History of the Scottish Nation Volume I: Pre-Historic, Druidic, Roman, and Early Christian Scotland by James A. Wylie

Author:James A. Wylie
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Wallachia Publishers
Published: 2015-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVII.THE BATTLE OF MONS GRAMPIUS.

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AGRICOLA WAS AWARE THAT A storm was gathering on the north hills. Intelligence had been communicated to him that embassies were passing betwixt tribe and tribe, that chieftains formerly at feud were now knit together on bonds of amity, that thirty thousand armed men were now available, and still recruits were pouring into the native camps, that a combination of the states had been formed, blessed by the priests, and that the Caledonians, their fierce and warlike enthusiasm roused to the highest pitch, were prepared to stake all on a supreme effort for freedom.

This cloud in the north, which was growing bigger every hour, made the Roman commander not a little uneasy. He had now been seven years in Britain, but the Roman arms had been unable to advance beyond the line of the Forth. For five years they had remained stationary. The legions had passed the summer in skirmishes, reaping the inglorious trophies of villages burned, and their inhabitants slaughtered. The tempests of the northern sky had furnished them with an excuse for resting in camp during winter, and refreshing themselves after the toils of the summer campaign. Agricola saw that he could no longer make the war an affair of skirmishes. He must attempt operations on a larger scale. He must strike a blow for the subjugation of the whole of Caledonia, otherwise he should find himself overpowered by numbers and be driven out of the country.1

Accordingly, forming his army into three divisions, and commanding his fleet to cruise on the coast, and strike terror by devastating the parts within its reach, he began his march to the north. He traversed the territory lying betwixt the Forth and the Tay, without, so far as appears, seeing the enemy or meeting opposition. As the legions climbed Moncreiff Hill-for it lay upon their route—they had their first view of the valley of the Tay. As they beheld the strath running far to the north, with the Tay issuing from the bosom of the distant Grampians, much as the Tiber appears to do from the Sabines to one looking from the Capitol at Rome, the soldiers burst out in the exclamation, so often attributed to them since, “Ecce Tiberim!” For the valley of the Tay, in its general arrangements of city, river, and mountains is the valley of the Tiber over again—but without its sky. There is one other point of difference betwixt the two. The Tay rolls along in a crystal clearness, which the Tiber, as it issues from Etrurian fountain, and sweeps onward through the Clitumnus vale with “yellow wave,” might well envy.

Beyond the Tay, stretching almost from side to side of Scotland, is the “Great Strath,” bounded on the south by the Sidlaws—soft as Apennine—and walled in on the north by the lofty Grampians. Across this plain lay the march of the legions. The Romans might a second time have exclaimed, “Ecce Campaniam,” for the region they were now traversing, the modern Strathmore,

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