The Ancients - Romans vs Caledonians: The Battle of Mons Graupius

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

In 83/84 AD a battle was fought somewhere in Scotland between the Roman forces of Gnaeus Julius Agricola and the 'Caledonians' – the great climax to Agricola’s campaigns in Northern Britain. Details of the clash are few and far between, with our sole literary source for the event being the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus. But how much of Tacitus’ account can we really believe? And what locations have archaeologists suggested as being the site of this lost battlefield? Taking on the challenge of this much-debated ancient military event is Dr Andrew Tibbs, a History Hit veteran and an expert on the Romans in Scotland.In the first part of this podcast Andrew explains the background to Agricola’s campaigns in the north and the account of the Battle of Mons Graupius itself. In the second segment we look at some of the locations proposed as the site of this enigmatic ancient battle.For Ancients updates and behind the scenes footage follow Tristan on Instagram @ ancientstristan

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, we're going back to ancient Scotland. I love Scotland. And we're now talking about the Romans in Scotland. We've done a podcast in the past with Dr. Andrew Tibbs, all about the Antonine Wall. It was one of the first podcasts we ever did. And Andrew, he's now back on the ancients to talk about perhaps the most disputed, the most debated military event from ancient Scottish history. This is the Battle of Mons Grapius, the grand climax to the campaign of the Grickler in the north in the late 1st century AD.

to the campaign of the Grickler in the north in the late 1st century AD. Where did this battle take place? What do we know about it? How much of Tacitus' account can we really believe? In this podcast, Andrew really highlights why there is so much debate surrounding this battle and surrounding the whole campaign of the Grickler in the North. So without further ado, here's Andrew. Andrew, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast. It's great to be back. It's fantastic. I love coming on to History Hit and doing stuff. It's brilliant. Well, exactly, on History Hit. I'm glad you said on History Hit because you came on The Ancients about a year ago

to talk about the Antonine Wall, one of our first ever podcasts. Since then, you've really hit the starlight. You've been on History Hit documentaries from Ardoch to Chester's Roman Fort to the Ninth Legion. Ninth Legion might even get a mention in this podcast because today we are talking about the Battle of Mons Graupius. Andrew, this is one of the most elusive, vague, debated military events, military clashes in ancient British history. Yeah, it's the culmination of first century Roman archaeology in North Britain. It's the top of the history pile. It's the big thing. The big thing indeed. So if we start with the background, first of all, who is our main source

for this military event? So main source is a guy called Tastus. He comes across as a very well-read individual. He was around Bourne at the same time as these campaigns were taking place. He writes what people describe as a biography of the main Roman governor, the Roman general in charge. He writes that we think towards the end of the first century, these campaigns are taking place late 70s, 80s AD in Scotland, in the north of Britain. Tacitus comes along and writes this. He writes it after the event. We're not quite sure where he writes it. We're not quite sure if Agricola is still alive at the time, but Tacitus certainly has some very good second-hand knowledge. I mean, is this quite key to emphasise right at

the start, Andrew, that Tacitus, he does have this close personal link to the main figure in this Mons Graupius story? Yeah, I mean, this is vitally important. So Tacitus, who writes this book, it's called The Agricola. It is about Julius Neus Agricolaola and there's just this little minor detail which is kind of quite key to everything, quite key to the interpretation, to what he says how he says it and that's because he's the son-in-law of Agricola so he marries his daughter at one

point and then goes on to write this, as I say biography and I say that in the loosest of terms and I would never really I think, personally describe it as a biography. It is probably best described as like a play or a film, that it's the edited highlights,

that you have a beginning, a middle and an end. You have a big climax of the denouement. You have an afterthought. So, you know, this is a film of his life, just written down without the pictures. Fair enough. Very interesting. I know someone has called it a hagiography before, more than a biography.

Can we say that as well? Or was that maybe a bit too far? It really comes down to your own interpretation of what you think of it. I mean, it starts out by saying it's a eulogy. This is a eulogy to my father-in-law. So, you know, whether you call it hagiography, historiography, biography, biopic, you know, the bottom line is, it is not an accurate historical representation of what happened. It has elements of truth, it probably has elements

of fiction. It's a blooming good read. It's a blooming good read indeed. We've got elements of fiction, elements of truth. So it is our main source. So Andrew, what does Tastis tell us about Agricola's campaign in the run-up to Mons Graupies, before Mons Graupies? What do we know about Agricola's movements in modern-day Scotland? Yeah, so, well, this is another key point we'll probably get onto using that word Scotland.

Let's get back to the story first of all before we pick holes and that so this is like the film of Agricola's life it starts off with brief biography of his early years as his military career and then he comes to Britain and it's very critical of his predecessors they did nothing but Agricola came here and he went here and he sorted these people out and he went here and he sorted these people out and he went here and sorted these people out and then the second part of the film is really all about Scotland and the book is very slightly peculiar in those terms to what we're used to because it starts out with all these little biographical details saying oh he's humble

and he's come to be brilliant and then he comes to Scotland it's the big fight of his, he's humble and he's come to be brilliant. And then he comes to Scotland and it's the big fight of his life. He's going where Julius Caesar didn't manage to get that far north. You know, Augustus didn't get that far north. All this sort of stuff. So he comes to Scotland or north of Britain and he starts campaigning. And it's about seven or eight years campaigning he does. And he gets to the north of Britain and he gets to a river and it's called the Tanum. And this is one of the big issues we have with it, that this book doesn't really mention any geographical features.

