ANTONINUS, WALL OF. This was an entrenchment raised by the Romans across the north of Britain under the direction of Lollius Urbicus, legate of Antoninus Pius, about A.D. 140, and is supposed to have con nected a line of forts erected by Agricola, A.D. 80. Julius Capitolinus, the only ancient writer who mentions this rampart, calls it a turf wall (mums cespititius). Tho work was composed of a ditch, a rampart with its parapet, made of materials taken from the ditch, and a military way running along the whole line of the en trenchment at the distance of a few yards on the south side. It extended from Dunglass Castle on the Clyde to the heights above Caer Ridden Kirk, a little beyond the river Avon on the Frith of Forth, or probably to Blackness Castle two miles farther on, though it cannot now be traced so far. In its course are nine teen forts, the eighteen distances between which amount to 63,980 yards, or 30 English miles, and the mean distance from station to station is 3554 yards, or rather more than two English miles. In the position of the forts,
the Romans chose a high and commanding situation from whence the country could be discovered to a considerable distance, con triving, as far as circumstances would permit, that a river, morass, or some difficult ground should form an obstruction to any approach from the front. Forts were also placed upon the passages of those rivers which crossed the general chain of communication. From in scriptions discovered in Scotland, it appears that the entrenchment was made by the second legion, by vexillations of the sixth and the twentieth legion, and the first cohort of the Tungri. A very considerable portion of the entrenchment may still be traced. The mo dern name is Grimes Dyke.