, there's a whole series of camps occupied at different times
00:11:22by soldiers who were coming through this area when they were in various conquest phases.
00:11:27The camps are vast in size. One of them holds potentially up to 30,000 men.
00:11:34And what's the rule of these camps?
00:11:36Soldiers needed an overnight halting place, obviously,
00:11:39but also it's a mark in the landscape.
00:11:42This is the Romans. They've arrived.
00:11:44This is where we're conquering. This is where we're travelling through.
00:11:46And while they were here, they would have terrorised the locals,
00:11:50got the supplies that they needed, they would have carried some supplies with them,
00:11:53but 30,000 men would have required an awful lot of additional supplies
00:11:57that they would have got from the locals.
00:11:59When they're campaigning from one site to another, they would have departed one site
00:12:04and the head of the column as they marched along would potentially arrive at the next site,
00:12:09some 20 miles away, whilst the tail was actually leaving the camp,
00:12:13which must have been quite a tremendous sight in the landscape.
00:12:21From Ardagh, the Romans headed along the Gask Ridge, skirting the southern highlands.
00:12:27Then they marched north-east, along Strathmore, in the good land south of the Grampians.
00:12:39A lot of people think the Roman Empire began and ended at Hadrian's Wall.
00:12:44In fact, the Roman army drove deep into north-east Scotland.
00:12:49This is Stonehaven, a town just south of Aberdeen.
00:12:54The Romans were here.
00:12:57And Agricola's advancing army was relentless.
00:13:03Penetrandam Caledonia minuendiendum, quetandem Britanniae terminu...
00:13:08Caledonia must be penetrated.
00:13:10The furthest shores of Britain must once for all be discovered in one continuous campaign.
00:13:21There is a gap here.
00:13:22That looks believable as well.
00:13:25Professor Bill Hanson of Glasgow University
00:13:27has been studying Roman Scotland for almost 40 years.
00:13:32He's come to meet me in the misty hills above Stonehaven.
00:13:36The site of a Roman marching camp.
00:13:40Ray Dykes.
00:13:41One of a series of camps on Rome's northern frontier.
00:13:46This bank and ditch are part of a massive Roman marching camp.
00:13:52This unremarkable grassy field was once the temporary home for some 20,000 Roman soldiers.
00:13:59It was a huge logistical operation.
00:14:02Food and other supplies, a baggage train pulling all kinds of things,
00:14:07advanced to weaponry, catapults, a field hospital.
00:14:11It begs the question, why did they come here?
00:14:15It really boils down to trying to finish off the conquest of the island.
00:14:21Whether they were after economic gain is much debated.
00:14:26Certainly it's clear that the area that they did consolidate after this first century campaigning
00:14:34was the area of Scotland as the richest agricultural land.
00:14:39But there may also have been an interest in acquiring resources, particularly minerals, particularly metals.
00:14:45There was gold in Scotland, lead in particular, and silver, because the two often go together.
00:14:51So they may well have been looking for that.
00:14:53But there is some considerable debate about the extent to which those economic drivers were behind the process.
00:14:58At the end of the day, it really is about conquering the world.
00:15:01They believed that they had a divine right to rule.
00:15:07To rule Scotland, Agricola would have to deal conclusively with the Caledonian tribes.
00:15:15Six years into the Roman invasion, the two sides met at Mons Graupius.
00:15:21The first recorded battle on Scottish soil.
00:15:28Tacitus brings to life a great war leader of the Caledonians, Calgacus.
00:15:33Scotland's first Braveheart.
00:15:36We stand now as one, the last of the three.
00:15:40There is no other race beyond us.
00:15:43Nothing but the crash of sea upon the rocks.
00:15:46And more deadly still, the Romans.
00:15:50They have pillaged the earth to plunder, butchery and rape.
00:15:55They give the false name of empire.
00:15:58They make a desert to call it peace.
00:16:05The speech is pure Hollywood.
00:16:08It's also pure fiction.
00:16:10It tells us more about Roman propaganda needs than it does about facts on the frontier.
00:16:15Supposedly 10,000 Caledonians killed with only 360 of our plucky Roman heroes.
00:16:21And they were playing the B team.
00:16:25The legionaries, the crack heavy infantry, supposedly weren't even involved.
00:16:33The Caledonians didn't have a written culture.
00:16:37We can't read their account of the battle.
00:16:40But their history, their culture and the things that were important to them can all be uncovered.
00:16:48I've come to Burnney, just south of Elgin.
00:16:54I don't get to work in places like the Parthenon or the Valley of the Kings.
00:16:59I work in places like pig farms.
00:17:01We spent 14 summers digging here.
00:17:082,000 years ago, this was a thriving community.
00:17:13Farmer folk.
00:17:15Not Scottish or Caledonian.
00:17:18They had no notion of nationality.
00:17:20Essentially these were small scale societies.
