Septimius Severus: First Hammer of the Scots

[OC Richard]

Septimius Severus In Scotland

The Northern Campaigns of the First Hammer of the Scots

by Simon Elliott

2018

During the COVID lockdown I really went down the Roman Britain rabbithole, reading a number of the more recent books and watching lectures on YouTube.

Because nowadays you don't have to wait for archaeologists, anthropologists, historical geneticists, or historical linguists to publish- you can watch their lectures done as they're making discoveries.

And with Roman Britain new discoveries are made all the time! Not one Roman fort has been fully excavated, but as partial excavations are done on various known forts, and new arial photographs reveal hitherto unknown forts, bit by bit our knowledge increases about the movements of the Romans in Scotland. (There's a Roman fort on the Spey near Elgin, I didn't know the Romans got that far.)

I had read about the four known incursions of the Roman Army into Scotland, but when I saw a lecture by Simon Elliott about the elaborate preparations and procedures to supply Emperor Severus' massive invasion I knew I needed to read his book.

First I have to mention that pretty much 100% of the Social Media chat about Hadrian's Wall and the Romans in Britain are complete misinformation, stuff like "the Romans conquered the known world but when they met the Scots they had to build a wall" etc.

The Romans went wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. But three things need to be kept in mind:

1) Rome didn't go around grabbing all the land they could. Romans loved an Emperor who won battles and land, but at the same time Romans were pragmatic and they did sober cost/benefit analyses when it came to incorporating new territory.
Maintaining Legions in far-away places was extremely expensive! So when it came to invading Britain the profitability was long debated in Rome (they were making loads of money taxing the trade across the English Channel already) and when they did invade they went for the things the Empire needed: grain and mineral wealth.
They established huge farms and mines right away and shipped massive amounts to the Continent.
They also needed the money that came from taxing trade.

Thus Rome had zero interest in maintaining troops to occupy non-arable land sparsely populated with tribes too few and too poor to generate large amounts of tax money.

2) Rome considered Britain itself, and especially the North, as relatively unimportant. Problems closer to Rome always took priority. Each of the four Roman incursions into Scotland was terminated, and the Antonine Wall abandoned, not because anything that happened in Scotland but because of troubles elsewhere in the Empire.

3) Hadrian's wall was not unique but part of an Empire-wide programme by Hadrian to clearly establish the borders of the Empire. Walls of various sorts were built across Germany and North Africa etc at the same time.

Also, Hadrian's Wall was not a defensive structure, nor were Roman forts. The Roman Army didn't fight from within fortifications. Hadrian's Wall, and Roman forts, had enough gates so that the Roman troops could go out and fight the enemy in the open the Roman way. Hadrian's wall probably didn't have a walkway on top nor crenellations (none of the top survives, but similar walls in North Africa which are better preserved don't have any walkway on top).

There were always Roman forts north and south of Hadrian's Wall, and defensive ditches were dug both to the north and south as well. Seems that the main purpose of the Wall was to regulate and tax anyone going in either direction.

In any case the ill, ageing Emperor Septimius Severus, who had spent so much of his rule on military campaigns, was itching to do some last grand campaign to secure his legacy.

His sons Caracalla and Geta were getting too spoiled living the rich life in Rome, and he thought it would do them good to get as far away as possible and live rough on campaign.

So he jumped on the pretext of Britain needing help in the north and assembled a 50,000 man force to invade Scotland.

As he was assembling troops and supplies in York the Scottish tribes sent ambassadors suing for peace but Severus sent them away.

The invasion was three-pronged, with Caracalla commanding a large force building forts on the line from Glasgow to Perth to seal off the various passages into the Highlands while the Roman fleet (with a wide variety of ships and boats, some shallow-draft) going up the east coast and up the various waterways up to the Moray Firth to seal off the Highlands from that direction, which allowed Emperor Severus to smash the tribes in the Midland Valley.

The tribes sued for peace, treaties were arranged, and the Roman field army went south for winter quarters (leaving troops in watchful forts).

Soon enough the tribes were (in Roman eyes) breaking their treaties and attacking Roman troops so Severus, now too ill to campaign, sent his psychotic homocidal son Caracalla to conduct a campaign of genocide in the Midland Valley.

This was so successful (in Roman eyes) that no troubles were experienced by the Romans in Britain for four generations.

Archaeologists found that agricultural land returned to forest, and some settlements which had been occupied up to that time were abandoned for 250 years.

Yet when this campaign was completed and the area thoroughly turned into a deserted wasteland Severus died in York (which at the time was serving as the capitol of the Roman Empire) and sons Caracalla and Geta, now co-Emperors, couldn't abandon Scotland fast enough and themselves return to the good life in Rome. (Soon Caracalla had murdered his brother and many others besides, but that's another story.)