Caledonii

Origins

The Caledonii were a people of the central and northern Highlands, named by Ptolemy and others; Roman writers used Caledonia for northern Britain as a whole. They first appear in history when the governor Agricola marched north, and Tacitus says a host of Caledonian peoples gathered under Calgacus to meet him at Mons Graupius in 83 or 84.

Rule and society

Romans describe them as a warrior society of clans and chiefs, without towns or coinage, living by herding and farming in a landscape of roundhouses, crannogs and brochs further north. Cassius Dio later portrays the Caledonians and Maeatae as the two main groupings beyond the walls, and tells of the Caledonian Argentocoxus, whose wife bantered with the empress Julia Domna.

Decline and legacy

Defeated at Mons Graupius but never conquered, the Caledonians bought peace or raided as Roman power allowed. Septimius Severus campaigned against them from 208 to 211, and after his death Rome withdrew. By the late 3rd century Roman writers spoke instead of the Picts, whose Kingdom of the Picts absorbed the Caledonian peoples.