00:17:23A land of big farms controlling their local area.
00:17:30Modern techniques are giving us a much clearer picture.
00:17:34of how these Iron Age people lived.
00:17:38Dr Matthew Nichols from Reading University has translated volumes of archeological evidence
00:17:44into a digital version of how this site may have looked.
00:17:50That's fantastic.
00:17:51That gives us a great sense of some of the buildings as we come down onto them.
00:17:54These roundhouses.
00:17:55And these are really large structures as well, aren't they?
00:17:58Yeah, I think this is the important thing.
00:17:59People call them huts.
00:18:00But these are huge big houses.
00:18:01These are 16 to 20 meters in diameter.
00:18:04Absolutely massive things.
00:18:06And many of them with more than one story in them.
00:18:08You know, you'd have an upper floor.
00:18:10I put a couple of shadowy people into the centre of the area there to try and give a sense
00:18:14of that scale.
00:18:15Yeah.
00:18:15Buildings like this one particularly are really huge.
00:18:18Yeah.
00:18:19I think that this is the problem.
00:18:20We lose so much in this kind of organic architecture that just doesn't survive.
00:18:23Whereas on a Roman site in stone it does survive.
00:18:27But of course you can do all kinds of things with organic architecture with fancy rope work or fancy turf
00:18:32work
00:18:32that would have made these buildings look big and grand and impressive.
00:18:36I tried to put in some evidence or some reconstructive imagery of what led to the prosperity of the site.
00:18:42So a suggestion of agriculture.
00:18:45Yes, the agriculture is all important.
00:18:47But the craft activities are key as well.
00:18:49And the iron smelting taking place over there.
00:18:52The blacksmithing, bronze casting, pot making, leather working.
00:18:55A whole range of craft stills going on here.
00:18:57Both for them to use and to show off with.
00:19:00But also to exchange with other folk and as a result build their connections, build their power.
00:19:06The people who lived here were labelled barbarians by Roman propaganda.
00:19:12The archaeology disproves that completely.
00:19:23And when I'm not in a muddy ditch, this is my office.
00:19:27The National Museum of Scotland.
00:19:31For me, the great joy of working here is that when everyone's left for the night, I can enjoy the
00:19:37exhibits on my own.
00:19:41The archaeology we've unearthed all across Scotland gives you a real sense of what mattered to the people living in
00:19:48these Iron Age communities.
00:19:52Well, this is one of the nicest finds from Burnie.
00:19:56Tiny wee glass gaming piece.
00:19:58Just like a wee marble.
00:20:01And it shows us these folk not only had spare time on their hands, but this is a little masterpiece
00:20:07of technology.
00:20:08With these swirls of blue and white glass set into it.
00:20:12These are skilled craft workers, not just savages or simple farmers.
00:20:19This hoard from Blair Drummond shows the craft skills, the power and the connections of some people in Iron Age
00:20:27Scotland.
00:20:29Locally made gold neck ornaments, torques.
00:20:33Along with one that's inspired by both Mediterranean and local craft styles.
00:20:39With its wonderful Mediterranean style decoration in the terminals.
00:20:45The finds can tell us what was important to these people.
00:20:48And this is part of a group of horse harness fittings.
00:20:51And horses and chariots are one of the ways you'd show off in Iron Age society.
00:20:56This is a strap junction.
00:20:59You'd fasten two leather straps from the horse harness together.
00:21:03And rather than just a plain boring old junction, they decorate these things.
00:21:07So this one you've got all these wonderful curving lines and trumpet shapes and enameled decoration on it.
00:21:14These folk decorated the things that were important to them.
00:21:18Horse equipment, jewellery and also weaponry.
00:21:21A few folk were warriors.
00:21:24And for them the sword was a symbol of status.
00:21:27And the sword scabbard showed that off with its wonderful decoration.
00:21:34Scotland's warriors had been soundly beaten at Mons Graupius.
00:21:39Their collected armies had been massacred.
00:21:44Large areas of Caledonia had been conquered.
00:21:47And now they were to be colonised.
00:21:52For the Romans, a new phase of the operation began.
00:21:57To mop up resistance.
00:21:59To police the native population.
00:22:02And to push on into the highlands.
00:22:06The very centre of that new strategy was located here, at Inchtuthal, near Blairgowrie.
00:22:20Here, on the banks of the River Tay, was a massive Roman barracks.
00:22:25Big enough to take an entire legion, over 5,000 men.
00:22:30You can maybe see, on the far side of the field, where the Land Rovers part.
00:22:37That's the other side of the fortress.
00:22:39That's the scale we're talking about here.
00:22:46The fortress was 50 acres in size.
00:22:50Roughly the area of 25 football pitches.
00:22:54Ten times the size of the London Olympic Stadium.
00:23:06It would have been a very dramatic thing in the landscape.
00:23:09Yeah, very forbidding, I would have thought.
