Pictish Mystic · Lore · Picts

The Caledonii and the Maeatae: Severus's War in the North, AD 208–211

The Caledonii and the Maeatae: Severus's War in the North, AD 208–211

In AD 208 the emperor Septimius Severus, old and so crippled in his joints that he was carried in a litter, came to Britain with his two sons and a great army. His enemies were two peoples beyond the frontier: the Caledonii and the Maeatae. Three years later the emperor was dead at York, his conquests were handed back, and the peoples he had tried to destroy would, within a century, be called by a new Roman name: Picti. This is part 13 of our Picts series. As always, history, legend and scholarly debate are kept apart, and the sources are named.

History (Two Peoples Beyond the Wall)

Ptolemy's Geography, written about AD 140 to 150, already places the Kaledonioi (Caledonii) across the Highlands, between the Lemannonian Gulf and the Varar estuary, with the "Caledonian forest" beyond them. The Maeatae appear only later. Writing in the early third century, the Roman senator Cassius Dio says: "There are two principal races of the Britons, the Caledonians and the Maeatae, and the names of the others have been merged in these two. The Maeatae live next to the cross-wall which cuts the island in half, and the Caledonians are beyond them."

That merging of names matters. The many tribes Ptolemy listed seem to have drawn together into two larger groupings, a step on the road towards the later Pictish kingdoms.

The Maeatae have left their name on the land. Dumyat, the hill above Stirling at the west end of the Ochils, is in Gaelic Dùn Mhèad, "the fort of the Maeatae". Its hillfort has been excavated by Murray Cook and Gordon Noble. Myot Hill near Fankerton, a few miles south, may mark their southern edge, as F. T. Wainwright and J. C. Mann suggested. Four centuries later Adomnán's Life of Columba records a battle fought by Áedán mac Gabráin against the Miathi, the same people under an Irish spelling.

History (Before the Storm)

Trouble began well before Severus. Dio records a war under Commodus in the 180s, when the governor Ulpius Marcellus fought tribes who had crossed the wall. Around 197 the Caledonians broke their promises and prepared to help the Maeatae, and the governor Virius Lupus "was compelled to purchase peace for the Maeatians at a high figure, and recovered some few captives".

Archaeology fits the picture of Roman silver flowing north. At Birnie in Moray, Fraser Hunter of National Museums Scotland excavated two hoards of Roman denarii running from Nero down to Severus, buried in a native settlement. He reads them as payments or gifts to powerful northern leaders.

History (Dio and Herodian Describe the Northern Peoples)

Our two Greek writers give the only description of these peoples from their own time, and both wrote as outsiders. Dio says they lived in "wild and waterless mountains and desolate and swampy plains", without walls, towns or tilled fields, living on their flocks, game and fruits, and would not eat fish. Their government was "democratic for the most part", and they chose their boldest men as leaders. They fought from chariots with small, swift horses, carried a shield and a short spear with "a bronze apple" on the butt that they shook to terrify the enemy, and daggers. They could stay in the marshes for days "with only their heads above water".

Herodian adds that they went naked from the waist, wore "ornaments of iron at their waists and throats", valuing iron as other peoples valued gold, and marked their bodies "with colored designs and drawings of all kinds of animals". They carried a narrow shield, a spear and a sword on a belt, with no breastplate or helmet.

One detail can be tested. Dio's "bronze apple" matches the knobbed "doorknob" spear-butts found in Scotland and Ireland. Moulds for them from Loch na Beirgh on Lewis have been radiocarbon dated to the fourth century.

History (The Campaigns, 208–211)

Herodian says the governor of Britain reported the barbarians in revolt. Severus came in 208 with Caracalla and Geta, carried in a litter. He refused the Britons' peace envoys. Geta was left to govern the province while Severus and Caracalla marched north.

Dio describes a war of engineering rather than battle: the army cut down forests, levelled heights, filled in swamps and bridged rivers. Severus "fought no battle", because the enemy set sheep and cattle in front of the Romans as bait and wore them down in ambushes. Dio claims that Roman soldiers too exhausted to go on were killed by their own comrades to save them from capture, "so that nearly as many as fifty thousand died", a figure most historians treat as exaggerated. Severus went almost to the far end of the island, where he noted how short the summer nights were.

The ground still holds the traces. J. K. St Joseph identified two series of huge marching camps: one of about 25 hectares leading towards the Tay, and one of about 54 hectares running up Strathearn and Strathmore as far as Kair House in the Mearns. At Ardoch the camps of different seasons overlap. At Carpow, where the Earn meets the Tay near Abernethy, the legions built an eleven-hectare fortress. Tiles there are stamped by the Sixth Legion with the title Britannica, "British", an honour won in these campaigns. Coins of 209 show a bridge, perhaps the crossing of the Tay. Further south, the old fort at Cramond on the Forth was reoccupied.

Dio says Severus forced the Britons to come to terms, on condition that they gave up a large part of their territory. He also tells a darker story: as father and son rode out to meet the Caledonians, to receive their arms and discuss a truce, Caracalla drew his sword behind his father's back. Dio gives no exact dates here; modern historians usually place these terms in 209 or 210, and the new revolt in 210.

History (The Revolt and the End)

The peace did not last. Dio says the Maeatae rose again and the Caledonians joined them. Severus ordered his soldiers to invade the rebels' country and kill whoever they met, quoting lines adapted from Homer's Iliad: "whatso is found in the womb of the mother, child unborn though it be, let it not escape utter destruction". While he was preparing to lead the war in person, his illness carried him off at York (Eboracum) on 4 February 211. His last words to his sons, Dio says, were: "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, scorn everybody else."

Caracalla wanted to secure power in Rome. Dio says he made terms with the enemy, withdrew from their territory and abandoned the forts. Herodian says he signed a treaty with the barbarians, accepted their pledges and left "this alien land". Within a few years Carpow was empty. Rome never again tried to conquer the far north.

Legend (Stories Told About the War)

Debate (Which Wall, and Who Were They?)

Pretani and Cruithin

Dio and Herodian simply call these peoples "Britons", in Greek Brettanoi. That word grew from the older Greek name Pretanoi, the Pretani, used for the people of the islands since the voyage of Pytheas. In Gaelic the same old name became Cruithni, used for the Picts and for the Cruthin of Ulster. The Caledonii and Maeatae who held out against Severus were among the oldest people of these lands, and the thread of their name runs on across the North Channel.

Sources

History, legend and scholarly debate are marked separately in the headings above.

First shared on X @dalriada36963.

Read in the Pictish Mystic app · Draw a free Pictish rune reading

‹ Previous · Next ›

Built by Apex Website Builders