There's one mountain, Mons Graupius. There are three rivers. There are three tribes, I think it is mentioned. And I think there's three islands there are three tribes i think it is mentioned and i think there's three islands mentioned and it's very vague it doesn't sort of say this is the island of mona and it's right here and kind of everybody has sort of tried to piece things together afterwards but anyway he gets up to the tanim or the taos and he campaigns up to there and sorts them out and then he falls back to the Clota and the Botitra two other rivers that are mentioned and he creates a secure line of fortifications and then he battles a bit further north again and it all culminates in this big

battle against the Britanni and the Romans or the Caledoniae depending on translations and again and that and I think for our purposes we'll say Caledoniae yeah everybody knows what we're talking about but again all comes back to this text and we have say it was written by Tastus it was then lost as these things were and it appears I think in a monastery in about the 15th century. It gets translated, it gets published, people start looking at it, it becomes a huge influence on the antiquarians, so from about the 17th century onwards. And then we get to the end of the 19th century and a man called, I think it's Feveru, translates it in 1898. He an american hugely influenced by circumstances his translation is tinkered with improved upon i guess in the 1920s and then that version is again a couple

of decades later tinkered again with by ogilvy and richmond two sort of well-known names british archaeology and that's it every interpretation of what Agricola does every sort of analysis that up till really past decade or so maybe a bit longer is all based on these old translations now the latest of those translations are done by people that are influenced by military the great war depression all these things that are going on we've got a newer translation that kind of picks apart a lot of that so that's kind of where we are with testis and the publication and what's going on and a lot of what we'll talk about is going to be influenced by those translations now i don't speak latin on the level of being able to translate first century documents.

So you kind of rely on what these translations are. And some of those translations, when it was originally done and it's building on these different versions, kind of interpret things in a certain way. Whereas now a guy called Anthony Woodman, he's based over in Virginia in America. He's done a lot of work to unpick that. And sometimes the words we think are quite accurate about something aren't as accurate as we'd like to think. And all this is important because, as I say, we've only got some like six or seven geographical locations or features that are mentioned in the text. And a lot of where we start thinking about where people were campaigning maybe isn't as accurate as we'd like to think.

And if the campaigning is not accurate, is the big battle at the end of this as accurate geographically as some people would like to think? Very important to lay that all out first, Andrew. some people would like to think. Very important to lay that all out first, Andrew. You did mention how during this part of Agricola, part of the text, he has this line of fortifications. And you do mention how there does seem to be elements of truth in the story. Because if we now turn to archaeological evidence, we do seem to have substantial, maybe a bit strong, but we do seem to have archaeological evidence surviving of fortifications that seem to date to the time of Agricola. So I think we've always got to be careful when we're talking about

the archaeology and the individuals. It's partly because we can't geographically pin down a lot of what Agricola was doing. We know he was in North Britain, that's about it. The archaeological evidence says the fortifications are early but a lot of that data is not scientific evidence so when we come to date archaeological sites or Roman sites in Scotland we've got about four different methods of dating those. So we have finds. So these are archaeological artefacts, and some of those can be put into typology, so a series, so we know what's the earliest and what's the latest. Some of those can be dated if they're organic materials. One of the other methods is the entrances of the sites. So Roman camps, which are the temporary strongholds that they build, they have different types of entrance and we think certain entrances are from certain periods.

So if we see a fort that has or a camp that has that type of entrance, we know it's earlier than a certain type of entrance. It seems to be in use in later sites. We've got something that's a variation on that is the sort of morphology so camps can have a certain type of design so they generally are plain card shape camps and forts but there are variations we've got a first century fort a place called Loudon Hill over sort of Glasgow-ish it's not that near Glasgow but it's over that way on the west of the country and it's a sort of half-sized trapezoidal style fort. We've got Bocassel Fort which is in Callander, it's a square fort. Newstead which is in the Borders, that's a square fort. So we've got sort of typologies there that we think we can start to update and then the other one is proximity. So a fortification might be attributed a first century label

because it happens to be next to a camp that we've positively identified as being from that period. So dating in Scotland, North Britain, is always a bit of a haphazard thing. And there would be some of my colleagues who'd be quite happy to redate everything. And some of my colleagues think it's all set in stone and I'm

kind of on the we need to do a big redating and occasionally people will do that we had a big pottery redating which helped to do some sites and take some of the sites like Bertha and that and sort of play around with the dating of those so it's all quite complex it's never as simple as it seems on the surface in terms of what's happening in Scotland it's all quite complex. It's never as simple as it seems on the surface. In terms of what's happening in Scotland, it's further complicated because a lot of these sites haven't got the scientific dating. So although we think we've got lots of early sites,

and we probably have, what does early mean? So period we're really talking about under Agricola starts around about 76,77 AD. Generally everybody agrees it goes off in the mid-80s. That's when withdrawal happens, about 86-87. Some people argue this whole period is longer and they stay later, but there are at least two previous Roman governors who are active. Now we know the fort at Carlisle was founded around 72 AD, so it's before this period that Agricola arrives. We know that Elginhoch, which is a fort just south of Edinburgh,

is really being constructed about 77-78 AD. So we know there's stuff happening in that sort of lowland area. The first general, Balanus, he disappears about 71 AD. And we've got a quote from Statius, who is a Roman poet, and it's addressed to Balanus' son. And it sort of says, where the Caledonian plains are, now we think that's north of the fourth Clydesthmus, he placed watchtowers with wide tracks, ditches, built forts and that point basically implies there's something happening in Perthshire along the Gask Ridge. The next Roman governor is Serialis and there's some indications that he may be active in Scotland as well. Whether these two governors are doing a big invasion force

or Agricola is the first to do that, we're not quite sure. The general consensus is Agricola, but again, it's all the dating. We don't have lots of evidence. Most finds that happened in sort of north of the Fourth Glide have generally been bits of pottery, occasional coins,

but the pottery that we believe fits into a certain typology. It's not entirely accurate. So we don't actually know, is Agricola the person coming and founding this? Tacitus says he is. He says that Agricola is such a great general that he decides where every fort is going to be built, every camp is going to be built. And this is why I don't like to describe it as a biography, because the Romans actually had detachments of specialist men that would go out and decide where to build a fort. Agricola may have approved it, but he wasn't unlikely to be individually doing that. So we know these are early fortifications that are built in Scotland. We know that Agricola may have been around, but there's certainly some Roman sometime doing it.