00:23:12Can we have a look at the fortress itself?
00:23:14This gives us a more close-in view of the fort.
00:23:1664 different barrack blocks there for the legionaries to live in.
00:23:19About 5,500 men.
00:23:22And then with tiled roofs, headquarters building, hospital.
00:23:25Houses for the officers built in the Grand Roman courtyard style.
00:23:29A workshop for blacksmithing and wagon-making activities.
00:23:33And in the middle of it all, that's the headquarters building, the Principia.
00:23:35But perhaps slightly smaller than we'd expect for a fort of this importance.
00:23:39And perhaps that's a sign that they were going to rebuild it on a grander scale
00:23:42when they got round to finishing the place.
00:23:45Had they been here longer, we'd be looking at a very magnificent praetorium there.
00:23:50The house of the commanding officer, who'd be a very high-ranking general indeed.
00:23:53Very important man. Friend of the Emperor.
00:23:57When they dug here in the 50s and 60s, they found a pit containing over a million nails.
00:24:03Ten tons of nails.
00:24:05And the effort involved in making those, and then in shipping them here,
00:24:09gives you some idea of the scale of the Roman endeavour.
00:24:15The Romans thought they were in Caledonia to stay.
00:24:19Their newly built infrastructure of roads, forts and signal towers helped to keep the peace.
00:24:27And connected Caledonia to the rest of the Roman world.
00:24:34This northern outpost was in track to become a fully-fledged province of the Roman Empire.
00:24:40But only four years after the Battle of Mons Graupius,
00:24:45the unstoppable forward momentum of the mighty Roman Empire stopped.
00:24:54The armies that controlled Scotland were needed elsewhere, and urgently.
00:25:01A rebellion that began in modern-day Romania was becoming a genuine threat to the stability of the Empire.
00:25:11With fewer men, the Romans could control less of Caledonia.
00:25:16In Stuthel, and the whole northern frontier was abandoned.
00:25:25Elsewhere in the Empire, these great fortresses gave life to settlements.
00:25:30And over time, those grew into towns and cities.
00:25:34York, Vienna and Strasbourg were all legionary fortresses.
00:25:39These Perthshire fields could have been a great Scottish city.
00:25:43And Stuthel might have been Scotland's capital.
00:25:52Instead, the Romans headed south.
00:25:55The highlands, the central lowlands were left behind.
00:26:01Left for another day.
00:26:06A new frontier, a buffer zone, was created across the north of England.
00:26:11An area that's been studied for decades by Professor David Breeze.
00:26:19They added more forts, smaller forts, which are more to do with frontier control, looking out for people moving in
00:26:28the landscape.
00:26:28And they added towers.
00:26:31Towers are to do with observation, keeping your eye on what's happening in the frontier zone.
00:26:36So we can see that this is a frontier.
00:26:40Although it lasted a whole generation, it clearly wasn't sufficient for the Romans, because then Hadrian came along and decided
00:26:47he would add something new to it.
00:27:04This is the best way of actually creating a system of frontier control, otherwise your system of forts and towers
00:27:13have gaps in them, obviously.
00:27:15But a wall is a very definitive statement.
00:27:19And is this the first time that's been done?
00:27:22Hadrian came to Britain from Germany, and in Germany we are told he ordered the construction of a palisade or
00:27:28a fence, which is not like a garden fence.
00:27:30He's socking great timbers, foot across.
00:27:33So why does Hadrian build a wall rather than expand?
00:27:37It's probably in part Hadrian's attitude of mind.
00:27:42He very much favoured Greek culture, and the Greeks at the time were not expansionist, unlike the Romans.
00:27:48Also, I think he's realising at the time that there's a problem in manpower.
00:27:53The Roman army is a voluntary army, you see, so against that background, he's building Hadrian's wall in part to
00:27:59say,
00:27:59right, okay, we're stopping here. This is the end.
00:28:05Even today, almost 2,000 years on, Hadrian's wall is mind-blowing.
00:28:16The local tribesfolk must have been amazed.
00:28:21Thousands of men building a stone wall 80 miles long, 15 feet high.
00:28:27Today, we think of it as a defensive installation.
00:28:31But is that all it was?
00:28:36The Roman army didn't fight from walls.
00:28:39It preferred to go out into the open to defeat an enemy.
00:28:43And there, its superior training, its high discipline, its well-armed troops is more likely to defeat an enemy.
00:28:53Even a more substantial enemy.
00:28:55So I think we should be careful about the defence argument alone.
00:29:00What's going to be really more troublesome is raiding.
00:29:04What are the interesting aspects about the Roman Empire and its frontiers?
00:29:07Along every frontier, we've got evidence for raiding.
00:29:09And we have a really interesting inscription from modern Hungary, which says the frontier was built against the actions of
00:29:18petty raiders.
00:29:19But once it's here, I think we then move on to another aspect of it, which is perhaps more bureaucratic.
