A History of Ancient Britain (63 page)

So by
AD
250 the painted people were still a thorn in Roman flesh. There had been the abortive experiment of the Antonine Wall, begun in
AD
142
and abandoned 20 years later; but pretty much everything north of the Roman town of Carlisle was then, and would remain ever after, hostile territory.

It had not been for want of trying either. As well as building their more northerly turf barrier, the Romans had sallied forth again and again, north of that line, in hope of securing final
victory. But anyone who has visited the north of Scotland – particularly the wild and mountainous north-west – will easily understand the logistical and tactical difficulties to be
faced there by any would-be invader.

Whatever else they were, the Picts were certainly the descendants of those hunters who had walked ever northwards while the ice retreated, many thousands of years ago. The rocks and the waters
of the place were therefore in their bones. They understood the landscape like no recent incomer ever could and probably saw themselves as belonging to it more than it belonged to them. Every
mountain, spring, river and bog had its god or spirit to guide them and reward them as well. They covered their skins in patterns only they and their gods could read, and when it came to fighting
they willingly stripped naked, the better to be seen and so protected by their guardians. How does anyone hope to conquer that?

They were guerrilla warriors, emerging from folds and shadows in the landscape to torment the foreigners before melting away again into the mists and mountain fastnesses that were their home and
their inspiration.

In time the Romans realised what the Picts had always known: that the land was poor. There was barely enough nourishment in the thin soil to
grow handfuls of oats and
barley, or to satisfy a few head of scruffy cattle. There might have been some gold, but only a sprinkling in the gravel of a few streams and rivers. The land mattered to the Picts and the rest of
the tribes for reasons unfathomable to the Romans. They would never recoup enough in taxes or plunder to justify the cost of keeping whole armies in the field there and so in the end they withdrew
for ever. In short, the Picts had nothing – at least nothing the Romans wanted or needed. But sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.

In the wilds of the north something old had survived, the Celtic Iron Age. It was something out of reach and long forgotten in the south and east of Britannia but it would not die.

If the silver coin hoard in Falkirk had been a collection of bribes – paid to the Maeatae perhaps, or to another of the recalcitrant tribes – then they certainly were not the only
ones in receipt of pieces of Roman silver. Also within the collections of the National Museum in Edinburgh is a hoard that makes the Falkirk coins look like the contents of a charity bottle on a
pub bar.

The Traprain Law Treasure amounts to 53 pounds of silver. There is enough of it to fill several museum display cabinets and it is the most blatant evidence so far discovered of the lengths to
which the Romans would go to keep at least some of the northern tribes sweet.

Traprain Law is a 700-foot-high whale-backed volcanic hill that breaches the surface of an otherwise calm sea of arable farmland beside the old A1 road connecting Edinburgh to Dunbar (a name
meaning ‘the fort on the summit’). Covering a footprint of around 30 acres, the hill is visible from miles around and would have attracted people from the very beginning. There are
Neolithic cup marks pecked into the bedrock on its summit. Sometime in the Bronze Age, perhaps 1,500
BC
, people with bronze tools found their way there too, possibly in the
summertime when the weather was more amenable. More recently a great unsightly bite has been taken out of one end by quarrying for road metal.

It was during the Iron Age that the Votadini tribe chose Traprain Law as the location for one of their huge hill forts, encircling much of the summit with a third of a mile of earth and timber
ramparts. Like the Brigantes who held much of northern England, and who caused a great deal of trouble for the Romans until at least the middle of the second century
AD
, the
Votadini were probably a confederacy of many smaller tribes whose individual names were not deemed worthy of recording.

They held lands stretching from Northumberland to the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the hill fort at Traprain may even have served as their capital for a
while. These were the same that laid claim to another volcanic rock, a few miles to the west. Visible from Traprain, it was once called Din Eidyn, although it is Edinburgh Castle Rock now.
Centuries later the descendants of the Votadini, called by then the Gododdin, would sally forth out of Din Eidyn and into legend. Their subsequent defeat by Angles at the Battle of Catraeth, was a
fall commemorated in a poem by their bard Aneirin, called Y Gododdin.

Perhaps their bloody destruction in 600 was come-uppance for their forebears’ dalliance with Rome. In 638 even Din Eidyn fell to the Angles, so their downfall was complete.

In any event the Votadini mattered once and in the years before the coming of the Romans they had hundreds of roundhouses on top of Traprain Law, together with workshops where they crafted
things of metal and also enamel. Archaeological excavation has established there was a sudden rush to augment the defences sometime around
AD
80 – perhaps in
preparation for the coming of the foreigners. When it came to it, however, there was no fighting and instead the Votadini chose to welcome the Romans with open arms, giving them safe passage
through their territory all the way to the Forth.

Archaeologists of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland rate Traprain Law as nothing less than ‘by far the most important place in the late prehistory
and early proto-history of Scotland, and of a wider area including NE England.’ The Votadini citadel on Traprain Law was on such a scale as to merit the title
oppidum
, the Latin word
the Romans used to describe the principal native centres they encountered as they explored their new provinces. Such places were few and far between in the north of Britain and the only others to
rival that at Traprain were Yeavering Bell in Northumberland and Eildon Hills, which glower over the modern town of Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Even
Eildon was
abandoned either just before the Romans arrived or very soon thereafter.

That Traprain Law survived and indeed thrived throughout the Roman period is testament to how careful the Votadini were to stay onside with the incomers. Their capital remained a free British
town and its occupants apparently grew rich on Roman bribes along the way.

This, then, is the context for the Traprain Law Treasure. Archaeologists know it as a hacksilver hoard because the precious metal was acquired as scrap that could be melted down and cast into
new objects. Once-stunning objects – jugs with handles shaped like dolphins and panthers, huge plates and other items bearing Classical motifs – had been crudely cut into pieces using
shears or some sort. Fine tableware, drinking goblets, wine jugs, military buckles – all of it was put deliberately beyond use.

