It was not consistent with the policy by which Caracalla was
actuated, to continue a war with the Caledonians; for the scene of
his ambition lay in Rome, to which he made hasty preparations to
depart on the death of his father. He therefore entered into a treaty
with the Caledonians by which he gave up the territories surrendered
by them to his father, and abandoned the forts erected by him in
their fastnesses. The whole country north of the wall of Antonine
appears in fact to have been given up to the undisputed possession
of the Caledonians, and we hear of no more incursions by them till
the reign of the emperor Constantius Chlorus, who came to Britain in
the year 306, to repel the Caledonians and other Picts.[17] Their
incursions were repelled by the Roman legions under Constantius, and
they remained quiet till about the year 345, when they again entered
the territories of the provincial Britons; but they were compelled,
it is said, again to retreat by Constans, son of Constantine the
Great.
Although these successive inroads had been always repelled by
the superior power and discipline of the Romans, the Caledonians
of the fourth century no longer regarded them in the formidable
light in which they had been viewed by their ancestors, and their
genius for war improving every time they came in hostile contact
with their enemies, they meditated the design of expelling the
intruders altogether from the soil of North Britain. The wars which
the Romans had to sustain against the Persians in the East, and
against the Germans on the frontiers of Gaul, favoured the plan of
the Caledonians; and having formed a treaty with the _Scots_, whose
name is mentioned for the first time in history in this connection
by Ammianus Marcellinus, they, in conjunction with their new allies,
about the year 360 invaded the Roman territories and committed many
depredations. Julian, who commanded the Roman army on the Rhine,
despatched Lupicinus, an able military commander, to defend the
province against the Scots and Picts, but he was recalled before he
had done much to repel them.
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