The first historical culture to inhabit the Lothians was the Celtic tribe known to the Greeks and Romans of the C1st AD as the "Votadini", and later, in their own language, as the Gododdin. In the early Romano-British period, Lothian existed outwith the Roman province of Britannia, and constituted the North-east frontier of a loose Celtic federation known to the Romans as Brigantia. But while Brigantia was a Celtic region, it was by no means a Gaelic one, and spoke Brythonic, the P-Celtic language which eventually gave rise to modern Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. The title "Brigantia" derives from a native pagan goddess of the same name, to whom a Romano-British altar was dedicated at Birrens in Dumfriesshire. This goddess appears in the Gaelic traditions as Bride, also known as Bridget, and her mythology was later entwined with that of the Irish Saint Bridget.
The Brigantia Altar, Birrens, Dumfriesshire
The capital of Brigantia is thought to have been in West Yorkshire in a kingdom later known as Elfed (Latinised as Elmet, which remains the name of an electoral constituency on the North side of Leeds to this day). The dealings of the Brigantian queen, Cartimandua with the Romans makes an interesting study in Romano-British politics. Initially, Brigantia appears to have resisted Roman expansion, and Cartimandua struck a bargain with the Romans to remain a client kingdom rather than a subject kingdom. This appears to have drawn the Brythonic freedom-fighter Caradawg (Caratacus, in his Latinised form) to seek refuge there following his campaigns against the Romans in what are now Southern England and Wales. But ultimately, Cartimandua sold Caradawg out to the Romans and he was taken to Rome as a trophy of conquest, as narrated by the Roman chronicler Tacitus in his key source for the Roman invasion of Britain, The Annals (48-54AD). In classic Tacitean style, Caradawg is given the following speech to the Roman emperor:
Had my moderation in prosperity been equal to my noble birth and fortune, I should have entered this city as your friend rather than as your captive; and you would not have disdained to receive, under a treaty of peace, a king descended from illustrious ancestors and ruling many nations. My present lot is as glorious to you as it is degrading to myself. I had men and horses, arms and wealth. What wonder if I parted with them reluctantly? If you Romans choose to lord it over the world, does it follow that the world is to accept slavery? Were I to have been at once delivered up as a prisoner, neither my fall nor your triumph would have become famous. My punishment would be followed by oblivion, whereas, if you save my life, I shall be an everlasting memorial of your clemency.
According to Tacitus, Caradawg gained a temporary reprieve in Rome for this speech. However, Cartimandua's betrayal of him in her attempt to appease the advancing Romans ultimately failed, and much of Brigantia was soon absorbed into the Roman province of Britannia in Southern Britain. Gododdin was, at this stage, somewhat removed, at least geographically, from the intrigues of the Brigantian negotiations with Rome. What part it played in Cartimandua's policy is unknown, if any, but as Brigantia fell to the Roman advance, it seems that the Northern kingdom of the "Votadini" became a frontier territory in the buffer-zone between the province of Britannia, South of Hadrian's Wall, and the kingdoms of the Picts, North of the Antonine Wall.
Many historians believe that the "Votadini" played a complex role in the politics of the region between the two great Roman walls, sometimes accepting and trading with the Roman settlers and at other times rebelling against them in alliance with their Northern neighbours, the Picts, whom the Romans certainly invaded, but never fully conquered. Perhaps the most famous Roman invasion of Pictavia was the Agricolan campaign of 84AD, and again, this is recorded by Tacitus in his Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola. Its primary battle seems to have taken place at Mons Graupius, presumably somewhere in the Grampian mountains, and Tacitus once more gives us a classic Celtic freedom speech, this time in the mouth of the Caledonian general, Calgacus:
Whenever I consider why we are fighting and how we have reached this crisis, I have a strong sense that this day of your splendid rally may mean the dawn of liberty for the whole of Britain. You have mustered to a man, and to a man you are free. There are no lands behind us, and even the sea is menaced by the Roman fleet. The clash of battle - the hero's glory - has become the safest refuge for the coward. Battles against Rome have been lost and won before - but never without hope; we were always there in reserve. We, the choice flower of Britain, were treasured in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness and the seclusion for which we are famed. We have enjoyed the impressiveness of the unknown. But today the boundary of Britain is exposed; beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks and the Romans, more deadly still than they, for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude. Brigands of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder, and now they ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their cupidity, his poverty their lust of power. East and West have failed to glut their maw. They are unique in being as violently tempted to attack the poor as the wealthy. Robbery, butchery, rapine, with false names they call Empire; and they make a wilderness and call it peace.
To this day, that final sentence remains a rallying-cry of the Scottish nationalist movement, yet Calgacus lost the Battle of Mons Graupius, even if the campaign as a whole was effectively won by the Picts. Whether or not a major battle decided the issue, the Romans never properly incorporated Pictavia into the Empire.
