| During Theodosius dynasty, in the winter of 367, the Roman garrison on Hadrian's Wall rebelled, and allowed Picts from Caledonia to enter Britannia. In 360 AD the Picts raided as far south as Londinium ( London ) and in 383 AD they breached Hadrian's Wall so badly that it wasn't fully repaired till 407 AD- the deciding influence on Rome to abandon Britain forever in 410 AD. Caledonia was inhabited by two main groups of people: a northern group of Celtic origin-the Caledones and the second group- who lived and evolved in Northern England, migrations from Germany and Scythia (todays Eastern Europe and Central Asia)- the Picts. The whole of the south of Scotland, up to the very edges of the Highlands, became covered in small settlements. |  |
The founding father of Theodosian dynasty was Flavius Theodosius (known to us as Count Theodosius), a great general who had saved Britannia from the Great Conspiracy. His son, Flavius Theodosius was made co-emperor of the Western Roman Empire in 378, and became the last emperor of a unified Roman Empire in 392, until his death in 395. Theodosius I was succeeded by his sons Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East of the Empire. The House of Theodosius was related with the Valentinian Dynasty since Theodosius I had married Galla, a daughter of Valentinian I, their daughter was Galla Placidia. The last emperor in the West belonging to the dynasty was Galla Placidia's son Valentinian III, the last emperor in the East was Marcian, the brother in law of Theodosius II. Later on a grand daughter of Valentinian III was married with Olybrius and Anthemius was a son-in-law of Marcian.
The Britons came from three very powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are of Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that part of the kingdom of Wessex which is still today called the nation of the Jutes. From the Saxon country, that is, the district now known as Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. Their first leaders are said to have been two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. Horsa was afterwards killed in battle by the Britons, and in the eastern part of Kent there is still a monument bearing his name. Vortigern gave land in the southeast to the Germanic peoples in return for their military service. Wihtgils was the son of Witta, Witta the son of Wecta, Wecta the son of Woden. Thusly did Woden engender all of our noble kin, and that of the Southumbrians as well. Britain had been a Roman province since the first century of the Common Era. Britain had been a Roman province since the first century of the Common Era, so many of the earlier Chronicle entries include references to Rome. "Pict" is the traditional name for a people that lived in what is now Scotland from roughly the third to ninth centuries. The Isle of Wight, a small island off the southern coast of England.
|
With the Claudian invasion of Britannia in the mid first century AD, and subsequent conquest of the southern tribes, the relative obscurity and isolation of the Caledonian people was about to end. About 78 AD Gnaeus Julius Agricola was appointed governor of Britannia. In 79 AD, the Emperor Vespasian died and Agricola was ordered by his successor, Titus, to conquer the whole of the island of Britain, and in early summer, invaded Scotland. In 81AD, however, the tribes in the south west revolted against the Roman occupation and Agricola's advance was halted while his forces quelled the Dumnonii and Novantae tribes. With that deed accomplished his legions moved north of the wall, but the campaigning season was coming to a close. In the spring of 82AD, Agricola advanced his troops through Fife, with crushing defeats over the local Venicone tribe. He then advanced his position to include most of Tayside, and began the construction of a patrolled frontier along the entrances to the highland glens. This frontier was connected to the wall in the south by a series of roads, and supplied from the sea along the Tay estuary.
Calgacus and his Pictish army of warriors, farmers, hunters and craftsmen kept an entire professional Roman army occupied for the greater part of a year, employing guerilla tactics and avoiding the superiority of the Romans in a massed battle. The Romans spent this inconclusive time continuing to build forts and defensive works to consolidate their position, once again. Agricola's emphasis may have been on the possibility of conquering Ireland. He may well have made a crossing from South West Scotland via the Solway Firth. He believed the whole of Ireland could be taken with just one legion and a few auxiliaries, but the Picts had other ideas. Taking Agricola completely by surprise, Calgacus and his Pictish army struck in the summer of 82-83AD. Tacitus estimates it must have been approximately 20,000 Agricola men. Tacitus says that some 10,000 tribal forces fell for the loss of 360 Romans and perhaps as many as 20,000 Picts were able to escape and live to resist Roman occupation. By night, two thirds of them had fled back to the highlands from where they had come. Agricola withdrew to the Gask line forts, was recalled by Domitian and was sent off as governor of Syria and despite later efforts, the Romans would never advance farther north than Agricola.
The Roman tribes and the Picts and Celts moved south into the lowlands, re-establishing their forts and farms, and the Romans sent sorties north from their bases at Carlisle and Newcastle. In 121AD, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, the fighting between the two nations had become such a problem to the Romans that they felt northern properties were in danger to Pictish raids. Hadrian ordered the construction of a stone wall, 72 miles long from Carlisle on the west coast to Newcastle on the east coast. Hadrian's Wall is an enduring monument to the Roman occupation of Caledonia and northern Britannia and the resistance of its people. A new wall was constructed in the early 140s, named after the emperor Antonius Pius. Sometime around 154 AD, there was a southern revolt, possibly by the Brigantes, and units of the Roman garrison were withdrawn to the south. By 164 AD, once again, the northern frontier of Britain reverted to Hadrian's Wall. During the subsequent reign of Marcus Aurelius, most of Roman attention was focused on the Danube in Germania, but raids and conflict prevailed along Hadrian's Wall as well. Later Emporers (Septimius Severus, Caracalla) would again attempt Caledonian conquest, but at the time of Commodus in 180 AD, the status quo for the Roman's was maintaining the border along Hadrian's Wall.
The Wall of Antonius, an ancient Roman wall extending across North Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde was built by the Roman governor Lollius Urbicus in the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius—probably in A.D. 140–42, intended as a defense against the peoples to the north, it was built out of turf, with a ditch on the north and 19 forts along its southern side. It was abandoned c.185 when the Romans retreated to Hadrian's Wall. The wall was the northern border of the Empire in Britain for most of the Roman Empire's rule, and also the most heavily fortified border in the Empire. By 210 however, the Caledonians had re-formed their alliance with the Maeatae.
The wall fortified the Roman Empire against the tribes of Scotland to the north and separating the Selgovae tribe and the Brigantes, as neither the Scoti tribe nor the English lived in Britain at the time of the wall's construction. In the Roman province of Britannia to the south, such a border runs on the broad wall dimensions such as a causeway. In any event, there is no further historical mention of the Caledonians for a century; a c. AD 230 inscription from Colchester which records a dedication by a man calling himself the nephew (or grandson) of "Uepogenus, [a] Caledonian."