So we've got to be careful when we assume it's a grickle because the archaeological evidence doesn't support that. And other than this biography and part of an inscription, I think it was from St Albans and a lead pipe from Chester, there is no other mention of a grickle in the archaeological record, really. I mean, but Andrew, that is really interesting itself. When you mentioned watchtower and when you mentioned north of the clyde fourth isthmus i went there recently so that's why my

mind immediately went to it but it went to that in stunning site which is ardagh roman fort where we know there's a watchtower nearby so it could be the flavian first century a.d fortifications if they are first century as you say if we're going by what you're saying there, they could have been constructed around that time, but just not by Agricola. Yeah, it's a possibility. But it's like everything, it's all possible, we just don't have firm evidence. And we're relying a lot on Roman texts. And as we sort of said about Tacitus, there's a bias there. Everybody has an ulterior motive. Tacitus says Balanus is rubbish. Statius says, well, actually, Balanus has conquered the north.

We've got another quote from, I think it's Cassius Dio, basically saying that there was campaigning in Caledonia for 30 years before Agricola crops up. But again, that comes down to where's Caledonia? We think it's generally north of the Fourth Clyde, but it's also used as a term to be beyond the Roman Empire. Your Roman Empire there is northern England, south of Adrian's Wall, where that gets put. So it's all incredibly vague. Everybody has tried to use all these little fragments to fit a jigsaw, but it's like having a jigsaw and it's pure sky and you don't have any of the edges or the corners

and you're trying to fit it all together. And sometimes a bit fits, but it's coincidental that it's the right bit and it's not the right bit. Better you than me trying to figure that out. Well, before we go on to Montegrappis itself, one more story from a gricker that I'd like us to talk about. And this is the Ninth Legion disaster. Andrew, what is this story? So Agricola is campaigning in Caledonia. It's in the part of the book where he's into Caledonia.

He's campaigning. Again, we don't know where in Caledonia, how far north or how far south. in Caledonia, how far north or how far south. He's decided to be more effective. He's going to split his army into three columns. And so they're going to break them into three groups. So they go off and do everything, meet up again. It's a tactic the Romans do seem to use sometimes. One group is camped, probably in a camp.

We don't actually know whether it's a camp or a fort. And the difference is your camp's your temporary accommodation. It can be occupied for a few nights, a few weeks, where you're crossing over the landscape. Your fort is your permanent station, where you're sort of parked there longer term to secure the area. So camps are when you come in to conquer. When you're securing, you build forts. So this group of soldiers is somewhere in one of these fortifications.

The enemy, the indigenous people, get wind of this and decide to attack and basically come in and slaughter them, break into the camp, big fight going on. The interesting thing is it's taken quite a while, this fight. Long enough for Agricola, who is presumably somewhere else in the area but not on their doorstep to come back with his men and save the day now we know there's a ninth legion we think there's some indication of them being in scotland at this time it's mentioned in the book they say the ninth legion so that bit marries up it's very difficult to prove that they were at this particular site and they did it and the reason

for that is because so they come to a site they surveyed it marked it out and then they dig big ditches be a good six seven foot deep and then they piled all that earth up into an embankment and that's their defences so that's what we call the rampart and the ditch defences within that all the soldiers are staying in their tents. Now when the Romans leave an area what they seem to do is knock down the ramparts, put it back into the ditch and then clear off and so the enemy can't occupy that and get a strategic advantage. So the problem is if defences are breached and that's what we're getting from Tacitus that that's what happens, they're going to knock down these ramparts. Well, these ramparts don't survive now.

We have one or two sites where they're three, four foot high, the remaining rampart. Most of them are ploughed out in that, so we can't really find that. Next sort of evidence you'd be looking for is burning. Did they start burning down tents and things like that? That may or may not have happened. We'd need to excavate a camp and find evidence of that. But there is some indication, certainly with forts,

that when they abandon them, they burn them down, the buildings, rather than dismantle it, just burn it down, move on. I think Ardach is an example of that. So if they were staying in a fort and that was breached, again, we can't find the evidence. Promise. And as I say, Agricola, or Tacitus's version of agricola it's a movie and this is your inciting incident so this is the beginning really of the build-up

to the battle of mons graupius this is sort of saying actually you know agricola almost lost the day but he came in he saved saved it. He was a brilliant leader, but he was determined to have his revenge and carried on campaigning. That's what it is. So something may have happened. The Ninth Legion, the indication is from the literary evidence that it was already depleted because it had been involved in the Budokan revolt some 20 odd years before, 15, 20 years beforehand and so it's difficult to know what was happening was this just a rubbish legion that tastas decided right i need a story you're the guys that are going to be you know it's the same you know you watch a soap opera you know you pick the family

that are going to get wiped out and falling into the river or something and that's what tastas is doing you know we need to look at it like you would a film. It is all very interesting that story so thank you for explaining that but let's go on to the big climactic event of this ancient soap opera as it were. We're Bast of Mons Graupius now we're going to keep on Tacitus because it's important first of all especially where we're going to be going on to later in the discussion, the geography, the topography that Tacitus says at this battlefield. What does Tacitus say? So he's very vague on it. So he's incredibly vague, horribly vague. He basically says Agricola arrives at Mons Graupius. That's it. There's slightly more description later on that when the battle lines are drawn up,

that the Britannic, the natives, the Caledoni, are on a hill and there's two pushes forward by them. As the first one's happening, he describes all the population being up the hill. But if you look at Scotland, it's a very hilly country. You know, there's nothing else really that stands out in that description we know it must be fairly level at the bottom of the hill because he talks tastas talks about chariots and they're going to need flattish ground to fight on we know there is some indigenous settlement roundabout because after the battle he talks about houses being burned down i think he talks about chimney smoke and some of them that sort of thing but that doesn't mean anything

