The Centurions (Calgacus Book 2)

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The Centurions Calgacus 2 by Gordon Anthony. With the Roman advance stalled, Calgacus seeks to avenge his brother's death. He is soon being hunted deep inside the Roman province but hides in the last place his enemies would look for him. Kindle Edition , pages.

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Feb 15, Steven rated it it was amazing Shelves: Our hero, Calgacus who we met in the first book in this series, World's End is determined to avenge the death of his brother. He winds up hiding out in an auxiliary unit of the Roman army, while a Centurion spy infiltrates a Celtic tribe. The characters are well drawn, the battle scenes stirring, and t A great book! The characters are well drawn, the battle scenes stirring, and the love relationships moving. Having secured an overland supply route for military personnel and equipment along Dere Street , Urbicus very likely set up a supply port at Carriden for the supply of grain and other foodstuffs before proceeding against the Damnonii.

Success was swift and the construction of a new limes between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde commenced. Contingents from at least one British legion are known to have assisted in the erection of the new turf barrier, as evidenced by an inscription from the fort at Old Kilpatrick , the Antonine Wall 's western terminus. It was possibly after the defences were finished that Urbicus turned his attention upon the fourth lowland Scottish tribe, the Novantae who inhabited the Dumfries and Galloway peninsula. The main lowland tribes, sandwiched as they were between Hadrian's Wall of stone to the south and the new turf wall to the north, later formed a confederation against Roman rule, collectively known as the Maeatae.

The Antonine Wall had a variety of purposes.

It provided a defensive line against the Caledonians. It cut off the Maeatae from their Caledonian allies and created a buffer zone north of Hadrian's Wall. It also facilitated troop movements between east and west, but its main purpose may not have been primarily military. It enabled Rome to control and tax trade and may have prevented potentially disloyal new subjects of Roman rule from communicating with their independent brethren to the north and coordinating revolts. The destruction of some of the southern brochs may date to the Antonine advance, the hypothesis being that whether or not they had previously been symbols of Roman patronage they had now outlived their usefulness from a Roman point of view.

Initially outpost forts were occupied in the south-west and Trimontium remained in use but they too were abandoned after the mids. Roman troops, however, penetrated far into the north of modern Scotland several more times. Indeed, there is a greater density of Roman marching camps in Scotland than anywhere else in Europe, as a result of at least four major attempts to subdue the area.

Severus invaded Caledonia with an army perhaps over 40, strong. According to Dio Cassius , he inflicted genocidal depredations on the natives and incurred the loss of 50, of his own men to the attrition of guerrilla tactics, although it is likely that these figures are a significant exaggeration.

A string of forts was constructed in the north-east some of which may date from the earlier Antonine campaign. This may have been due either to Roman military aggression or the collapse of local grain markets in the wake of Roman withdrawal. By , Severus' campaigning had made significant gains, but his campaign was cut short when he fell fatally ill, dying at Eboracum in Although his son Caracalla continued campaigning the following year, he soon settled for peace.

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The Romans never campaigned deep into Caledonia again: It was during the negotiations to purchase the truce necessary to secure the Roman retreat to the wall that the first recorded utterance, attributable with any reasonable degree of confidence, to a native of Scotland was made. When Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, criticised the sexual morals of the Caledonian women, the wife whose name is unknown of the Caledonian chief Argentocoxos allegedly replied: Little is known about this alliance of Iron Age tribes, which may have been augmented by fugitives from Roman rule further south.

The exact location of "Caledonia" is unknown, and the boundaries are unlikely to have been fixed. It is likely that the prior to the Roman invasions, political control in the region was highly decentralised and no evidence has emerged of any specific Caledonian military or political leadership. Later excursions by the Romans were generally limited to the scouting expeditions in the buffer zone that developed between the walls, trading contacts, bribes to purchase truces from the natives, and eventually the spread of Christianity.

The Ravenna Cosmography utilises a 3rd- or 4th-century Roman map and identifies four loci meeting places, possibly markets in southern Scotland. Locus Maponi is possibly the modern Lochmabenstane near Gretna which continued to be used as a muster point well into the historic period. Two of the others indicate meeting places of the Damnonii and Selgovae, and the fourth, Manavi may be Clackmannan. The intermittent Roman presence in Scotland coincided with the emergence of the Picts , a confederation of tribes who lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde from Roman times until the 10th century.

They are often assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonians though the evidence for this connection is circumstantial and the name by which the Picts called themselves is unknown. Naturalistic depictions of Pictish nobles, hunters and warriors, male and female, without obvious tattoos, are found on their monumental stones. The Pictish relationship with Rome appears to have been less overtly hostile than their Caledonian predecessors, at least in the beginning.

There were no more pitched battles and conflict was generally limited to raiding parties from both sides of the frontier until immediately prior to and after the Roman retreat from Britannia.

In part it may have been due to the difficulties encountered in subjugating a population that did not conform to the strictures of local governance that Roman power usually depended on to operate through. The technology of everyday life is not well recorded, but archaeological evidence shows it to have been similar to that in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England.

