Mons Graupius Identified
The Agricola Chapter 30 - 32
Key aspects;
Chapter 30, 31 and 32 covers the speech Calgacus – a “man of outstanding valour and nobility” - delivered to the tribal army.
As mentioned before, this speech is almost definitely entirely fictitious, and while stirring it is clearly a piece of Tacitean invention and indeed a literary device that would not be amiss in a modern “page-turner” novel.
Unfortunately, Calgacus (meaning “Swordsman”) is also almost definitely an invention too, created as both a literary and as an individual counterpoint to Agricola. His speech was seen as the necessary prelude to Agricola’s own “rousing” pre battle speech in the next chapter as was required by the literary convention of the time.
Formal negotiations which we discussed above, would - had they in fact gone ahead - have given Agricola an insight into exactly who he was dealing with in charge of the council of tribal elders that controlled the Caledonian army.
Without this knowledge Tacitus is forced to invent the character Calgacus. His part duly played in Tacitus’s little piece of theatre, he promptly exits stage left and we hear no more of him, hardly the outcome we would expect of the leader of the Caledonian army following their defeat.
These chapters also contain the memorable and most misquoted phrase from Tacitus’s Agricola; “beyond us nothing is there but waves and rocks ”.
However, the actual text runs; “……..but there are no more nations beyond us, nothing is there but waves and rocks”.
This is exceptionally telling, it is a description of the political circumstances – according to Tacitus’s Roman view - prevailing beyond the landmass of Scotland, i.e. no more identifiable tribes and lands to conquer.
However generations of champions for contending sites in the far north of Scotland speciously truncate the phrase, and hence the original meaning, to give the incorrect implication that the site of battle was so far north as to have nothing (geographically) worth mentioning beyond it other than waves and rocks.
NEXT PAGE: The Agricola Chapter 33 - 34
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First Published February 2009