he doesn't describe fortified settlements or anything like that so it's very vague we've got another description i think it's in the speech by calgac, who is designated the sort of leader or spokesperson in Tastus's account. And he says, I think it's him that says, there's nothing really between them and it's the rocks and the sea. So it implies it's on the edge somewhere, which people have interpreted as North Scotland. But to be quite honest, you know, that's a different thing. Different thing indeed. Let's keep on the's a different thing different thing indeed let's keep on the battle for now my friend let's keep on the British force for a bit because you mentioned chariots there but you also mentioned the name Calgacus because he is quite an important figure

in this whole battle narrative in the whole Agricola story isn't he he is and he isn't so again you think of it as a film script, you know, it's a film and this is all about Agricola. It's told from his point of view, it's told about him, it's got the tragedy, it's got the highs, it's got the lows. Calgacus is a storytelling tool. So around this time when Tacitus is writing it, and this is what I meant at the start when I said Tastus is a very well-read, knowledgeable, seemingly intelligent person, because the literary tradition at that time, and we have this with the accounts of Boudicca, is that you have the very anti-Roman, you know, the big pantomime villain that comes in and does, oh, I hate the Romans, and we're going to be better, because we will rise above the Romans, and we'll conquer the

world, we'll be brilliant, and we'll beat all those Romans, and we hate the Romans, and we're going to be better because we will rise above the Romans and we'll conquer the world. We'll be brilliant and we'll beat all those Romans. And we hate the Romans. We're very anti-Roman. And that's what it's all about. Basically, he's doing a sort of literary trend. He's doing the Jackie Collins thing. You know, it's trying to do the big sort of pantomime villain that's going to ruin the hero's journey because, you know, that's just the trend of the time. So Calgacus, did he exist? We've no evidence. There's very little there to imply that there was that sort of figure. There are leaders.

I mean, this is what they described. There are leaders. And then he talks about Calgacus as being the leader. Was it the same person? There probably was someone on the battlefield who may have been a bit of a figurehead. Is that the figure of Calgacus, which is, you know, what Tacitus is doing? We probably won't really know that. I mean, there's implications that, you know, there is a figure there, but doing all these big speeches. I think out of the whole of Tacitus, there are only really three people I think

mentioned by name, and it's Agricola, Calgacus, and then he does this very strange thing of talking about after the battle, people have fallen, and there's a Roman soldier he mentions by name, Attilus, I think it is. And that's it, there's no mentions of names, you know, this is not about the Caledoni. This is, you know, all about Agrippola. I remember looking at some like quotes from ancient history. And one of them, which is always striking for me is the Calgacus one. And correct me if I'm wrong in saying this, Andrew, but it's like the Romans, they make a desert and they call it peace and all of that. I mean, what are the main sort of messages put over in Calgacus's speech?

Well, it's the anti-Roman rhetoric. It's being the pantomime villain. You know, it is, how do we make Agricola look even better? You know, we've had the big inciting incident with the Ninth Legion. We've come to the culmination. You know, the whole campaigning has almost geographically progressed to this is the climax calgacus is really there to challenge some of the roman perceptions have someone challenging them on their behalf and tastas is very good at that he's created this character who may have some

sort of historical or origins and reality But it's about sort of saying, well, you come in here, you do all this, you know. And I think we can quite often interpret that as trying to sort of humiliate or go against Agricola. And it's not for that, because the Romans are quite arrogant to a large extent. And they will be like, yes, we did come in here and we gave you peace.

And we did this left, here and we gave you peace and you we did this left right and center you know and the other thing to bear in mind is a battle for the romans is very much the last thing they do it's a very costly exercise you know if you start losing people you then have to get more people and train them you start losing weapons well then you have to forge those weapons and if if you're campaigning, they're not likely to have large-scale weapons factories, you know, when they're at their camps. Those are back in the forts and possibly even further south of their winter quarters. Hello, I'm James Rogers, and over on the History Hit Warfare podcast, we're marking the 20th anniversary of 9-11.

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All right, so Calgacus' speech, we've got the Britons lined up on the hill at Mons Graupius according to Tacitus, but then what does Tacitus tell us then about the Roman deployment? How does Agricola supposedly deploy and prepare his troops for the clash? So he does his rousing speech. Calgacus' speech lasts for several pages. I can't remember how long exactly. It's several pages long whereas Agricola's quite a bit shorter. But again, it's not a verbatim speech. Neither of them are verbatim, you know. Tacitus wasn't there.

This is for the reader. It's like when you read a newspaper, you know, there are edited highlights and that's what Agricola's doing. He's doing speech writing. The way Tacitus writes certainly writes Calgacus's speech. It's got hints of Cicero, you know. It's a very big speech.

You know, Cicero's the great orator, and it's reflecting that. And that's why I think I said at the start, Tacitus is very well read. He knows all this sort of stuff. There are elements of Virgil in some of the work when it's been analysed. So Agricola's speech isn't as big and dramatic. It's a bit of a pep talk of, you know, come on, lads, we'll do this. We'll get it over and done with for the might of Rome

and let's go get them. It doesn't need to be that long because the Romans are the readers. He's writing that for that audience. Why tell them what they already know? It's like, again, back to the pantomime analogy it's like boo hiss and a yay you know it's like cheering the good guys and boo hiss for the bad guys you know you whip them into a frenzy for the bad guys and that's exactly what Tacitus is

doing I think they're mentioning there's something like know, we've got 8,000 auxiliary soldiers and we've got something like 30,000 Caledoni, 3,000 Roman cavalry. And again, it comes back to this being a bit of a propaganda piece. You've got, by the end of it, 10,000, you know, Caledoni dead against something like 360 Romans. It's like, really? against something like 360 Romans. I was like, really? Interestingly, though, it's a bit of a tangent, but 10,000 is the figure that's given.

