As Scotland's ancient history was reassessed in light of further research and fraudulent new sources, so the debate regarding the extent and impact of Roman activity in the region continued. If anything, later eighteenth-century attitudes towards the subject became even more entrenched and ebullient: as is often the case with something on the brink of demise, the chauvinistic and belligerent wrangling over just how Roman ancient Caledonia had actually been experienced a burst of energy in its final years. But while the intensity of the arguments had not yet waned, their scope and influence certainly did, as antiquarians became increasingly parochial, more concerned with the local than the national. Agricolamania was to remain a driving force in their research, particularly the endless (and ultimately fruitless) attempts to locate the elusive site of Mons Graupius.

The formation of antiquarian societies in the last decades of the eighteenth century may have ensured the popularity of the subject, but the new approaches to the past associated with Enlightenment scholarship marked a departure from, or more precisely a rejection of antiquarian methodology.

Modern Scotland is a nation that continually struggles with its sense of identity and remains divided over its position within Britain and the wider world. This is not a new phenomenon: in fact, it could be said that Scots have been concerned with such issues ever since they first expressed the symptoms of patriotism, their outward confidence often suggesting an underlying anxiety regarding the status of their homeland. Throughout much of its existence Scotland has been overshadowed by its larger, richer and more populous neighbour to the south. While the two nations often sat in a state of mutual tolerance, this peace was regularly disrupted by political bickering and minor raids that sometimes erupted into full-scale battles and invasions. Although he admits that it is difficult to define, William Ferguson locates early signs of a sense of Scottish identity during the Wars of Independence, a time when English monarchs still believed themselves to be the rightful rulers of Scotland, a claim apparently justified by the spurious histories of Geoffrey of Monmouth that would persist into the Tudor age. Suggestions that the Scottish church should rightly be under English control also threatened religious freedom north of the border. If medieval Scots often found it hard to derive a sense of pride from the current state of their nation, then they naturally turned to the past for nostalgic self-affirmation; for, as Horace Walpole bluntly noted in 1778, ‘nations, like private persons, seek lustre from their progenitors, when they have none in themselves’.

Born in Edinburgh in 1641 into a wealthy landowning family, Robert Sibbald (Figure 1.1) was to become one of the most noted Scottish scholars of his day. Devoting his life to study, his research covering a wide variety of fields including medicine, geography and history both natural and human, Sibbald was a true virtuoso who was driven by his insatiable curiosity and an ambition to improve the state of learning in Scotland. Demonstrating a fascination with the past and a desire to both stay abreast of and make a contribution to European scholarship, Sibbald's work presents contradictions: while his approach was often old-fashioned, rooted as it was in seventeenth-century traditions, his methodology could be remarkably innovative and the conjectures that he proposed were sometimes radical.

A dedicated Scottish patriot, Sibbald focused largely on his home nation, charting its geography both ancient and modern, and displayed a specific interest in uncovering its Roman past. He scoured the landscape for material evidence of Roman activity north of Hadrian's Wall, studied classical texts, medieval chronicles and more recent writings on the subject and discussed the matter at length with fellow antiquarians in his extensive correspondence. Keen to share the results of his research, Sibbald was the first Scot to publish essays devoted exclusively to the endeavours of the Romans in Scotland.

Although it comes as no surprise that Scottish antiquarians of the eighteenth century were fascinated by Roman Scotland, it is important to note that the subject also attracted attention south of the border. An analysis of the changing English perceptions of Scotland's early history confirms that there was more than just Scottish patriotism at play in the nation's developing historiography. The first half of the eighteenth century saw the publication of two key works featuring Roman Scotland written by arguably the most renowned English antiquarians of the period, namely William Stukeley and John Horsley. These two publications presented startlingly different depictions of ancient Caledonia and its relations with Rome. Stukeley's An Account of a Roman Temple, and Other Antiquities, Near Graham's Dike in Scotland appeared in 1720; although he had already established himself as an esteemed member of London's intelligentsia by this time, this essay was the first of his works to be published. As well as including a description of the ‘Temple’ of its title, the mysterious, probably Roman structure in central Scotland known as Arthur's O’on, Stukeley's Account also expounds the antiquarian's vision of the Roman landscape that surrounded it, presenting southern Scotland as a virtual Roman province filled with evidence of classical civilisation. Although it is not dedicated solely to Scotland, Horsley's Britannia Romana, printed in 1732 soon after its author's untimely death, also contains much information on the Roman heritage of the northern nation.