00:29:26You could only come into the Roman Empire at specified places, and you could only proceed under military supervision.
00:29:36If I'm a tribesman, for generations, my family have grazed their cattle over there.
00:29:43We've raided cattle from over there.
00:29:46We've got family on that side of the wall.
00:29:48The sacred places are over there.
00:29:50This wall stops all that.
00:29:53Now, if I want to go and meet the family, if I want to go to one of the gatherings,
00:29:57I have to ask permission.
00:29:59I have to come to one of these gateways through the wall.
00:30:02And I have to knock.
00:30:04And in daylight, they might let me through.
00:30:06If they like me.
00:30:08And they'll search me.
00:30:09And they'll take my weapons.
00:30:11And I need to get permission to do anything.
00:30:13And as soon as I enter the Roman Empire, I need permissions.
00:30:16I get taxed on things.
00:30:18They're keeping an eye on me at every point.
00:30:22And a squaddy's word is law.
00:30:24I've got no comeback here.
00:30:27This wall is a huge interruption for us.
00:30:30It would cause enormous resentment.
00:30:36This bureaucratic element of controlling access to Roman space.
00:30:41Just as we are so interested in controlling access to our space.
00:30:45Countries build great walls to protect their frontier zone from, as they see, troublesome people from the other side.
00:30:59Generations of Scots have taken a mistaken pride in this wall.
00:31:03Thinking that it justifies their war-like reputation.
00:31:07That they were too tough for the Roman Empire.
00:31:11But you could take an opposite view.
00:31:14That the Romans chose not to stay in Caledonia.
00:31:18Decided it wasn't worth having.
00:31:20That there weren't the resources there to keep them.
00:31:24That this was a planned withdrawal, not a retreat.
00:31:29The truth, I think, was a mixture of both.
00:31:33From the Roman point of view, the northern tribes were troublesome.
00:31:37This was a restless frontier.
00:31:40The wall is testament to that.
00:31:42But in the end, this was a pragmatic decision.
00:31:45Caledonia was more bother than it was worth.
00:31:51But Hadrian's successor had other ideas.
00:31:55Sixteen years after construction of the wall began, Antoninus Pius came to power.
00:32:02A respected senator and a man with his own ideas on where best to place Rome's northern frontier.
00:32:14The new emperor was faced with two problems.
00:32:18Continued conflict with the Caledonians.
00:32:22And also the problem of his own credibility.
00:32:26He had no military honours.
00:32:31Antoninus Pius would not be the last leader to seek domestic popularity from foreign military adventures.
00:32:41Caledonia was a place where reputations could be won.
00:32:44And there's little to be won on Hadrian's wall.
00:32:48So, some sixty years after the Agricola's campaigns, the legions ventured north again.
00:32:55In charge was a man called Quintus Lullius Urbicus.
00:33:00He led his men into central Scotland.
00:33:04The lowlands between the Clyde and the Forth.
00:33:07And the shortest space between Britain's east and west coasts.
00:33:12The perfect location to build another wall.
00:33:17Nowadays, we call it the Antonine Wall.
00:33:22It was made of turf and timber, so much less survives than at Hadrian's wall.
00:33:28But it was once a formidable monument.
00:33:32The legions adorned the wall with inscribed slabs to celebrate their part in overpowering Caledonia.
00:33:41This is the most spectacular of these distant slabs.
00:33:44From the east end of the Antonine Wall at Bridge Ness on the Firth IV.
00:33:49And here the army marked their great victory for the new emperor.
00:33:54This is their view of that victory.
00:33:58With the locals defeated, captured and slaughtered.
00:34:03It's a classic piece of Roman propaganda.
00:34:08For these poor, subjugated locals, this new wall was every bit as daunting and disruptive as its predecessor.
00:34:21First, you'd have to get across these pits.
00:34:24And these would have been hidden under branches and foliage.
00:34:27If you fall through, you're falling onto sharpened wooden stakes.
00:34:32Seriously nasty.
00:34:37Then there's this ditch, like we saw at Ardic earlier, but much, much bigger.
00:34:42Nine metres across, originally four metres deep, and with nasty, jaggy thorn branches in the bottom of it.
00:34:50And there's the wall itself.
00:34:52Four metres high, near vertical turf.
00:34:55Palisade on top of that.
00:34:57Roman soldiers on top of that.
00:35:01We call them Roman soldiers.
00:35:04But most of the men stationed in Caledonia had never been to Rome.
00:35:13When we think about the Roman army, most people think about guys like these.
00:35:18Roman legionaries.
00:35:19Men from the Med with our swords and sandals shivering in our cold northern climates.
00:35:26But they were the exception.
00:35:28Most of the garrison of Roman Scotland didn't come from the Med.
00:35:32They came from all round the Roman world.
00:35:36The Empire recruited soldiers from the territories it conquered.
