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The Fifth Year of Agricola's Campaigns*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Nicholas Reed
Nicholas Reed
Affiliation:
Balderstone Upper School, Rochdale, Lancashire
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Extract

Up to one hundred years ago no difficulty was felt in the translation of this passage: thus Church and Brodribb translated the first part of it as: ‘In the fifth year of the war Agricola, himself in the leading ship, crossed the Clota, and subdued in a series of victories tribes hitherto unknown.’ But in their edition of the following year they found some difficulty in nave prima, and in this were followed by Furneaux; both editions still found no difficulty in supposing the Clyde to be the object of transgressus. Anderson, however, regarded nave prima as definitely corrupt, since he could find only one parallel (Livy 21,5,5) for the position of prima. He admitted that the point of crossing would, in the context, most obviously be taken as the Forth-Clyde Isthmus, but said, ‘It is much more likely that the starting-point was not the Isthmus at all, but either headquarters at Chester, or some point on the Chester-Carlisle line.’ Then, apparently assuming that the object of transgressus was concealed in the ‘corruption’, he suggested that the phrase was explained more fully in the following reference to operations opposite Ireland. Bury agreed with Anderson about the probable position of headquarters, but went further, in denying that ‘the Isthmus’ can be supplied from the context, appealing to ‘the method of Tacitus's narrative’.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 2 , November 1971 , pp. 143 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Nicholas Reed 1971. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to Professor S. S. Frere, Dr. R. M. Ogilvie and Mr. A. L. F. Rivet for their advice, and for their criticisms of an earlier draft of this article. This does not imply that they now agree with my conclusions.

References

1 The Agricola and Germany of Tacitus (1868), p. 21.

2 The Agricola of Tacitus (1898), p. 131.

3 In his revision of Furneaux's edition (1922), pp. lvii and 109.

4 JRS xii (1922), 57–59.Google Scholar

5 Bury, op. cit. p. 57.

6 De Vita Agricolae ed. R. M. Ogilvie and Sir Ian Richmond (1967), p. 235 hereafter referred to as Ogilvie or O.

7 C.Q.7 (1957), 118 ff.

8 For references, cf. Lacey, op. cit. p. 121. In any case, if there were a lacuna, we would seem to need «Itunam aestuarium».

9 JRS lix (1969) p. 267.Google Scholar

10 And since the ‘ambiguity’ lies in the remote possibility of prima being an adverb, not a noun, the transitiveness or otherwise of transgressus would seem irrelevant.

11 C.R. 18 (1968) p. 316 and Tacitus ed. Dorey (1969) p. 59.

12 For Demetrius, cf. O., 32 ff., and see now O.'s revision of the Loeb translation of the Agricola: Loeb Tacitus Vol. i (1970) p 98, n. 1. Other expeditions are referred to in Dio lxvi, 20.Google Scholar

13 Anderson, op. cit. (note 3) p. lvii n. 5.

14 Cf. e.g. JRS xxxiv (1944), 39 and Roman Britain (1955), 52.Google Scholar

15 Britannia (1967), 108.

16 One could not say that Agricola simply by-passed these tribes in the way that he seems previously to have by-passed the Lakes and East Yorkshire. This is no case of a swift-moving campaign going north, but a whole year of consolidation behind the Isthmus: he must have protected his western flank in some way.

17 There is, of course, no archaeological evidence from there, but that is inconclusive.

18 And we can find an explanation of Tacitus's words—implying it to be the only part of Britain which faces Ireland—if his view of the shape of Britain coincided with Ptolemy's in regarding the Epidium promontorium (Kintyre) as facing north, well away from Ireland.

19 pace Anderson, op. cit. p. lviii and Miller, , JRS xxxviii (1948), 17.Google Scholar

20 The new site by the Lake of Menteith (cf. JRS lix (1969), 109–10) is of course integral to the campaign on the east, blocking one of the exits from the Highlands.Google Scholar

21 Tacitus, p. 52.

22 op. cit. (note 2) p. 46 n. 3.

23 O. wishes to read exissent, and since this corruption is not accounted for by damage to the ends of lines, he explains it by ‘the appearance of bantur mox in the corresponding position of the line-but-one above’—but this would only account for a reverse corruption from issent to exissent.

24 More remarkable than these gentes are the novae gentes which Agricola met on his return from Mons Graupius: why novae (c. 38, 3)? A possible answer is that on the advance he went almost directly via Raedykes and Glenmailen to the Pass of Grange, but after winning the battle, he deducit his army towards the sea, and then returned sticking more closely to the coast of north-east Aberdeenshire.

25 I presume that Wellesley has in mind trie weather conditions in the area, so this point is irrelevant to e.g. any supposed naval campaign by Vespasian on the south-west coast of England during the early years of the Conquest.

26 In which case there is absolutely no literary evidence that ‘Richborough was the base of the Classis Britannica at this period’ (O. p. 282).

27 Hermes 16 (1881), 545.Google Scholar

28 Archaeologia 93 (1949), 47.Google Scholar

29 The complete list, nos. 201–227, runs as follows: Lano, Maulion, Demerosessa, Cindocellum, Cerma, Veromo, Matovion, Ugrulentum, Ravatonium, Iberran, Pinnatis, Tuessis, Lodone, Litinomago, Devoni, Memanturum, Decha, Bograndium, Ugueste, Leviodanum, Poreo classis, Levioxava, Cermium, Victorie, Marcotaxon, Tagea, Voran.

30 Where we can check them, Ravennas' lists of places on or near other parts of the coast seem to be in the correct geographical order, so we might expect the same thing here a priori.

31 In Tacitus, ed. Dorey, p. 59.