Born in 1676, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (Figure 2.1) belonged to the generation that followed Sir Robert Sibbald. Renowned during his lifetime as a politician, judge, patron, composer and antiquarian, his reputation faded in the centuries following his death, to the extent that he would be described in the 1970s as ‘a figure strangely neglected in the story of the nascent Scottish Enlightenment’. Since then, largely thanks to the pioneering research of Iain Gordon Brown, his importance in the evolution of Scottish learning has become much better understood. Like Sibbald, Clerk was the son of a prosperous landowning family, and both men led lives similarly informed by a love of ancient Rome. An avid reader of classical literature and collector of ancient artefacts, Clerk styled himself as a Roman, even fashioning for himself houses and estates that imitated those of the ancients. Also like Sibbald, Clerk declared himself a Scottish patriot and spent much of his life tracing and discussing the ancient history of his nation. In addition, Clerk was a generous patron of professional antiquarians, most notably Alexander Gordon, also John Horsley, whose extensive fieldwork resulted in two of the most important and influential eighteenth-century books featuring material on Roman Scotland. Unlike Sibbald, however, Clerk only occasionally slipped into Romanist fantasy, generally (but not always) taking a more level-headed approach to his interpretation of Scotland's Roman heritage.

Although it is always more difficult to demonstrate an absence than a presence, a survey of nineteenth-century Scottish historiography, literature and popular culture exposes a distinct lack of interest in Roman Scotland. After Chalmers’ bid to reclaim the nation's classical heritage, serious scholarly discussions (which clearly excludes eccentric oddities like Andrew Small's Interesting Roman Antiquities Recently Discovered in Fife discussed in the previous chapter) were to be few and far between over the following decades. The ways in which Scots saw themselves, also how they (and indeed all Britons) thought about Rome, were changing. As Rosemary Sweet points out, ‘the admiration for all things Roman … no longer commanded the same position of intellectual dominance that had characterised the antiquarian world of the early eighteenth century’; her suggestion that ‘by the early nineteenth century, the study of Roman antiquities had been consolidated’, however, can be comfortably applied to England, but less convincingly to Scotland.

Much recent scholarship on Romanist antiquarianism focuses exclusively on the long eighteenth century and has little interest in what came directly after. Richard Hingley's The Recovery of Roman Britain continues into the following century, but makes no mention of Scotland after the 1793 publication of William Roy's Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain; thereafter Hingley's references to ‘Roman Britain’, like those of the nineteenth-century historians he discusses, actually mean Roman England.

That the eighteenth-century English elite were enthralled by the glories of ancient Rome and were often eager to both emulate its culture and discover physical evidence of its civilising effects on their homeland has been widely recorded in recent scholarship. As has been demonstrated in the first two chapters of this book, such an approach also spread north of the border, leading some notable Scots to search for traces of Roman civilisation in their own nation. But while Sir Robert Sibbald may have hoped to classicise ancient Caledonia in his publications on the subject of Roman Scotland and Sir John Clerk expressed frustration at the nation's lack of classical antiquities, mourning his supposed ancestors’ rejection of Roman domination and the civility that it would have brought, it is worth remembering that such men would have been in the minority in Scotland at this time. In fact, a survey of various aspects of Scottish writing in the first decades of the eighteenth century reveals that ancient Caledonia's repulsion of Roman invasion was repeatedly celebrated not only in antiquarian texts, but also in political tracts and patriotic poetry.