00:35:41Along the Antonine Wall, recruits came from England, France, Belgium, and even further afield.
00:35:52These battered fragments of pottery come from a casserole dish of a style we still use today.
00:35:59It's called a tagine, a North African style of cooking.
00:36:02And this was made and used by North African soldiers serving in Scotland for the Roman army.
00:36:10There was also tremendous social variation.
00:36:13The humble squaddy would cook his own food and he'd be serving rubbish wine in rubbish wine flagons like this.
00:36:21And eating his burnt meal from a pot like this.
00:36:25The officer class would have their meals cooked by slaves or servants.
00:36:30And they'd be dining on food eaten from high quality pottery like this imported from France.
00:36:37And drinking the best quality wine in bronze flagons like this work of art from the Mediterranean.
00:36:45And sometimes with this Roman material you can get so close to these dead soldiers you can almost feel their
00:36:51breath.
00:36:52On the bottom of this pot the owner carved his name, Victorinus, so that nobody would nick it.
00:37:02There's a real mix of people on the Roman frontier.
00:37:05People from all around the Roman Empire coming together in Scotland.
00:37:09And you see this mix of cultures as part of frontier life.
00:37:12This brooch is a really nice example of that.
00:37:15Because you look at this swirling decoration. Typical Celtic art.
00:37:20And yet the idea of putting it on this kind of brooch is a Roman one.
00:37:24So what we're seeing here is the mixing of Roman and local styles creating this new culture on the frontier.
00:37:32The Antonine Wall brought cultures together as much as it kept people apart.
00:37:40And for me the best example of that is here at Inveresque to the east of the wall.
00:37:46The cemetery was laid out on the site of a Roman fort.
00:37:52Matthew Nichols has built a fascinating picture of how soldiers and civilians would have come together.
00:38:00Here's the fort on the higher ground in the loop of the river.
00:38:03But spreading beyond it is a civilian settlement, the start of a Roman town, Vicus.
00:38:08I think this is the really exciting thing about Inveresque.
00:38:10The fact that it's not just a military stronghold.
00:38:12Here we've got the evidence for everything happening round about the fort.
00:38:16Lots of agriculture, trade and industry activities.
00:38:19A bathhouse outside the fort possibly.
00:38:21And also evidence for temples, parade ground, possible amphitheatre.
00:38:26You really get the sense of life here.
00:38:28This isn't just the soldiers coming in and beating people up.
00:38:30There's a whole community developing.
00:38:32Yeah, that's right.
00:38:32What's coming over on the right there?
00:38:34Down here a parade ground, an area perhaps with military displays or town events
00:38:38with possible religious buildings at one end of it.
00:38:41Around that agricultural buildings and land for grain crops.
00:38:45And here the Vicus itself, the town with its street down the middle
00:38:48and buildings spreading off on thin plots to the north and south.
00:38:53It really gives a sense of a community here.
00:38:55And when you think also in here would be all the industry,
00:38:57the pottery kilns and the metal working
00:38:59and also the facilities the soldiers needed, the fast food joints
00:39:03and where their families are staying as well.
00:39:05And the whole thing still dominated by the fort up on the high ground at the top.
00:39:10At Inveresque, the camp followers and merchants offered services and goods for sale to the soldiers.
00:39:18But this was only part of the story.
00:39:22This community was at the sharp end of a huge imperial supply chain,
00:39:28transporting the choice cuts of empire to the front line.
00:39:33Excavations here found a massive 250 gallon wooden barrel, once filled with German wine.
00:39:41And work in the sewers of the Roman fort at Bear's Den showed that the soldiers there had exotic Mediterranean
00:39:47foods in their diet.
00:39:49Fig, celery, dill and coriander.
00:39:53This was a good life.
00:39:55And Caledonian communities could themselves get a taste of that good life.
00:40:02Here at Castle Craig, on a hilltop south of Perth,
00:40:07a team of archaeologists led by Heather James has discovered an Iron Age baroch,
00:40:13a stone roundhouse, with evidence that the inhabitants had access to a wider, wealthier world.
00:40:21It's very exciting to find within the material within the baroch,
00:40:25not just the artefacts you'd associate with farming like a sickle and weaving combs and spindle whorls,
00:40:33but we also have Roman goods like a brooch, Roman glass, pottery.
00:40:38So all these things give an indication that the people who live here are being given some fantastic objects, Roman
00:40:44objects,
00:40:45perhaps in exchange for supplying goods and food to the troops that were up here.
00:40:53This is at the top of the local social pyramid, dealing with the Roman world.
00:40:58The Romans are marching up and down that area over there.
00:41:01And one of the ways to keep this area quiet is by making sure they've got good relationships with the
00:41:06local population.
00:41:08Essentially, bribing them, paying them off, keeping them in good terms then.
00:41:12Can I?
00:41:13Yes, please do.
00:41:16That is stunning.