However, the Picts appear to have also played a more direct part in the politics of Gododdin during the early Roman period. Indeed, to the North-west of Gododdin lies a string of brochs stretching from around Dunipace to Loch Lomond, skirting the Northern edge of the Campsie Hills, and this may represent the fortified Southern frontier of Pictavia at this time. A broch is a type of heavily-built circular stone fortress not generally found outwith the Pictish heartlands of the Highlands, yet a greater number exist around ancient Lothian than we even find in the Southern Pictish territories of Fife and Grampian. Most Northern brochs are also of an earlier date than those around Lothian, and this may signify that the architectural style was specifically revived in an attempt to ward off the imminent Roman invasion. A prime example of such a broch can be seen at Tappoch near Falkirk, demonstrating a distinctly Northern, if not Orcadian character otherwise uncharacteristic of the Lothian regions. Yet other brochs exist around the perimeter of ancient Lothian itself - on the South-east near Galashiels and Duns (now in the Borders), and near Carnwath on the South-west (now in Lanarkshire). These brochs are clearly not in Pictavia, and also seem less architecturally typical than even the Tappoch broch, but significantly, they date from the same period as those on Pictavia's Southern perimeter. Perhaps they represent an attempt by the Gododdin themselves to imitate the border defences which the Picts were throwing up against the Romans. Or perhaps they represent direct Pictish technological aid to the Gododdin, recognising the value of an alliance with their Southern neighbours, and effectively using Gododdin as a buffer-zone against Rome's Northward advance. Regardless, it seems plausible that the distribution of both the Southern Pictish brochs and those around Lothian itself give us an indication of something which historians have long fought shy of - a definition of Gododdin's borders, at least for the first and second centuries of the historical era. Gododdin, of course, like its later manifestations of medieval and modern Lothian, is bounded mainly by natural topographical features - to the North, the River Forth; to the East, the North Sea; and to the South-east, the range of the Lammermuir Hills. Historians have almost without exception claimed that its full Southern border and its entire Western border are undefinable. Yet if we take account of the broch distribution for the early Roman era, we can draw an almost perfect line around Gododdin's perimeter. This line would start with the most Eastern of the Pictish brochs to the North-east - basically, with the Tappoch broch near Dunipace in Falkirk. On the South-west, the presumably non-Pictish broch at Calla near Carnwath in Lanarkshire. And on the South-east with the three known brochs at Galashiels and Duns in the Borders. Combine this with a detailed topographical survery of the lie of natural features such as hill ranges and waterways, and we would have a definition of Gododdin's extent in the first and second centuries with an almost modern cartographic precision. It is often said that ethnic and tribal groupings became more defined and stable in resistance to Roman expansion, but surely the distribution of anti-Roman border defences around Gododdin also tightened the kingdom's sense of its geography in a way which was previously not so urgently necessary.
Yet, despite the apparent alliance with the formidable Picts, and despite the construction of new border defences, the Romans did gain sporadic, yet significant footholds in the Lothian region, and the Eastern end of the Antonine Wall borders modern West Lothian, at the fort of Carriden (formerly in Linlithgowshire) on the shores of the River Forth, and the nearby fort at Kinneil (Bede's famous Peanfahel):
Kinneil Roman Fort, on the Antonine Wall in Ancient Lothian
Indeed, Gododdin loosely represented (along with the other Northern Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde in the West) the far North-western limit of the whole Roman empire. In this respect, it was of pivotal concern to the Romans. Beyond it lay the un-conquerable Picts, so admired for their resilience by Tacitus, and Gododdin itself could never be entirely trusted to reject its Pictish sympathies. It was a debatable land on the fringe of the empire, and an unstable territory which never fully subscribed to the pax Romana, and could not be entirely trusted as a client kingdom. For this reason, it lies in the indeterminate territory between the two great Roman walls, and to some extent explains the reason for the construction of two rather walls than one. If Gododdin truly was an integral part of Britannia, then Hadrian's Wall to the South would have been unnecessary, and the Antonine Wall to its North would have sufficed in keeping the barbarous Picts at bay. But Gododdin could not be trusted, and so it became a buffer zone between the two walls, between the Picts and the Romans, by turns siding with the Picts in political matters, and with the Romans in economic and even social terms. Like any border region, its allegiance was debatable, but its strategic position was crucial.
But the Romans, at least in their own minds, had already won the overall argument. At Bridgeness, on the famous distance slab near the terminus of the Antonine Wall at Carriden, they left a visual depiction of their battles against the local "barbarian" tribes, such as the Gododdin and the Picts, showing a Roman cavalryman subjugating four locals, one of whom he has decapitated - oddly, with a spear. The right-hand panel shows the suovetaurilia ritual - a Roman pagan sacrifice for the benefit of the Second Augustan Legion, including priest, aulos-player, and sacrificial pig (sus), sheep (ovis) and bull (taurus):
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The Bridgeness Slab, Antonine Wall, Bridgeness, Carriden |
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The inscription on the central panel of this distance slab (not pictured) records the herculean achievements of Roman technology over the Scottish landscape:
IMP CAES TITO AELIO
HADRI ANTONINO
AVG PIO P P LEG II
AVG PER M P IIIIDCL II
FEC
To Emperor Caesar Titus Aelius
Hadrianus Antoninus
Augustus Pius, father to the country, the 2nd Legion
of Augustus built [the wall] across 4652 paces
Yet the Roman empire, of course, could not last. The Antonine Wall was built around 142AD, but by 165AD, the Northern frontier of the empire had already withdrawn back South to Hadrian's Wall. And if the date of the Agricolan campaign in Pictavia, 84AD, can be taken at the moment of Rome's earliest and most Northern success, by 401AD, the Romans were being forced to pull their resources out of Britain to deal with a new non-Celtic barbarian threat - Visigoths were rampaging through Western Gaul and threatening Rome itself. In 410AD, the Visigoths achieved their goal and sacked the imperial capital. And by 446AD, the Romanised Celts of Southern Britain were appealing to Rome for help against a new enemy of their own - Saxon invaders, a pagan Germanic tribe arriving in ships from the Continent set on war and colonisation. But Rome was already on the brink of disaster itself, and Britannia was left to fend for itself.
The effects of these crises in Southern Britain would take some centuries to fully impact on the kingdoms of the North, and no doubt the loss of Romano-British infrastructure was not felt so keenly in a semi-Romanised region like Lothian as it was in, say Hampshire. But while the Roman withdrawal lead to a flourishing of native Celtic culture in many ways, the crises which were precipitated by Roman withdrawal could not be avoided for ever.