And back in the days of Rome, when a Roman general was successful, he'd have a triumph, some big parade and lots of big celebrations. And you needed to have 5,000 natives dead for that. So what Tacitus is doing is giving Agricola 10,000, so twice the limit for the triumph that he never really gets. But, you know, all this is propaganda. So it's basically playing up the role of Agricola. You've done the spoiler there. You've kind of told us who wins this battle in the Tacitus is Agricola. It's quite all right. I think we could all guess

where it was going. But I mean, how does, once again, I'm going to say with the words, according to Tacitus, we will get onto the locations and the archaeology. And you have very well throughout this podcast explained why we need to be very dubious of this account. But according to Tacitus's Agricola, how does Agricola gain this victory?

What do we know about the battle itself? So he mentions in the book that we've got four groups of auxiliaries there. Now, the auxiliaries are part of the Roman army, but they're hired help, the mercenaries. And quite often they have skills like archers and things like that. And we've got six, actually, there. We've got four Batavians and we've got two of the Tungarians. So the Batavians are from

what is the Netherlands now and the Tungarians are from I think it's East Belgium and so he sends in those and he keeps back some of the legionaries legionaries are the ones you see in the films the nice armours marching for a nation they have their own type of fortification a fortress so they're kept back. I think the wording sounds like it's just in case. And it's actually one of the sort of trends, the sort of military trends of the time. That's what they do. They keep the liegees out of it, send in the auxiliaries.

And to an extent, the basic reason is that they're expendable. You know, your soldier is more expensive because he's the one that's well trained. Some of them can be from the ruling classes, you know, the military commanders. You kind of don't really want to get rid of them if you can help it. There's also the cavalry. So he sends in, I think it's about 3,000 cavalry as well. So the horsemen and that seems to solve it. They don't seem to, I don don't think send in the legionaries and as you say this all results in agricola supposedly getting this decisive victory at the end of this soap opera and like this is the big climax with the big roman victory at the end yeah this is it you know it's all built up to this moment and boy wasn't he good at it he's completely wiped out people they

essentially commit genocide which you know they've had lots of problems with these people they're on the battlefield they kill them if they're lying there half dead they actually claim i think at one point i think that some of their families come around and kill them it's just everybody dies it's quite a brutal but then again warfare is like that and it was no different you know three four hundred years ago in some of the battles you get rid of the survivors lop off the finger take the rings dig out the gold teeth and all that sort of stuff it's the same you know two thousand years ago on this battle i mean i often think of it you read some of the description and you see some of the stuff on the news today

in places like Syria and it must have been very much similar back then that you've got refugees you've got families completely wiped out you've got children who are orphaned people fleeing into the country we know the battle takes place late in the year the weather in Scotland can be quite harsh there's probably people dropping left right and centre that weren't necessarily on the battlefield you've also got this really crazy description of some of the chariot horses from the Caledonia their chariot horses that when they lost the rider the horses started careering into people and head butting and crashing into their sides. And I think quite often because 2,000 years ago and there's been this sort of mythical status,

we actually forget Roman Scotland was a nasty place. When you're living under oppressors who take what they want, whether it's money, food or your wife, nasty, nasty place. And this battle, whether it's fictional or or not would not have been a nice place to be it would have been a very bloody mess absolutely right it's good to cover all of that and andrew well that is the story of mons graupius according to tacitus let's delve into the archaeology now because the hunt for the battlefield of mons Graupius, it's been ongoing, it's been debated for a long, long time. We'll go into some of the potential sites in a moment.

But first of all, big overarching question, which I know you like to be asked, so I'm going to ask you it now. How do archaeologists go about trying to identify an ancient battle site, particularly in this case in Northern Britain? Well, I think the basic reality is that you don't. For a lot of reasons, OK? It's great to be able to pinpoint something that is written about, something that has become a modern sort of legend, fable. It's great to be able to pinpoint that. But as archaeologists, we have to have questions.

You know, you just don't go dig something because excavation is destruction once you've taken that stone out or that wall or that body or whatever artifact it's no longer in the ground it's no longer in its original context we start losing data we have to preserve it why was it there all these questions come up so looking for something like a battlefield we try not but it's not that we try not to do it is that we're all proactive in doing it there's all the ethical thing behind it because you're talking about a cemetery these are people's final resting places and we have to respect that completely it's not about treasure hunting it's not about oh I found the battle site,

you know, they're people's graves, lives. If it's anything like Tasta says, it was horrific and brutal, there will be bits of body scattered and all that, you know. So there's a whole ethical side of it, but it's also the cost. You know, if you start finding organic material that has to be preserved, and that costs a fortune. I think Vindolanda, they keep finding leather shoes and it's a couple of hundred pound a shoe to preserve that and you've got to preserve every one. You can't pick and choose because you don't know how important that is. Same with the armour. Sometimes the soil can rust the armour, sometimes it can preserve it. We have to balance that. We have to chemically sort of get that to make it more secure so it doesn't keep eroding. We have to preserve all that and if that to make it more secure so it doesn't keep eroding.