Recently evidence has been found of watermills in Pictland and kilns were used for drying kernels of wheat or barley, not otherwise easy in the changeable, temperate climate. Elsewhere in Scotland wheelhouses were constructed, probably for ritualistic purposes, in the west and north. Their geographical locations are highly restricted, which suggests that they may have been contained within a political or cultural frontier of some kind and the co-incidence of their arrival and departure being associated with the period of Roman influence in Scotland is a matter of ongoing debate.

It is not known whether the culture that constructed them was "Pictish" as such although they would certainly have been known to the Picts. As Rome's power waned, the Picts were emboldened. War bands raided south of Hadrian's Wall in earnest in , , and and they participated with the Attacotti in the Great Conspiracy of Its location is unclear, but it is sometimes placed on or beyond Hadrian's Wall. Another campaign was mounted in , but both were short-lived successes.

Rome had fully withdrawn from Britain by , never to return. From the midth century to the midth century, Charles Bertram 's forged Description of Britain Latin: The work is now known to have been one of the most successful historical forgeries in history and it is no longer believed to contain any truthful independent content. In , a candidate for a Roman fort was identified by aerial photography at Easter Galcantray , south west of Cawdor. If confirmed, it would be one of the most northerly known Roman forts in the British Isles. The possibility that the legions reached further north in Scotland is suggested by discoveries in Easter Ross.

The sites of temporary camps have been proposed at Portmahomack in , although this has not been confirmed, [88] [89] In an investigation of Tarradale on the Black Isle near the Beauly Firth concluded that "the site appears to conform to the morphology of a Roman camp or fort. The military presence of Rome lasted for little more than 40 years for most of Scotland and only as much as 80 years in total anywhere.

It's now generally considered that at no time was even half of Scotland's land mass under Roman control. Scotland has inherited two main features from the Roman period, although mostly indirectly: Through Christianity, the Latin language would become used by the natives of Scotland for the purposes of church and government for centuries more. Roman influence assisted the spread of Christianity throughout Europe , but there is little evidence of a direct link between the Roman Empire and Christian missions north of Hadrian's Wall.

Traditionally, Ninian is credited as the first bishop active in Scotland.

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He is briefly mentioned by Bede [91] who states that around he set up his base at Whithorn in the south-west of Scotland, building a stone church there, known as Candida Casa. More recently it has been suggested that Ninian was the 6th-century missionary Finnian of Moville , [92] [93] but either way Roman influence on early Christianity in Scotland does not seem to have been significant. Although little more than a series of relatively brief interludes of military occupation, [94] Imperial Rome was ruthless and brutal in pursuit of its ends.

The reality is that the Romans came to what is now Scotland, they saw, they burned, killed, stole and occasionally conquered, and then they left a tremendous mess behind them, clearing away native settlements and covering good farmland with the remains of ditches, banks, roads, and other sorts of ancient military debris. Like most imperialists they arrived to make money, to gain political advantage and to exploit the resources of their colonies at virtually any price to the conquered.

And remarkably, in Britain, in Scotland, we continue to admire them for it. All the more surprising given that the Vindolanda tablets [96] show that the Roman nickname for the north British locals was Brittunculi meaning "nasty little Britons".

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For many years it has been almost axiomatic in studies of the period that the Roman conquest must have had some major medium or long-term impact on Scotland. On present evidence that cannot be substantiated either in terms of environment, economy, or, indeed, society. The impact appears to have been very limited.

The general picture remains one of broad continuity, not of disruption The Roman presence in Scotland was little more than a series of brief interludes within a longer continuum of indigenous development. The Romans' part in the clearances of the once extensive Caledonian forest remains a matter of debate. The 16th-century writer Hector Boece believed that the woods in Roman times stretched north from Stirling into Atholl and Lochaber and was inhabited by white bulls with "crisp and curland mane, like feirs lionis". Skene followed suit as did the 20th-century naturalist Frank Fraser Darling.

Modern techniques, including palynology and dendrochronology suggest a more complex picture. Thereafter, there was re-growth of birch, oak and hazel for a period of five centuries, suggesting the invasions had a very negative impact on the native population. The archaeological legacy of Rome in Scotland is of interest, but sparse, especially in the north. In Scotland, the Celtic Iron Age way of life, often troubled, but never extinguished by Rome, simply re-asserted itself. In the north the Picts continued to be the main power prior to the arrival and subsequent domination of the Scots of Dalriada.

The most enduring Roman legacy may be that created by Hadrian's Wall. Its line approximates the border between modern Scotland and England and it created a distinction between the northern third and southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain that plays a part in modern political debate.

This is probably coincidental however, as there is little to suggest its influence played an important role in the early Medieval period after the fall of Rome. Read more Read less. Matador September 1, Language: Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Showing of 4 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Our hero, Calgacus who we met in the first book in this series, World's End is determined to avenge the death of his brother.

He winds up hiding out in an auxiliary unit of the Roman army, while a Centurion spy infiltrates a Celtic tribe. The characters are well drawn, the battle scenes stirring, and the love relationships moving. Really enjoyed this second book in the Calgacus series. The battle sequences made me feel as though I was there. We'll done Mr Anthony. It was interesting way of showing Roman army.

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