00:41:18It's very heavy, isn't it?
00:41:20Yeah.
00:41:21Typical late 1st, 2nd century Roman.
00:41:26Made probably northern Italy, somewhere like that.
00:41:29It's quite a flashy example, the fact that you've got the decoration on there as well.
00:41:34In a local context, this is a real way of showing off.
00:41:37Very few folk would have had access to those kind of things.
00:41:40For the Romans, what happened at Castle Craig and sites like it was all about winning hearts and minds.
00:41:48A strategy that's still very much in use.
00:41:51You can give them land, give them riches, give them money, allow them access, allow them trading opportunities
00:42:00to ensure that the ruling elites are those who support you and you absorb them within you.
00:42:07I think the other thing is you've just got to simply make sure that the public goods that you might
00:42:11introduce as part of your rule are favourable to citizens.
00:42:17If a citizen of a country is relatively safe, well, that's a big bonus in your favour.
00:42:26And they're unlikely to want to side with someone who's going to make life much more insecure when they can
00:42:33get about with trading and living a relatively peaceful life.
00:42:41The Roman invaders provided a natty lifestyle for local bigwigs, but the ruthless face of Roman imperialism was never far
00:42:50away.
00:42:51Time and again, they showed they were capable of unspeakable cruelty.
00:42:58Rome had crushed local uprisings all across the empire.
00:43:03At Masada, in modern-day Israel, they laid siege to a Jewish sect in a hilltop fort.
00:43:11A thousand men and women endured a three-month siege, then committed suicide rather than surrender to the Roman aggressors.
00:43:27And Scotland might have had our very own Masada.
00:43:30I'm flying over Burns Warg Hill, just outside Lockerby.
00:43:34And from the air, you can clearly see the two Roman camps threatening the Iron Age hillfort.
00:43:44I think the two camps were siege camps.
00:43:47The locals had resisted or attacked the Romans.
00:43:51They had retreated to their hillfort.
00:43:54And the Romans came to get them.
00:43:58The three circles just outside the southern camp are the best clue.
00:44:09This massive earthen mound was probably the base for a piece of Roman heavy artillery.
00:44:15Some scholars argue it was a training ground.
00:44:18A practice range, if you like.
00:44:21But I think the evidence suggests there was a real siege here.
00:44:26That the Romans took the time to bring up their heavy technology.
00:44:31To terrify the locals.
00:44:34The invaders had a significant technological advantage over the Caledonians.
00:44:42Every legion had 60 of these deadly scorpion catapults.
00:44:52And how does it work?
00:44:54This is a 27-inch bolt, which the machine was designed to shoot.
00:44:58It has a point which makes a small hole.
00:45:01And these are sharp corners which will cut its way in.
00:45:05It will penetrate plate armour.
00:45:07Elevate more, more. That's it. That's about right.
00:45:10Shoot there.
00:45:11And we're off.
00:45:13That is about 140 metres, just as it gets.
00:45:17So you could reach the top of the hill, you could reach the hill from here.
00:45:20Yes. Yes, from here.
00:45:22It's a deadly looking thing if you've got a row of them along the rampart.
00:45:26It's a deadly looking thing.
00:45:27So you've got 180 of these bolts in the air at any one time.
00:45:31And they would be battery shot.
00:45:33They would be shot to an order.
00:45:35They would fire and they would pick out weak spots in the opposition.
00:45:38They would look for the chief.
00:45:40They would look for an attack.
00:45:41And they would then barrage, fire, shoot at that.
00:45:47The Romans had a range of heavy artillery.
00:45:52Catapults mounted on the earth mounds fired murderous stone balls far into the hill fort.
00:45:59Slingers used lethal lead shot to pick people off.
00:46:06Up here on top of the hill, it must have been terrifying.
00:46:12Crammed in with your extended family, your children, probably running out of food.
00:46:17With the iron grip of the Roman army all around you.
00:46:29There's no record as to what happened, but it's unlikely it ended well for the defenders.
00:46:36The Roman army didn't really believe in prisoners.
00:46:39Men would most likely have been killed.
00:46:42Women and children sent into slavery.
00:46:47The Romans always saw themselves as the good guys.
00:46:52But they were an army of occupation.
00:46:56And of course, some of the Caledonians would have resisted and become more warlike.
00:47:02The Romans had created a problem that they themselves would have to solve.
00:47:10And it was a problem they'd have to solve with less men.
00:47:15Once again, troops had been sent to countries of greater importance.
00:47:20And so, only twenty years after beginning construction,
00:47:25the Romans gave up the Antonine Wall and retreated back to its predecessor.
00:47:33Rome needed a new kind of solution to the problem of Caledonia.
00:47:39Not manpower, but money.
00:47:44And at Birney, in the summer of 2000, we uncovered amazing evidence of just that.
00:47:52It was a dry afternoon.
