The Roman Wall: A historical, topographical, and descriptive account of the barrier of the lower isthmus, extending from the Tyne to the Solway, deduced from numerous personal surveysBruce, J. Collingwood (John Collingwood)
History
The Roman Wall: A historical, topographical, and descriptive account of the barrier of the lower isthmus, extending from the Tyne to the Solway, deduced from numerous personal surveys
Bruce, J. Collingwood (John Collingwood)
Great Britain -- Antiquities, Roman; Walls, Roman -- Great Britain
The fosse of the Wall and Vallum at this point deserve attentive
examination. In passing over the crown of the hill, they have been
excavated with enormous labour out of the basalt of which the summit
consists. The workmen, as if exhausted with the task of raising the
splintered fragments, have left them lying on the sides of the moats. A
mass on the outside of the north ditch, though now split by the action
of the frost into three pieces, has evidently formed one block, and
cannot weigh less than thirteen tons. It is not easy to conceive how
they managed to quarry so tough a rock without the aid of gunpowder, or
contrived to lift, with the machinery at their command, such huge
blocks. No luis-holes appear in them.
The lithograph presents a view of the giant works of the Vallum and
fosse at this point. It is quite evident that here, at least, the north
agger did not form the Military Way. There are several breaks and
irregularities in both the mounds; the works have probably been left by
the Romans in a rough, unfinished state.
Between this spot and the craggy summit on which Sewingshields
farm-house is perched, the ground is flat, and destitute of any decided
descent to the north. On this account, and for mutual defence, the lines
of the Barrier keep close together, so close, sometimes, as scarcely to
leave room for the passage of the Military Way between them.
[Sidenote: PROCOLITIA.]
PROCOLITIA is the seventh stationary camp on the line of the Wall. It
was garrisoned by the first Batavian cohort, which, with two others from
the same country, and the two Tungrian cohorts, was with Agricola in his
great battle with Galgacus in the Grampian Hills. That the ruined camp
at Carrawburgh was the adopted home of this cohort, is proved by the
altar engraved on page 62, and by [Illustration: Slab—Coh. I. Batavorum]
the fractured slab now introduced,[94] and which was found here in the
year 1838. On this mutilated stone, the words COH I BATAVORVM are quite
distinct, and are of themselves sufficient, not only to fix the site of
the ancient PROCOLITIA, but to corroborate the testimony of Tacitus, on
the presence of Batavians in Britain during the period of Roman
occupation. The line following may probably be read INST[ANT]E BVRRIO,
and bears the name of the prefect under whose superintendence the
building was erected, to which the slab referred. In the last line, the
word CO[RNELIANO may be perceived. In 237, when Maximinus was emperor,
Titius Perpetuus and Rusticus Cornelianus were consuls. That this is the
date of the inscription is rendered likely from a fragment of this
emperor’s name appearing in the beginning of it.
Whitaker gives, as the meaning of the word PROCOLITIA, the ‘fortress in
the woodlands.’ In the Gaelic tongue, _coille_ signifies a wood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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