Julius Agricola was the man who first brought the Caledonians within the ken of distinct history. He came to Britain in 78 A.D. His first campaign was on the Welsh border, his second in the territory of some outlying Brigantian tribes along the northern shores of the Solway. These were the Selgovae, who occupied what is now the county of Dumfries, and the Novantes further to the west in the modern counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigton. To the north of these lay the great nation of the Damnonii--of the same stock as those who occupied Devonshire in the south of England. They held extensive territories in the centre of Scotland, including the counties of Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and, north of these estuaries, the counties of Dumbarton and Stirling and the districts of Menteith, Stratherne, and Forthreve, or the western half of the peninsula of Fife. They were the "novae gentes," or new nations, whose territories Agricola ravaged as far as the "Tavaus," or Tay, in his third campaign. They were somewhat civilised, having towns, of which we know the names of six--three lying south of and three north of the Firths. The chief of the southern towns was Coria--Carstairs, near Lanark, on the Clyde. North of the Forth there were Alauna, where the Allan joins the Forth; Lindum--that is Ardoch, at our own doors; and Victoria, in Fife, situated on a small lake. The lake has disappeared, but the name Lochore remains, and is otherwise famous than as a town of the Damnonii. The natural division line between the Selgovae, Novantes, and Damnonii was the hilly country which separates the waters that flow north from those that find their way into the Solway--the Ituna Aestuarium, as its name then was. Crossing this mountain barrier, Agricola struck into the valley of the Clyde, passed with his legions through Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire, then by the fords of the Forth and the Vale of the Allan into Strathearn, thence onward to the Tay. There was an alternative route. A fleet accompanied his movements. He might have crossed the Firth of Forth--the Bodotria Aestuarium--and penetrated through Fife to the Tay. But Tacitus usually mentions the crossing of estuaries, and he omits it in this case. Besides, he states that the natives on the north shore of the Forth were new to him in the fifth campaign.