We have to preserve all that. And if this is a battle site where you've got, you know, what's that, about 12,000 Romans, well, 12,000 auxiliaries and cavalry, however many legionaries were sat watching, and, you know, 30,000 indigenous people, that's a lot of things to start finding. So that gets expensive. So, you know, if we found it, of course, we'd do a lot of things to start finding so that gets expensive so you know if we found it of course we'd do a lot with it we'd have to spend that but i don't think anyone's really got the money to go looking for it and then you've got people that will come and do what we call night

hawking where they'll dig the ground they'll take stuff not declare it and then goes on ebay or other such sites where these things can be sold without knowing its history and we lose a lot of data again and we don't want that you know we want to learn from this but we have to have the questions to go and dig it there's not a lot of roman archaeologists studying scotland there's not a lot of battlefield experts so we're not going to proactively do it at this stage i don't think anyone's got a desire to do all the work. I mean you're talking a lifetime of work if you found it. That being said the way battle sites tend to be found is by accident. So you'll have a farmer or someone out doing something in a field

they'll find a couple of bits of armour. Local archaeologists then gets called in to have a look at it or the treasure trove people do it as it is in Scotland or possible antiquities in England and Wales. They'll find stuff, they'll find more stuff. You start to think maybe this is a battle site and then you probably do some select work to work out how big it is and all that. But we have a lot of what we call non-invasive techniques. It's a lot of geophysical survey, metal detecting. We can plot things with all that but we have a lot of what we call non-invasive techniques it's a lot of geophysical survey metal detecting we can plot things with all that without disturbing the ground so if we were to find those that's the sort of thing we'd be doing to try and preserve it i mean i was going to say you raised it just there i mean with the development of more modern technologies as time goes on do you think there's more opportunity for us to, as you say,

these non-evasive techniques to locate potential battle sites without interfering, without interrupting? You do make the important point that these are ancient cemeteries, as it were. These scientific methods, these new technological environments, they could really help in that regard? They can and they can't. They're great techniques. They can tell us a heck of a lot about an area, small area, big area. We can do it with a great deal of accuracy. We can do a lot of it remotely. That saves money. You know, someone has to pay for all this. We can learn so much from them. We can learn where to dig if we were going to dig. What's the best site to answer certain questions we can do so much more but it's still a needle in a haystack we don't know where Mons Graupius is

and I'm sure we'll talk about that later but all that sort of thing you've got to find the site to then survey it we can't go around every potential site and there's I think probably 30-40 proposed sites for Mons Graup. We can't go around all of those. It takes forever. It also takes a professional knowledge. There aren't many people that know what the typical site, profile site for a Roman battle site is. We can do lots of analysis, but it does take people that have that knowledge and expertise to be able to say, well, this seems to fit a profile of this site in another country

and things like that. We've got one or two additional clues from Tastus. So he says, I think it's the Roman troops were lined up in front of a Roman camp. So that kind of narrows it down for a lot of sites. We know there are a lot of camps out there we probably haven't found yet, but it kind of helps to narrow down some of it. But it's still, still again you've got

to have a look at the type of camp the period of camp what's the evidence the Romans were here at the right time then you've got to start looking at the battle stuff then you've got to have a look at what are the finds on the ground have we found anything do they come to the right period then we survey it the signatures when we do resistivity or magnetometry, as we probably do for this, it starts to build a picture. Is that likely to be Roman? Can we test to see if the site is Roman? That's before we start looking for remains of the actual evidence of the physical fighting in that. We're just looking at the fixed things in the ground that last longer. And one of the unfortunate things is certainly in parts of the northeast of Scotland,

the soil corrodes a lot of metal. So a lot of it could have disappeared, a lot of that evidence, a lot of bones have disappeared. That's why we don't have tons of Roman bodies from Scotland. You know, these things do disappear. Well, you mentioned in passing as we were chatting there that there are like 30 or 40 different proposed locations for the battle. We're not going to go through them all.

But we are going to focus on a few of, I'm not going to say the big ones, I'm not going to say more interesting because I'm sure they are all very interesting. But we are going to start with what seems to be the big one when you do any looking into the Bastion Mons Graupius. And this is the site of Benahy. Andrew, where is Benahy?

And why is this particular location so popular with people when it comes to the Bas de Mons Graupius? So Benahy's in Aberdeenshire. It's a big hill. When I say hill, it's sort of mountain, small mountain. It's got evidence of several indigenous settlements, hill forts on and around it. I don't think any of those have been dated.

And we do have to be careful in the dating because if it was abandoned by the Roman period or occupied after the Roman period, you can't use that as evidence to support it was a site the Romans came to. And again, we've got to be careful. There's a hill fort, it's not site that Romans came to. And again, we've got to be careful, there's a hill fort, it's not too far away from there, called Tapanoth, which has been excavated by Gordon

Noble at Aberdeen University recently. And we thought that could have been Roman. I think some people have even proposed that as a site of Mons Graupius. They've had organic materials and things come up that they've been able to properly date, scientifically date, and it doesn't look like it's contemporary with the first century Roman activities. So we can't sort of say that's a hill fort. The Romans were here at the same time people were living in it. We just can't say that. We can think it, but we can't say it. So Benachi, it's got the hill fort on the top. It's got some hill forts round to the side.

There's quite a few hill forts and other hills nearby. So it does seem to be in a bit of a population centre at some time. And it's kind of got the flat plains in front of it. So it kind of does fit the profile on that level. Nearby, there are a number of Roman camps. There's a particularly large one. I think it's about 50 hect hectares just under 50 hectares um a place called logi durno which is fairly nearby and it does seem to fit the profile but

no one's ever found anything there i don't think logi durno is on top of the hill so you're sort of losing that element that's in the description that the Romans lined up in front of it so yeah it's a possibility I mean it was put forward I think first of all possibly by Gordon Maxwell who was a worked for what was the Royal Commission Ancient Historic Monuments in Scotland very knowledgeable gentleman found lots of Roman sites through aerial survey did lots of Roman sites where he'll survey, did lots of excavation. We've not really revisited that since he proposed it back in, I think, the early 80s. I think his book came out. It's a site we give some credence to. I mean, Gordon knows his stuff and he is an expert

and he's the sort of person that if he makes a guess, it's an educated guess and we should respect and acknowledge that. So Benaki is a possible one, but again, the archaeology isn't there yet with it. Isn't there yet, yet indeed. Well, I'm hoping for future discoveries at any of these locations to cast more light on this ancient clash, but we're going to go a bit further north. I think it's slightly north if you look at a map to a site where you might initially think of a famous battle that occurred several several centuries later and this just south of inverness this is culloden but also andrew it's the theory

that this could be the site too yeah there's been a couple of people who have suggested it, including at least one expert that knows their stuff. I don't think there's been too much published about it being a Roman site, so I won't name names of people that have said it, because that's up to them to publish it. I haven't seen the case for that, but in my mind, Culloden

is probably not a great site. So we know that because it's been used as a battlefield back in the Jacobite uprisings in 1746 when the Battle of Clawdon took place. And at that time, Bonnie Prince Charlie was leading his men and he was camped out in Inverness and he was deciding, where should I have a battle with the Duke of Cumberland?

