In the 6th year of his government, he set out on the eastern coast of Caledonia with an army, and a fleet so near it as to attend and support all its motions. He was opposed by an army of the Caledonians, who, in a night attack upon a portion of his army, threw it into confusion, and having entered the camp of the 9th legion, would have put them to the slaughter, if Agricola had not come up with great celerity to their aid, and driven the Caledonians to their woods and morasses.
Agricola retired, after this action, into winter quar ters, and left the Caledonians a short time to prepare for the last struggle, in defence of their independence. When he took the field the seventh time, he found our ancestors encamped on the skirts of the Grampian hill to the number of 30,000, under a warlike leader, Galga ens. The Roman army was little inferior in Tacitus has employed an eloquence and minuteness in describing this engagement, which would suit a more equal contest. So interior were the armour and disci pline of the Caledonians, that 10,000 of them were slaughtered, while the Romans lost only 340 men. Their missile weapons were, in fact, their only means of of fence ; their long broad swords being unfit for close ac tion, and their bodies defended by only small targets. After the rout of their main body, a reserve of the Cale donians attempted to take the Romans in flank, but a Ro man body, under Agricola in person, foiled this attempt, and the straggling bands of their whole army fled so fast and so far from the scene of action, that next day Agri cola's scouts could not discover an enemy or inhabitant over the whole face of the country. A mournful silence reigned in every direction ; and nothing was to be seen but the burning of houses, to which the natives them selves had set fire in despair. Agricola proceeded no farther northward, but marched into the country now called Angus, and received hostages from the Horesti. He gave orders to his fleet to sail along the eastern coast to the very northern extremity of Caledonia, and turning its extreme peninsula, to come round westward the whole course of the island, into the harbour from which they had sailed in the spring. His orders were performed, and even the perilous Orcades were sub dued. After seven years service in Britain, of unexam pled utility to his country, Agricola was recalled. In
estimating his character, we are not to found his merit solely on the victories he obtained over naked barbarians. The ascendant which he gave to the Romans over the British mind, was obtained by means more creditable than the sword. He made the provincial Britons emu lous of arts and improvements ; and, acquainted with the comforts of civilized life, taught the youth of their nobility the language and the sciences of Rome, encou raged ornamental as well as useful public works, the splendid temple as well as the powerful garrison. Thus converting the whole national energy from warlike to peaceable objects, he was all the benefactor to Britain that a conqueror could be. But unhappily a people, who are helped forward to civilization, not by their own strength but by that of others, cannot reap from it its most ennobling effects. Hence, in place of their barbar ous energies, was substituted that pliant spirit, which made them cling in supplication round the knees of Rome for protection, when she herself was falling.
From the entire conquest of Britain to the close of the third century, the island is seldom noticed by Roman historians. It was indeed visited by the emperor Adrian in the year 121, who, either from choice or necessity, abandoned the northern extremity of the province, and built a new rampart, from the Solway to the Tyne, many miles to the Southward of that raised by Agricola. In 210, the Emperor Severus found it necessary to come to Britain, and repel the incursions of the Caledonii and the Meatx. He succeeded; and, having cleared the frontier, erected a stone wall, almost parallel with that of Adrian, on a system so permanent, that the founda tions are to this day to be seen; abandoning Agricola's rampart, which had been repaired by order of the Em peror Antoninus Pius. Severus died at York in the year 211, leaving his sons, Geta and Caracalla, joint succes sors in the empire. Caracalla concluding a peace with the Caledonians, hastened with his brother to Rome, to 91unge into all the debaucheries of his capital; and, for more than seventy years from the time of his departure, the silence of historians may leave us room to hope that there was peace in the island.