Hacksilver hoards have little if anything in common with other collections of metal found buried in the ground or deposited in water. Most other hoards contain precious swords and cooking pots
that were ritually broken – made useless to the world of men before being offered to the gods. In the case of the Traprain silver the archaeologists are certain the objects were cut up by the
Romans themselves before the whole lot was handed over to the Votadini as bullion, its value based only upon its weight.

Fraser Hunter, of the National Museum of Scotland, said the Traprain Law Treasure was a diplomatic gift made to a client king as part of a long-running effort to maintain the Votadini as a
buffer between Hadrian’s Wall and the troublesome Pictish tribes further north. Two silver coins were found among the hoard – one dating to between
AD
364 and
378 and the other to between
AD
395 and 423. Clearly the tribe was in a position to continue to extract payments right up until the Romans lost control of Britannia
altogether. ‘The late dating of the hoard suggests that this relationship was sustained by both parties until the very end of the Roman period in Britain,’ said Hunter.

The Brigantes had slugged it out with the Romans until the bitter end but their northern neighbours preferred to reach an accommodation that left their swords in their sheaths and their
independence sold for Roman silver. It had been classic manoeuvring by the invaders, using a military tactic that is as old as the hills: namely the undermining of inter-tribal loyalties –
divide and conquer.

Fighting Rome was like fighting the Hydra, the many-headed serpent of Greek legend. If a tribe managed to beat off the soldiers, then a ruthlessly
organised division of
administrators and money men would emerge to bamboozle and bribe. If that failed then the allure of Roman civilisation itself – with all its fine clothes, fine foods and luxury – might
prove beguiling. The success of the Roman machine was therefore down to how many levels it operated on. Finally, if they could neither coerce nor seduce, then they simply excluded – building
walls that clearly defined who was in and who was out. If the Roman advance was not physically overpowering, then it was at least confusing. All the while one tribe held out, their neighbours might
succumb. For proud and independent people it must have been infuriating as much as anything else.

The Romans would change the layout and organisation of your land. They wanted to change your way of life. By the time they were in Britain they were past masters too in the art of handling the
tribulations of culture clash, of massaging perceived differences until they were made to disappear. And as well as dealing with the day-to-day, they had also learned how to overcome a potential
obstacle that was deeply personal to every individual they encountered: that of religious belief.

In Britannia they knew the people were part of the Celtic tradition they had already encountered in the provinces of Gaul. Each British tribe would have had its sacred places in the landscape,
watched over by gods that demanded to be appeased by the giving of gifts, and of sacrifices.

When the Romans arrived, they brought their own pantheon of gods: Apollo, god of the sun and Diana, goddess of the Moon; Mars, god of war, Venus, goddess of love and Saturn, god of time. There
were deities for all needs and ruling over them were Jupiter and Juno, King and Queen of the gods.

The Romans worshipped their gods as faithfully and fearfully as the Celts worshipped theirs and so it might be assumed the invaders sought to impose their own beliefs on those they encountered.
It was either that or accept that the local gods held sway, which would surely have been unthinkable. In fact the Romans, pragmatic as always, found a solution that avoided either extreme.

The modern city of Bath, in Somerset, is built around a natural wonder, the only one of its kind in the whole of the British Isles. Rainwater falling on the Mendip Hills sinks into the soil and
then begins slowly, so slowly, to percolate down through the limestone. By the time it has descended to around 14,000 feet the water comes in contact with natural geothermal energy emanating from
the Earth’s core that raises its temperature to nearly
100 degrees centigrade. Now under pressure, the near-boiling water begins its journey back to the surface
through fissures and faults in the rock. By the time it emerges as the hot, mineral-rich spring that is the whole reason for Bath’s existence, the temperature has lowered to an extremely
pleasant 46 degrees centigrade. Every day the best part of a quarter of a million gallons of this naturally produced bath water gushes forth. It has been going on for millions of years and will
likely continue for millions more.

The people of ancient Britain had no way of understanding how it was happening, and were simply drawn by the wonder and the pleasure of it all. By the time the Romans arrived, the locals had
long since decided it was the work of a goddess they called Sulis and were in the habit of appeasing her with prayers and with gifts thrown into the spring.

The Romans were just as impressed as everyone else and between
AD
60 and 70 they set about building their own baths around the spring. They would continue to develop and
augment the site for the next three centuries, eventually creating a lavish structure housing a
caldarium
, hot bath, a
tepidarium
, warm bath and a
frigidarium
, cold bath.

The Roman baths were lost for centuries, submerged beneath more recent streets and buildings. Then in the middle of the eighteenth century a lady house owner began complaining about the water
that was always flooding her basement. The local authority of the day investigated the problem and, in so doing, rediscovered the fourth-century foundations, in 1755. Since 1987 the City of Bath
has been recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The local goddess, Sulis, was apparently concerned with healing, wisdom and insight and when the Romans heard this they were immediately reminded of their own deity, Minerva, who looked after
medicine, wisdom and magic. Rather than cause offence by evicting a local girl and replacing her with a foreigner, the Romans cleverly combined the two – creating a goddess called
Sulis-Minerva. Everyone was happy and able to continue with the business of seeking help and comfort from the mistress of the hot spring.

At Bath, just as at other similar sites scattered all across the Classical world, people appealed to Sulis-Minerva by scratching messages onto little squares of lead. These were then folded in
half and usually thrown into the water for the attention of the goddess. Classicist Roger Tomlin has been studying those recovered from Bath for the past 25 years and he explained the very specific
nature of the language used.