| Those high-ways which the Romans made
throughout every part of their great empire, may be ranked amongst the
chief of their works. If they were not the first who thought on these
public conveniences, they gave them more attention than any other
nation. When their state was yet in its infancy, and their territories
reached no farther than Capua, the censor Appius Claudius rendered
himself famous by forming that public road, the Appian way, which is
still to be seen in Italy. As their empire enlarged, they never
neglected to continue this branch of improvement; and extending their
roads with their conquests, they connected the most distant provinces
with the metropolis. When we cast our eye on Antonine’s Itinerary, or
Peutinger’s table, and take a view of the public ways, and bye-ways
striking off to the several towns and stations, in every province, the
face of the globe appears as re-cast anew; and we may safely affirm,
that more labour was bestowed upon these roads, than would have sufficed
to re-build and re-embellish the city of Rome, even in the days of its
greatest extent and grandeur. We must also observe, that, besides the
conveniences and advantages derived from these roads, another reason
contributed not a little to increase their number beyond what was
absolutely necessary. By employing their armies in such works, in the
time of peace, the Romans prevented, in a great degree, the bad
consequences of military inactivity; a stroke of policy to which that
people were always attentive, as they dreaded idleness in their own
troops more than they did an enemy.
In England, the remains of those works
are everywhere to be met with, there being few ancient towns in that
country which have not a Roman road in their neighborhood; and, though
we cannot expect them so frequently in Scotland, which lay without the
bounds of the provinces, yet here also they are occasionally to be seen,
and are the grandest monuments of the Roman rule which remain in the
northern parts of the island.
A Roman high-way, nothing inferior to any
within provincial Britain, runs far into Scotland. It can be traced with
certainty north to the Grampians; and even beyond them, as far as
Brechin, vestiges of it are to be observed. Leaving England at the
Solway, it passed through Annandale and Clydesdale to the neighbourhood
of Glasgow, running parallel to the Annan on to its source in the
heights of north Moffat; and then falling in with the fountain-head of
the Clyde, it seldom departed to any great distance from that river’s
banks. From the vicinity of Glasgow, it took a direction eastward,
across the isthmus, between the firths of Clyde and Forth, clinging to
the same tract where the forts of Agricola and the wall of Antoninus
stood.
In Stirlingshire, this great paved road
has the name of Camelon causeway. It enters upon that shire at Castlecay,
passing close by the southern ramparts of the fort; from thence it runs
eastward, in as straight a course as the irregularity of the ground
would admit, by Dykehouse, Seabegs, Elf-hill, and Roughcastle; and is in
several places used a as road even now. Half-a-mile east of Roughcastle,
it crosses the wall of Antoninus, in which an opening had been left for
its passage. Near the wall its appearance is but faint. Shortly,
however, it rises quite entire, and runs northward through some marshy
ground and a ploughed field, till it comes up to the ancient station of
Camelon, through the midst of which it passes, holding on to the river
Carron. Between the wall and Camelon it is now intersected both by the
canal, and the public road from Falkirk to Glasgow. From Camelon to the
river, no vestige of it is to be discerned, the fields having been in
tillage from time immemorial. Neither was any trace of the bridge where
it had crossed the Carron observed till the summer of 1773, when workmen
employed to make a reservoir at that very part of the river, dug up
several of the foundation-stones; but, whether an arch of stone had been
thrown over the Carron, or that the bridge had consisted only of wooden
beams, supported by stone pillars, is quite uncertain. After the road
had got free of the river, it appeared again upon a rising ground, a
little westward of the church of Larbert, and held on in a straight
course by Torwood-head, Plean-muir, Upper Bannockburn, Whins of Milton,
St. Ninians, and Stirling. When it had reached the latter town, where
every vestige of it is lost amidst buildings, enclosures, and cultivated
fields, it took a westerly direction to a ford called the Drip, near
Craigforth. Whether it had caught a compass round the hill on which
Stirling stands; or, passing over it, had descended the sloping path of
Ballochgeich, upon the north side of the castle, cannot now be
determined. Still there is good reason to believe that the Romans had a
station here. Sir Robert Sibbald, as one authority, has preserved an
inscription, now obliterated, which he found upon a rock opposite to the
old gate of the castle. "In Excv. Agit. Leg. II.;" of which
the reading may be, In excubias agitantes legionis secunda – "for
the daily and nightly watch of the second legion." Half-a-mile
westward of the castle, and not far from a place called Kildean, very
plain traces of this Roman road are discernible at a farm-house, which,
together with its offices and yards, is situated upon the very summit of
the surrounding lands. The peculiar form, and regular dimensions,
together with the straight course, easily distinguish it from other
causeways. Nearer to the Drip, too, its foundations have been dug up.
