Mons Graupius Identified
The Boresti
Tacitus tells us that following the battle, Agricola “withdrew” to make contact with the fleet as it was too late in the year for operations on land to be extended (a clear indication that events did not take place in the far north). During this episode Agricola took hostages from a people known as the Boresti.
Identifying the location of the Borestis’ tribal homelands holds a major clue to the location of both the preceding events and those that followed.
The name Boresti is probably another corruption, this time of the Celtic name “Horesti” or the “Horreii” and Ptolemy’s map (based on information from the Flavian period) indicates a site called (H) Orrea located in Fife.
The later Ravenna Cosmography intriguingly mentions Poreoclassis and this is generally identified as the early 3rd C AD Severan legionary fortress at Carpow on the Tay. The classis element is usually interpreted as recording the sites link with the navy.
One possibility is that the “B” was introduced by Tacitus (or indeed by later medieval copyists) in lieu of the “H” or “P” to give the impression of an extreme northern location for the battle by mimicking the classical Greek terra incognito name of “Hyperboria” – meaning literally the north wind beyond the land of the “Boreas”.
Alternatively, the other major watercourse that bounds the Fife peninsula – the Boderiae Aest (Firth of Forth) may be suggestive of contemporary phonetic influences on the name of the tribe who lived there or at the very least in the pronunciation of their name.
We suggest that a softly pronounced Celtic “ph” before either Orrea or Orrestii will have been the original Celtic rendition that the Romans heard and in whose harsher Latin pronunciation was given a different spelling when subsequently written down. Therefore either the letter “H” or “P” was adopted depending on the strength of the particular inflection used in its original spoken form and - like other names in this quest - has subsequently been transmogrified further with the substitution of the “B” prefix, most probably for poetic licence.
This would place the Boresti inland firmly within the Fife peninsula and most likely centred around the Lomond Hills.
Of the general “Fife” peninsula between the Forth and Tay it is probable that the Venicones held sway over those areas approximating with the modern Perth and Kinross holdings there.
The remaining bulk of the Fife peninsula was probably Boresti territory and likely also satellite to the Votadini whose territory – or more probably hegemony – Ptolemy shows extending into Fife. A satellite dependency to a named southern tribe – Tacitus otherwise names no tribes north of the Forth Clyde line - makes sense and marks this tribe to the north of known tribal territories but to the south of the bulk of the Caledonian confederacy.
Alternative linguistic conspiracy theories that claim there was no Boresti tribe and that the text should read that Agricola “withdrew” to the “Boreas” i.e. the far north can be dismissed as illogical and contradictory to Tacitus explicit statement that Agricola was unable to extend land operations further after the battle and that he physically took hostages from a people called Boresti.
Conclusion
It is no mere speculation therefore that the battle took place near to Fife and that Agricola’s noteworthy decision to take hostages from the Boresti follows this ostensibly allied Votadini septs failure to prevent - or perhaps report on - the northern tribes mustering on the borders of their territory.
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©2009 Roman Scotland. All Rights Reserved
First Published February 2009
