Classical Caledonia

Classical Caledonia explores eighteenth-century attitudes towards Scotland’s ancient history and heritage, looking in particular at how Roman Scotland was interpreted at this time. It discusses the research of early modern antiquarians and historians both north and south of the border and looks at how Scotland’s ancient past was often misinterpreted and manipulated in attempts to create a new national identity for a country undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The book uncovers the political, patriotic and intellectual influences which fuelled the heated eighteenth-century debates surrounding the success or failure of the Roman conquests of Scotland, a place sometimes referred to in ancient sources as ‘Caledonia’, and the disagreements regarding the impact of Roman invasion on the evolution of the modern nation. Analysing the period’s historiography, antiquarianism, political propaganda and literature, Classical Caledonia investigates the widespread interest in Scotland’s Roman past during the eighteenth century and reveals the influence of folklore, myth and tradition on the accounts of Scotland’s ancient tribes and their supposed resistance to conquest by the Roman Empire. It also examines the fading interest in the subject of Roman Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and associated notions of the nation’s origins overtook the desire to establish a classical heritage in the region north of Hadrian’s Wall.