The ford had a firm and solid bottom, and, during the summer season,
carried little over two feet of water. There was thus no occasion here
for a bridge to transport those hardy sons of Rome, whom much more
stately rivers did not intimidate from their darling project of subduing
the world. From the Drip, the road turned northward by Keir to Dunblane,
where it again makes its appearance, holding on to Strathearn. Various
vestiges of it are noticed by the statists of the parishes through which
it seems to have run. In the moss of Kincardine, a Roman way was
discovered, 12 feet broad, and formed by trees laid across each other.
In Moss-Flanders, another was found running from south-east to
north-west. Many years ago a number of logs of wood in the form of a
raft, and squared by the axe, were also got in the same place. And
again, on the south side of the Forth, west of the spots just alluded
to, a road was discovered exactly similar in breadth and character to
that noticed at Kincardine.
As to the form of construction of this
military road, great pains must have been taken to render it firm and
durable. It consisted of several layers of stone and earth, which,
however, seem to have been thrown together just as they came to hand;
for the stones are of all dimensions. It is generally about twelve feet
in breadth, and its foundations are so deep, that, in the formation of
it the Roman labourers seem first to have dug a ditch, which they filled
up again with stones and earth, in a careless manner, till they had
raised it at least a foot above the natural surface. It always rises in
the middle, and slopes towards the edges; and, on each side, especially
where the ground is wet, there has been a small ditch or drain, to keep
the work dry. The stones of the uppermost layer were generally of so
large a size, that, unless always well covered with gravel, it must have
prevented the legions from marching either with ease or expedition. Its
direction is as straight as the nature of the ground through which it
passes would admit; and the track of it is a much shorter road from
Falkirk to Stirling, than the present winding high-way.
As the itinerary of Antoninus reaches no
farther northward than the firths of Tweed and Solway, we cannot from
thence derive any assistance to enable us to determine, whether the
different stages and distances were marked out upon the military road in
Scotland, with the same precision as in provincial Britain, and other
parts of the empire. It is, however, certain that the Romans had
measured, with much exactness, the breadth of the isthmus between the
firths of Forth and Clyde. This is evident from the situation of the
forts at regular distances, and also from inscriptions upon stones found
in sundry parts of "Graham’s Dyke," which expressly mention
the number of miles executed by the different divisions of the army
employed in that work. We may well suppose that a people, whose
attention and care descended to the minutest circumstances, did not
neglect an exact mensuration of their roads, even to their farthest
extremities.
It is a disputed point in the circle of
our antiquaries, as to who was the maker of the work under review –
Agricola, or Antoninus. Both probably had a connection practically with
the scheme. Tacitus mentions no other enterprise in which the army of
Agricola were employed during their fourth campaign, except the erection
of the praesidia across the isthmus; and as they consisted of three
legions, besides the auxiliaries, it could be no laborious task to
finish both these and the military road in the course of one summer.
In those times, and even much later, the
greater part of Stirlingshire was covered with woods, many vestiges of
which remain to this day. The Roman historians often speak of forests
which the armies of that people had to cut down, and marches which they
had to drain, or make roads through, in their marches towards Caledonia;
and, if the speech which Tacitus puts into the mouth of Galgacus, before
the battle at mount Grampian, be genuine, it appears that they employed
not only their own soldiers in this work, but compelled, with much
rigour, such of the natives as fell into their hands to labour with
them; "Corpora ipsa ac manus, silvis ac paludibus emuniendis,
verbera inter ac contumelias conterunt."
It must, however, be added that after the
wall of Antoninus was built, the military road was carried on eastward
to the firth of Forth, where the former terminated. Vestiges of it, in
fact, are still discernible in sundry places. |
