and sent an expedition up the Red Sea and so on,
but gradually the empire settled down on carefully
defined borders.
“On those frontiers the Romans then set about
building fortified linear barriers. They were designed
primarily to stop outsiders intruding upon their
territory: their space. As a result their empire
became surrounded and defended by a complex
series of frontier installations. As a contemporary
of Antoninus Pius wrote: ‘an encamped army like
a rampart encloses the civilized world in a ring’.
Another said: ‘they surround the empire with a great
circle of camps and guard so great an area of land
and sea like an estate.’
“This was the concept that the Emperor Hadrian
pushed forward in building Hadrian’s Wall from the
Solway Firth in the west, all the way to the mouth of
the River Tyne in the east. When Hadrian died in 138,
he had no obvious successor, so he chose Antoninus
Pius, a rich and elderly senator who had no military
experience. My own view is that because Antoninus
Pius was emperor in a military dictatorship, he
needed military experience as Claudius had 100 years
before. He chose to gain that experience in Britain,
so he simply ordered his generals to abandon the
existing frontier (Hadrian’s Wall) and establish a
new border by capturing more territory further to
the north. This allowed him to take the salutation
‘Imperator’ (Conqueror). It was the only time in his
23-year reign that he did this.”
It appears that Antoninus Pius ordered his legions
into action very soon after his succession. Prof. Breeze
says the crucial piece of evidence to support this is an
inscription from Corbridge, just south of Hadrian’s
Wall and on the main road north into Scotland.
“Although this was a practical action,” he said, “it was
equally important to solicit the support of the gods.
The right-hand panel on the Bridgeness distance slab,
which was found in 1868 at the eastern end of the
Antonine Wall, shows a libation being poured on to
an altar while a pig, sheep and bull await sacrifice.
The ceremony is the ritual cleansing of the legion
and its officers prior to battle.”
The left-hand panel of the Bridgeness distance
slab relates to the next event, the invasion of North
Britain. This is recorded in the Life of Antoninus
Pius: “the emperor conquered Britain through the
governor Lollius Urbicus, and, having driven back the
barbarians, built a new wall, this time of turf”. A single
Historic Scotland
scene on the Bridgeness distance slab represents this
activity: a Roman cavalryman riding down a group
of naked enemies. One man is fallen and sheltering
under his shield, with a second speared from
behind, while in the foreground is a man in a pose
of subjugation and another, apparently bound and
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