00:47:55We were digging around here at the base of the plough soil.
00:47:58And what we found was truly spectacular.
00:48:07And here it is, a hoard of Roman silver from the heart of a Caledonian farm.
00:48:13And the following season we found another hoard,
00:48:16buried in two bags just a few metres away.
00:48:20It looks to me like a series of payoffs to a powerful local leader.
00:48:25Rome couldn't fight everybody.
00:48:29Battles or sieges like Burnswork took a lot of resources.
00:48:33And they could also use diplomacy, or bribery if you like,
00:48:36as a way of dealing with the local tribes.
00:48:39This policy was used across northern Scotland in the trouble spots.
00:48:43And in the years after the Antonine withdrawal,
00:48:46it helped to bring peace, at least for a while.
00:48:55Fifty years after the death of Antoninus Pius,
00:48:58a man raised in the bustling olive oil cities of North Africa
00:49:03would be the next to attempt a conquest of Caledonia.
00:49:09The emperor Septimius Severus.
00:49:15The governor of Britain wrote to Severus saying,
00:49:19the barbarians were in revolt, destroying virtually everything on the island.
00:49:27The emperor went on the offensive.
00:49:31He and his son Caracalla would lead a massive assault.
00:49:35The third major Roman invasion into present-day Scotland.
00:49:41The final surge, the last throw of the dice.
00:49:46This was a military operation on a truly epic scale.
00:49:52Let no one escape sheer destruction.
00:49:58Not even the babe in the womb of the mother.
00:50:03These fields at St. Leonard's in the Scottish Borders
00:50:06were a key part of that campaign.
00:50:14There's nothing to see here.
00:50:17Absolutely nothing.
00:50:19But this field hides the biggest marching camp known in the entire empire.
00:50:25The sheer scale of it is amazing.
00:50:28It would take me 40 minutes to walk around the perimeter.
00:50:36This was one of the largest armies ever assembled for battle in the history of the British Isles.
00:50:43Rome's last chance to colonise Scotland.
00:50:51We don't know exactly how the camp was laid out or what units Severus had with him on campaign.
00:50:56But from reading through ancient sources, I put about 35,000 people into here.
00:51:01The tents arranged, as we know they did, in orderly lines, separated by type of unit, type of soldier,
00:51:06baggage, train, hospital.
00:51:07And here in the centre, the emperor's tent, right in the middle of the camp.
00:51:11Also very near the highest point of the camp.
00:51:14It does make the point that this was the emperor himself on campaign.
00:51:18You know, for a while this was the heart of the Roman Empire, for at least a day or two.
00:51:21It was. Leading the troops in person. At that stage, getting on in the ears.
00:51:25And he had gout and he had problems with his sons.
00:51:27But he was nevertheless here and trying to lead the Roman Empire forward against the enemy.
00:51:32And all around him, thousands of his loyal troops.
00:51:40Severus gathered his forces at Kerpu, on the southern bank of the River Tay.
00:51:50And what happened next became the stuff of Roman military legend.
00:51:55The heartland of the troublesome tribes lay to the north.
00:52:00To get at them, Severus did what a modern army would do.
00:52:05To get across the river, he built a pontoon, a bridge of boats.
00:52:12This first ever Tay bridge was commemorated in a Roman coin.
00:52:18The emperor's troops were poised to flood north.
00:52:23To finally and conclusively conquer Caledonia.
00:52:30And yet, it didn't happen.
00:52:34Once again, the legions were thwarted by the Caledonian insurgents.
00:52:40It was easy for them to escape.
00:52:45To disappear into the woods and marshes.
00:52:48Because of their knowledge of the terrain.
00:52:51But all this hampered the Romans.
00:52:59And it's said his sons came to terms with the barbarians.
00:53:06A phrase that suggests sweeteners and subsidies, rather than the crushing military victory of Roman propaganda.
00:53:14Once more, the Romans fell back on Hadrian's wall.
00:53:18But this conflict had created more problems than it solved.
00:53:24Three campaigns.
00:53:26First Agricola.
00:53:28Then Antoninus Pius.
00:53:30And finally Severus had all failed.
00:53:34And now, all across the empire, Roman control was under increased threat.
00:53:42From the Goths.
00:53:44The Saxons.
00:53:46The empire was in mortal danger.
00:53:49And in Caledonia.
00:53:51The Roman invaders were set to face a new challenge.
00:53:57The Caledonian tribes had been shaken by the Roman attacks.
00:54:01And reformed into new, more threatening groups.
00:54:06The Romans called them Picti.
00:54:09The painted people.
00:54:12Nowadays, we call them the Picts.
00:54:17I've come to see this Pictish symbol stone at Abdi Kirkyard in Fife.
00:54:22An ideal place to meet up with Dr Alex Wolfe at St Andrews University.
00:54:27A leading authority on these mysterious people.