And that was meant to be their big battle. So in that movie, this is the climax of Bonnie Prince Charlie's story. And he had with him several commanders, I think as he termed them, and these were very experienced military men. And the Earl of Moray was one of them in particular. I think it was Earl of Moray that said to him, don't hold it at Culloden. The terrain is rubbish.

It's a very marshy place. A bit of forest. It's not great. Boggers down will be quite slow. And a few other people suggested other places, somewhere near what is now Inverness Airport. Some people wanted to fight further east. Body Prince Charlie was really, you've got to feel sorry for him,

he didn't have any military expertise at all. He was not a general. He was leading the life of a prince, whether or not you think that was something he was entitled to. But he was relying on his experts. And I think the wrong people were whispering in his ear, people that had undue influence over him. And I think Charlie wanted to prove himself

and took the decision to have the battle at Culloden. And it was a disaster. And a lot of that was down to the terrain, that you were having men walking through marshes and it hampered them. It didn't help anything. So to then propose Culloden as a Roman site in my mind if it wasn't great in the 18th century it wouldn't have been great 2,000 years

ago and that's well before a lot of modern agriculture improvements which start happening around the 18th century and improve a lot of land but Culloden today is still quite a marshy terrain that isn't great so I'm always a bit sceptical on it and the other thing that doesn't lend itself to being the battle site there isn't really a single mountain there well I say mountain I think it depends on your translation again Tastus it could be a big mound as one of the translations and there are a couple of volcanic rocks up there Tomnahurich with the modern cemetery in Inverness is one of the translations. And there are a couple of volcanic rocks up there. Tomnahurich with the modern cemetery in Inverness is one of them. It's not too far from Culloden,

but it doesn't seem to be big enough to line up lots of people on. To me, it doesn't have a lot going on. I would need to see someone put forward a good evidence base or some good arguments for that. But I think it's proposed, but not one I would take seriously at this stage. Well, let's not look through all the 30, don't we? I'm not expecting you to know all the 30 other theories that there are for various battle sites.

But are there any other battle sites that you'd like to mention, proposed possible battle sites for the Clash at Mons Graupius? I think there are a number of interesting ones. I think we've got two places that we shouldn't dismiss and i suspect other people have proposed these down in dumfries and galloway we've got a number of mounds big hills that we know are sort of active around this time one of those being burnswark now burnswark becomes quite key in the antonine period seems to be where they start doing big offensives and attacking it. It's a big volcanic hill. It's got some indigenous activity on top. It's got a couple of Roman camps around the bottom. The dating for all this is very vague. We don't have evidence for

first century activity on the hill. The Roman camps we haven't quite dated but there does seem to have been an attack in the second century. It always strikes me as it fits the criteria quite well. There's bits of Tastis that says they're looking at the harbours, the indigenous harbours, they're sailing around the coast. There's a lot of indigenous activity on the coast. We have that in Dumfries and Galloway on the Solway coast. We've got a lot happening there. Again, a lot of undated sites and activity it seems to be quite fortified in the first century and possibly slightly later so it's quite an interesting area it fits some of the criteria

it doesn't fit other bits of the criteria so Tastis talks about the talum or the talus, which we think is the te. We're assuming that it's the same location as today's te. They then fall back and create a solid line between the fourth and the Clyde. We're kind of assuming the klota and the bodhitra are the fourth Clyde. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. There is some interpretation of the language that suggests it could be river estuaries, which could be the Tyne and the Solway. That's quite debated, but it is a possibility. So this is what I say.

We can't take task is too literally because the line of where everything's happening can move back and forth the other interesting site we've got is newstead and the scottish borders near the town of melrose um there's the yielding hills there which is really two sort of peaks and a sort of conjoined hill quite large there there's a Roman watchtower on it. There's evidence of indigenous activity on it. There's a lot of evidence of indigenous activity around the base of the hill. A lot of things that are unchecked haven't been investigated since, although I think Gordon Noble from Aberdeen is doing some work on the hill itself in future.

But Melrose, you've got a Roman fort there. It's rebuilt in the first century. It's rebuilt twice in the second century. There are about six or seven Roman camps around there. So there's a lot of activity going on there. Again, not much evidence to indicate a battle site, but it does fit some of the criteria. It's one where there's a lot going on archaeologically

that we need to fathom what's going on. Does that mean Agricola was there having a big battle? No. But equally, you know, it's just as valid as thinking about Benachy. It's so interesting how we've gone from the Scottish borders to Benachy to Culloden. So a huge geographical

area, which is really interesting for where we currently are at with trying to well the theory surrounding where the Basil of Mons Graupius could have been fought now Andrew this is like a what-if scenario but let's say in the future something happens which means that someone is able to find a site which they do believe and they do state this seems to be the Basil of Mons Graupius location. What would be the implications of such a discovery? It would be the first known location of a Roman battle site in Britain, one of the only ones in Europe. We've got one or two elsewhere, we've got evidence of stuff happening in Spain, We've got Schubert Forest in Germany, although that's debated by some archaeologists.