As we have seen, early eighteenth-century antiquarian research into the Roman history of Scotland was dogged by contradictions and disagreements. Sir Robert Sibbald broke with tradition when he described the south of Scotland as a veritable Roman province, and not much later William Stukeley concocted a similar vision of the Scottish Lowlands dotted with the remains of classical culture. In 1726, however, Alexander Gordon denounced such ideas in favour of an indomitable Caledonia that the Romans had tried but ultimately failed to conquer, and while English antiquarian John Horsley agreed with the proposal that Scotland had largely remained outside of Roman control, the reasons he gave were far less flattering to the Scots. Despite such assertions, some commentators, no doubt swayed by the ‘high idea which is commonly entertained of Roman greatness’ later described by John Anderson, continued to search for the remains of Rome in the north, intent on discovering evidence of a truly classical Caledonia.

Then, between 1747 and 1763, two new sources emerged that both appeared to shed dramatic new light on the history and geography of Roman Scotland.

The first half of the eighteenth century was a time of social and political disruption in Scotland and across Britain as a whole. Perhaps the most dramatic crises of the period were the Jacobite rebellions of 1715, 1719 and 1745, the last of which came close to bringing down the Hanoverian regime, Bonnie Prince Charlie marching his troops as far south as Derbyshire before losing his nerve and retreating back to Scotland. Having raised their standards in the far north and ultimately been defeated there at the Battle of Culloden, the Stuart uprisings were (and still are) often presented as a Highland phenomenon, although support for the Jacobite cause was certainly not restricted to that region. The idea of a harmonious Britain resulting from the Union of 1707 was shattered, anxieties about the internal divisions within Scotland itself re-emerged and the traditional vision of Caledonia as a place of conflict was revived, with memories of ancient battles between savage northerners and civilised southerners rekindled in eighteenth-century minds. In the wake of these unsuccessful rebellions, the ways in which the north of Scotland was to be viewed and governed were to radically change.

Throughout the long-running and often acrimonious early modern debates regarding the historiography of Roman Scotland, one source dominated the discussion, namely the Agricola of Publius Cornelius Tacitus. This relatively short work, written around 98 ce and purporting to describe the life of the author's father-in- law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, was recognised by antiquarians as the most extensive primary source for events in first-century Britain, containing an account of the subjugation and civilisation of much of the island by its titular general. A large proportion of the text relates specifically to Roman exploits in what is now Scotland, and a comprehensive knowledge of it was vital for any eighteenth-century Scot who professed an interest in the nation's earliest history. As a result, it was translated, read and re-read, analysed, interpreted, misinterpreted and quoted endlessly by antiquarians seeking to substantiate their conjectures regarding the extent of Roman power in the north. Its protagonists became heroic figures to many, while the potential geographical locations of the incidents that it describes were scrutinised and deliberated ad nauseam.

Although some doubts about its accuracy and reliability were to emerge during this period, the Agricola was generally viewed as a factual record of historical figures and events.

In their attempts to retrieve the history and geography of Roman Scotland, early modern antiquarians turned to various sources. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the Agricola of Tacitus was to become their preferred ancient text, while other surviving classical writings were similarly examined for references to northern Britain. Also crucial to the task of understanding Scotland's ancient past were the surviving traces of Rome in the form of earthworks or foundations, as well as the inscriptions, coins and other ancient objects found around them. Throughout the eighteenth century such sites and artefacts were actively sought out and, once identified, were repeatedly inspected and measured, described and drawn, each visitor intending to correct the mistakes of his predecessors and hoping perhaps to uncover something new that had escaped their notice. For lovers of Rome, these remains were proof that classical civilisation had arrived in Scotland. For those of a more traditionally patriotic mindset, they could be interpreted as evidence of aborted attempts to conquer the north. More than just the indicators of the heritage of a place, Roman antiquities also became symbols of status and learning to be purchased, swapped and displayed. While the white marble statues being discovered in Italy and imported in bulk by Grand Tourists were a common sight in aristocratic houses in England (Wilton House, Ince Blundell Hall, Newby Hall and Charles Townley's London home to name but a few), they rarely made it north of the border.