00:54:32To begin with, back in the days of Agricola and some of his successors, the Romans probably thought that they
00:54:39were gradually going to be expanding the frontier and take over the whole island.
00:54:42They saw the Picts, or the people who would become Picts, as simply other tribes that would be subdued.
00:54:48But as that frontier became permanent, and they realized that they couldn't penetrate for any length of time north of
00:54:55the Forth into the fringes of the highlands, they probably began to idealize the Picts as an unbeatable barbarian, more
00:55:03savage than anyone they'd encountered before.
00:55:05We have the British Latin writer, Gildas, he describes the Picts as foul hordes coming out of their rocks like
00:55:13worms, and almost subhuman.
00:55:17And that's very different from the way, say, Tacitus presented Caledonian leaders like Calgacus.
00:55:23There they were seen as noble opponents, but by the late Roman period they've become almost subhuman savages.
00:55:30And that to some extent is a way of the Romans legitimizing their own failure in being able to pacify
00:55:36this area.
00:55:38Under sustained attack, the once mighty empire was becoming desperate.
00:55:45No price was too high to retain control.
00:55:49Rome was quite prepared to sell the family silver.
00:55:54This remarkable hoard was found at Treprain Law, the site of an early hill fort east of Edinburgh.
00:56:03This is barely a quarter of the Treprain treasure, the biggest and most spectacular hoard of Roman silver known from
00:56:12beyond the edge of the empire.
00:56:15And it can tell us the story of the death throes of Roman Scotland.
00:56:21It dates to the middle of the 5th century or so, and consists of really flashy elite Roman tableware, plates
00:56:30and bowls and cups and spoons.
00:56:33But look at the condition of it, bent, broken, battered.
00:56:37Almost all of it was in bits when it went into the ground.
00:56:42Now when it was first found, this was thought to be loot.
00:56:45That our barbaric ancestors had descended on the Roman world as it died, looted and plundered the rich villas and
00:56:52chopped these treasures to pieces.
00:56:54Because of course they were barbarians who couldn't understand proper classical art.
00:56:59This seems a pretty dodgy argument now.
00:57:02There's plenty of good parallels from this elsewhere and other suggestions are possible.
00:57:07So why do we have all this material here?
00:57:09It might be a bribe.
00:57:10It might be similar to the coin hoards we saw earlier.
00:57:13But it could be payment.
00:57:15Payment for services rendered.
00:57:19A lot of this silver is chopped into particularly weight units.
00:57:23The weight units you'd use in dealing with the Roman world.
00:57:26Whoever had this silver was dealing with Rome.
00:57:30And a likely scenario is that this is payment for soldiers.
00:57:35That the people in Treprain Law were acting as warriors for the Roman army.
00:57:41So this is the bounty of a late Roman mercenary serving to protect the last remnants of the Roman frontier
00:57:50from the Picts lying to the north.
00:57:54For more than three centuries the Roman invaders enjoyed a technical, financial and above all military superiority.
00:58:04But somehow it hadn't been enough.
00:58:09We've seen throughout counterinsurgency that the large well equipped army isn't necessarily the army that wins through.
00:58:19Because large armies do find it very hard to adapt to change the status quo and to adopt a different
00:58:26course because the current course is the one that's always worked.
00:58:29And I would imagine part of what made Roman life very difficult for the Romans here was that inability to
00:58:37constantly adapt against an insurgency that was adaptable.
00:58:43So the things that made them successful are the things that crippled them in the end.
00:58:47Inevitably.
00:58:53By the fifth century, the Roman Empire was little more than a memory for the people of Caledonia.
00:59:03In time, Rome would become a byword for civilization.
00:59:09Pictish artists copied Roman styles.
00:59:12Pictish kings took Roman names.
00:59:15Rome was no longer a threat.
00:59:19But its influence lived on for centuries.
00:59:31Eighteen hundred years ago, Tartan-clad Caledonians were marched to the deserts of North Africa.
00:59:39The spoils of a far away war.
00:59:45To celebrate, the Romans built this great triumphal arch.
00:59:49But there was no great triumph.
00:59:52Scotland was never conquered.
00:59:55The Empire always had bigger fish to fry.
00:59:58But Scotland was certainly transformed by three centuries of contact and conflict with Rome.
01:00:05Like every superpower since, the Empire manipulated local societies.
01:00:10Created tension and strife.
01:00:13Some people got seriously rich.
01:00:15Some got seriously annoyed and fought back.
01:00:20So in the end, how should we assess Rome's influence on Scotland?
01:00:25For me, it was both a force of aggression and a force for change.
01:00:29A golden opportunity and a mortal danger.
01:00:32Two sides of exactly the same coin.
01:01:00Two sides of exactly the same coin.
01:01:02The Empire.
01:01:05Context of Cheese.
01:01:07The Empire.
01:01:08The Empire.
01:01:10The Empire.
01:01:12The Empire.
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