But it would be huge, not only because battle sites are protected sites because they're graves. So you're talking about a mass grave. And those people, as with any excavation that archaeologists do, those people have a right to be respected and done with whatever.

And in this country, we've not really had a lot of conversations about how we do that with battlefields. You know, recent battles, First World War, Second World War, we've got nothing like that in Britain. They treat those with great respect and don't do anything with them in Belgium and Flanders, France, all that sort of place. What would we do with it? You know, what do you do?

Do you excavate recover the bodies do you leave them where they fell the knowledge of it we probably start to think about doing some sort of program of research on it little bits here and there it just depends where it is is it a risk of being developed or coastal erosion or things like that if so we have to protect it we have to record it. If it's a farmer's field, well, what do you do then if you say to him, well, this is actually one of the most important sites in the country, you're not allowed to plough it? Is that ethical to stop him doing what his family may have done for 50 years? There's a whole cacophony of questions

we'd have to ask. And, you know, the bottom line bottom line i think for archaeologists in this day and age is it is a grave site as i say so you've got to respect that and clodden is a good example of it's never really been touched because it is a grave site and there will be human remains all over the place and a lot of them were gathered and put into graves but there'll be lots bits of people that weren't so you've got that whole side of things but it's then what questions do we want to ask as archaeologists how big was the battlefield can we confirm it's a Roman battlefield that would probably involve excavation can we confirm it's first century so that would involve

excavation and dating of artifacts or there's slightly new techniques that we can do. You then want to look at the wider area because bear in mind that there's been estimates of the baggage train for the campaign in Scotland could have been up to 10 miles long. So it's not just about this little area where everybody was getting killed. I say little, it'll be a huge area because we had cavalry you've got allegedly 30 000 people it's probably a bit of poetic license and that but

you've still got lots of indigenous people that are on the hill lots of romans at the bottom next to a camp what do you do about the camp do you look at that and investigate that huge it's almost unthinkable the amount of work it would involve. And of course, that costs money. A hundred years ago, when you did a big excavation of a fort, such as at Ardach, you came, you dug, you went. We don't do that now. We survey it, we scan it, we do everything before we touch it. Then we decide what are the best bits. You know know if you're talking about a Roman fort do you dig the central buildings where the commander lived do you dig the barracks where the soldier lived do you dig the granaries where you can potentially get grains that you can start to look at their

diet you can date it do you dig the ditches which can tell you how long it was occupied for depending on how much silt was built up on it so you have to look at all that and this is why we do the surveying because then you can target where to excavate and if we want to date it there are places you would do if you want to find out who was living there there are bits you would dig and it's the same with the battle site you know we'd want to find out where the roman lines were where the lines of the indigenous people were, where they up the hill, as Tacitus was saying, or was it something else? So it's a hugely complicated project. And I know people that have done training excavations at universities over, you know,

six, seven weeks every summer for four or five years. And that's two, three years of writing up it takes them, you know, because these people also have normal jobs they've got to do everything else so it's time and money and staff silchester which is the reading university excavations they've been digging there for 20 25 years something like that and they've only really dug one small quadrant i think it's insula 9 they did for most of that time i think they moved on now but it just goes to show you a whole battle site will take a lot of time to excavate and is it going to tell you much not really there are certain bits will tell you a lot so you have to

be very selective but as i say time and money and there's just not the money out there sadly in this day and age not yet my friend but hopefully in the future things will change. I mean, that's all really interesting to hear, the behind the scenes, as it were, of the archaeology world, of Roman archaeology in Scotland, which, of course, you are a key part of. Andrew, this has been a brilliant chat. Just to wrap it all up quickly, Agricola following the Basso Mons Graupius, according to Tastus,

it doesn't seem like he stays in that area of the world for much longer after that, is it? No, so he does the battle. It seems to go well, according to Tacitus, lots of celebration, his men like it. The emperor has now changed his demission by the time we get to the battle. By all accounts, not a particularly pleasant emperor, quite jealous.

This is why we think that Tastus is writing sort of slightly later on because he's quite critical of the emperor in a fairly subtle way, but basically saying Agricola didn't get the recognition he deserved and everybody was not impressed. And there's even, I think you could translate one passage as sort of indicating that he should be emperor rather than Domitian and all this stuff. But basically Tacitus gets recalled to Rome,

looks like he might be going to Syria. It doesn't really happen. He then seems to be put out to pasture and that's it. Basically the emperor being jealous according to Tacitus. And of course it's all very biased. And I think, from what I recall, there were the sort of stories that you say the wrong thing about the emperor and you're off. I think it's Cicero is one example of that.

You start cheesing off the people in charge and you're off to fall on your sword sort of thing. So that's why we think he's writing after all this has happened and the mission's gone but that's who tastis is blaming on the reality is there's a bit of trouble in germany german frontier is always a bit troublesome it remains troublesome but there's a bit of a need to have extra soldiers there so we think they're taken from the south of britain and put to germany which means that they need to then pull people back from Scotland to secure it. And they seem to fall back to the sort of North England line until they start campaigning again under Hadrian. So like 50 odd years later, they start doing a bit more in Scotland again. Absolutely. And of course, Antoninus Pius. and then you get the Antonine Wall and all of that.

So they're back there again. I mean, Andrew, I think the key phrase from this whole discussion over the last hour or so is according to Tacitus. This has been a really fun chat. Mons Graupius is always a great topic to talk about. Really interesting topic, popular topic. Last but not least,

you have done a lot of work on the Romans in Scotland. Let us know one more time, your book, what is your book called on this topic? It's Beyond the Empire, A Guide to the Roman Remains in Scotland. It's out at the moment, available from all good bookshops and should have another one, Scotland's Early Roman Fortifications coming out next year. Fantastic. Looking forward to reading that in due course. Andrew, always a pleasure. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.