DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22272#0053
IV.—Modern Structural Accounts of the Wall of
Antonine.
Between a cespiticious rampart, built like a wall, with sods, and
a rampart made of promiscuous heaped-up earth from the trench,
there was therefore the clearest possible distinction, and the
former alone could have been called cespiticious. The dis-
tinction is important, though it has been overlooked. The best
modern authorities on the Wall of Antonine, with one accord,
confuse the two things, and the fact has influenced their
observations, leading them into misconception in matters of
consequence.
At this stage, it may be well to refer shortly to what authors
of account have written in relatively modern times on the
structural characteristics of the vallum and its attendant fosse.
George Buchanan, though scarcely a recent author, may head the
list—which, be it said, is in no sense to be regarded as even
tentatively of the nature of a bibliography. Buchanan1 dwelt at
some length, and with some perfervidness on the wall's history,
but so far as his own observation was concerned he had little
more than a couple of sentences to bestow. There were, he said,
many vestiges of it left.
The plan drawn some fifty years later by Timothy Pont,2
1 Buchanan thought that the vallum in North England was made by Hadrian,
that it was rebuilt by Lollius Urbicus, that Severus made the vallum in Scotland,
and (History, iv. 37) that it was not a vallum but a mums. See his History,
lib. i., cap. 22 ; iii. 5-11 ; iv. 30, 31, 37.
2 Pont's description of the wall is brief enough to quote in full. " The trace of
this fortification beginneth betwiux Abireorn and the Quoens ferry, besyd the
rampier and the ditche, with the rownds stoff, all along it had many squar forti-
fications in form of a Roman camp, it went west from Abireorn towards Kinneil,
then to Inner-ewin at Langtoun a myl be-east Falkirk a fort, at ye rountree-
burnehead a fort, at wester Cowdon above Helin's Chapell one, at the Crovhill
Antonine.
Between a cespiticious rampart, built like a wall, with sods, and
a rampart made of promiscuous heaped-up earth from the trench,
there was therefore the clearest possible distinction, and the
former alone could have been called cespiticious. The dis-
tinction is important, though it has been overlooked. The best
modern authorities on the Wall of Antonine, with one accord,
confuse the two things, and the fact has influenced their
observations, leading them into misconception in matters of
consequence.
At this stage, it may be well to refer shortly to what authors
of account have written in relatively modern times on the
structural characteristics of the vallum and its attendant fosse.
George Buchanan, though scarcely a recent author, may head the
list—which, be it said, is in no sense to be regarded as even
tentatively of the nature of a bibliography. Buchanan1 dwelt at
some length, and with some perfervidness on the wall's history,
but so far as his own observation was concerned he had little
more than a couple of sentences to bestow. There were, he said,
many vestiges of it left.
The plan drawn some fifty years later by Timothy Pont,2
1 Buchanan thought that the vallum in North England was made by Hadrian,
that it was rebuilt by Lollius Urbicus, that Severus made the vallum in Scotland,
and (History, iv. 37) that it was not a vallum but a mums. See his History,
lib. i., cap. 22 ; iii. 5-11 ; iv. 30, 31, 37.
2 Pont's description of the wall is brief enough to quote in full. " The trace of
this fortification beginneth betwiux Abireorn and the Quoens ferry, besyd the
rampier and the ditche, with the rownds stoff, all along it had many squar forti-
fications in form of a Roman camp, it went west from Abireorn towards Kinneil,
then to Inner-ewin at Langtoun a myl be-east Falkirk a fort, at ye rountree-
burnehead a fort, at wester Cowdon above Helin's Chapell one, at the Crovhill