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Scotland during the Roman Empire refers to the protohistorical period during which the Roman Empire interacted with the area that is now Scotland, which was known to them as "Caledonia". Roman legions arrived around 71, having conquered the Celtic tribes of "Britain" (England and Wales) over the preceding three decades. Aiming to annex all of "Albion" (Great Britain), Romans under Q. Petillius Cerialis and Gn. Julius Agricola invaded the Caledonians in the 70s and 80s. An account by Agricola's son-in-law Tacitus mentions a Roman victory at "Mons Graupius" which became the namesake of the Grampians but has been questioned by modern scholarship. The Romans then seem to have repeated an earlier Greek circumnavigation of the island and received submission from local tribes, establishing their border of actual control first along the Gask Ridge before withdrawing to a line south of the Solway Firth. This line was fortified as Hadrian's Wall. Several Roman commanders attempted to fully conquer lands north of this line, including a brief expansion that was fortified as the Antonine Wall. Despite grandiose claims made by an 18th-century forged manuscript, however, it is now believed that the Romans at no point controlled even half of present-day Scotland and that Roman legions ceased to affect the area after around 211. The history of the period is complex and not well-documented. The province of Valentia, for instance, may have been the lands between the two Roman walls, or the territory around and south of Hadrian's Wall, or Roman Wales. Romans held most of their Caledonian territory only a little over 40 years; they probably only held any Scottish land at all for about 80 years. Some Scottish historians such as Moffat go so far as to say Rome's presence was entirely uninfluential. "Scots" and "Scotland" proper would not emerge as unified ideas until centuries later. In fact, the Roman Empire influenced every part of Scotland during the period: by the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain around 410, the various Iron Age tribes native to the area had united as or fell under the control of the Picts while the southern half of the country was overrun by tribes of Romanized Britons. The Scoti, Gaelic Irish raiders who would give Scotland its English name, had begun to settle along the west coast as well. All three groups may have been involved in the Great Conspiracy that overran Roman Britain in 367. The era also saw the emergence of the earliest historical accounts of the natives. The most enduring legacies of Rome, however, were Christianity and literacy, both of which arrived indirectly via Irish missionaries. ==The dawn of Scottish history== Scotland had been inhabited for thousands of years before the Romans arrived. However, it is only during the Greco-Roman period that Scotland is recorded in writing. The work ''On the Cosmos'' by Aristotle or Pseudo-Aristotle mentions two "very large" British Isles called Albion (Great Britain) and Ierne (Ireland). The Greek explorer and geographer Pytheas visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 and may have circumnavigated the mainland, which he describes as being triangular in shape. In his work ''On the Ocean'', he refers to the most northerly point as ''ラテン語:Orcas'' (Orkney).〔Breeze, David J. "The ancient geography of Scotland" in Smith and Banks (2002) pp. 11–13.〕 The earliest written record of a formal connection between Rome and Scotland is the attendance of the "King of Orkney" who was one of 11 British kings who submitted to the Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 following the invasion of southern Britain three months earlier.〔Moffat (2005) p. 173-4.〕〔Thomson (2008) pp. 4–5 suggests that there may have been an element of Roman "boasting" involved, given that it was known to them that the ''Orcades'' lay at the northern extremity of the British Isles.〕 The long distances and short period of time involved strongly suggest a prior connection between Rome and Orkney, although no evidence of this has been found and the contrast with later Caledonian resistance is striking.〔Moffat (2005) p. 174-6.〕 Originals of ''On the Ocean'' do not survive, but copies are known to have existed in the 1st century so at the least a rudimentary knowledge of the geography of north Britain would have been available to Roman military intelligence.〔Moffat (2005) p. 230.〕〔Breeze, David J. "The ancient geography of Scotland" in Smith and Banks (2002) p. 11.〕 Pomponius Mela, the Roman geographer, recorded in his ''De Chorographia'', written around 43, that there were 30 Orkney islands and seven ''Haemodae'' (possibly Shetland).〔Breeze, David J. "The ancient geography of Scotland" in Smith and Banks (2002) p. 12.〕 There is certainly evidence of an Orcadian connection with Rome prior to 60 from pottery found at the broch of Gurness.〔Moffat (2005) pp. 173–4.〕 By the time of Pliny the Elder ( 79), Roman knowledge of the geography of Scotland had extended to the ''Hebudes'' (The Hebrides), ''Dumna'' (probably the Outer Hebrides), the Caledonian Forest, and the Caledonians.〔 Ptolemy, possibly drawing on earlier sources of information as well as more contemporary accounts from the Agricolan invasion, identified 18 tribes in Scotland in his ''Geography'', but many of the names are obscure. His information becomes much less reliable in the north and west, suggesting early Roman knowledge of these area was confined to observations from the sea.〔〔Moffat (2005) pp. 236–37.〕 Famously, his coördinates place most of Scotland north of Hadrian's Wall bent at a right angle, stretching due eastward from the rest of Britain. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Scotland during the Roman Empire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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