Caledonia is the Latin name given by the Romans to the land in today's Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire. Modern use is as a romantic or poetic name for Scotland as a whole.
Contents |
The original use of the name, by Tacitus, Ptolemy, Lucan and Pliny the Elder, referred to the area (or parts of the area) also known as Pictavia or Pictland north of the Antonine Wall in today's Scotland.[1] The name may be related to that of a Pictish tribe, the Caledonii, one amongst several in the area, though perhaps the dominant tribe which would explain the binomial Caledonia/Caledonii. Their name can be found in Dùn Chailleann, the Scottish Gaelic word for the town of Dunkeld meaning "fort of the Caledonii", and in that of the mountain Sìdh Chailleann or Schiehallion, the "fairy [hill] of the Caledonians". According to Historia Brittonum the site of the seventh battle of the mythical Arthur was a forest in what is now Scotland, called Coit Celidon in early Welsh. Traces of such mythology have endured until today in Midlothian: near the town centre of Edinburgh stands an old volcanic mountain called Arthur's Seat.[2]
There are other hypotheses regarding the origin of Caledonia (and Scotia). According to Moffat (2005) the name derives from caled, the P-Celtic word for "hard". This suggests the original meaning may have been "the hard (or rocky) land" although it is possible it meant "the land of the hard men".[3] Keay and Keay (1994) state that the word is "apparently pre-Celtic".[4]
The exact location of what the Romans called Caledonia in the early stages of Britannia is uncertain, and the boundaries are unlikely to have been fixed until the building of Hadrian's Wall. From then onwards Caledonia stood to the north of the wall, and to the south was Britannia, not the island but the Roman province.[5] During the brief Roman military incursions into central and northern Scotland,[6] The Scottish Lowlands were indeed absorbed into the province of Britannia, and the name was also used by the Romans, prior to their conquest of the southern and central parts of the island, to refer to the whole island of Great Britain. Once the Romans had built a second wall further to the north (the Antonine Wall) and their garrisons advanced north likewise, the developing Roman-Britons to the south of the wall had trade relations with the Picts to the north of the wall, as testified by archaeological evidence, much of it available at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The modern use of "Caledonia" in English and Scots is as a romantic or poetic name for Scotland as a whole.[4] An example is the song "Caledonia", a folk ballad written by Dougie MacLean, published in 1979 on the album of the same name and covered by various other artists since, including Amy Macdonald.[7][8]
The name has also been widely used commercially, by such organisations as British Caledonian and Caledonian MacBrayne.
Ptolemy's account also referred to the Caledonia Silva, an idea still recalled in the modern expression "Caledonian Forest", although the woods are much reduced in size since Roman times.[9]
Some scholars will argue that the name "Scotland" itself is derived from Scotia, a Latin term first used for Ireland (also called Hibernia by the Romans) and later for Scotland, the Scoti peoples having originated in Ireland and resettled in Scotland.[10] Another, post conquest, Roman name for the island of Great Britain was Albion, which is cognate with another Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland: Alba.
Haverfield, Francis J (1911). "Caledonia". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).CALEDONIA, the Roman name of North Britain, still used especially in poetry for Scotland. It occurs first in the poet Lucan (A.D. 64), and then often in Roman literature. There were (I) a district Caledonia, of which the southern border must have been on or near the isthmus between the Clyde and the Forth, (2) a Caledonian Forest (possibly in Perthshire), and (3) a tribe of Caledones or Calidones, named by the geographer Ptolemy as living within boundaries which are now unascertainable. The Romans first invaded Caledonia under Agricola (about A.D. 83). They then fortified the Forth and Clyde Isthmus with a line of forts, two of which, those at Camelon and Barhill, have been identified and excavated, penetrated into Perthshire, and fought the decisive battle of the war (according to Tacitus) on the slopes of Mons Graupius. 1 The site - quite as hotly contested among antiquaries as between Roman and Caledonian - may have been near the Roman encampment of Inchtuthill (in the policies of Delvine, io m. N. of Perth near the union of Tay and Isla), which is the most northerly of the ascertained Roman encampments in Scotland and seems to belong to the age of Agricola. Tacitus represents the result as a victory. The home government, whether averse to expensive conquests of barren hills, or afraid of a victorious general, abruptly recalled Agricola, and his northern conquests - all beyond the Tweed, if not all beyond Cheviot - were abandoned. The next advance followed more than fifty years later. About A.D. 140 the district up to the Firth of Forth was definitely annexed, and a rampart with forts along it, the Wall of Antoninus Pius, was drawn from sea to sea (see Britain: Roman; and Graham'S Dyke). At the same time the Roman forts at Ardoch, north of Dunblane, Carpow near Abernethy, and perhaps one or two more, were occupied. But the conquest was stubbornly disputed, and after several risings, the land north of Cheviot seems to have been lost about A.D. 180-185. About A.D. 208 the emperor Septimius Severus carried out an extensive punitive expedition against the northern tribes, but while it is doubtful how far he penetrated, it is certain that after his death the Roman writ never again ran north of Cheviot. Rome is said, indeed, to have recovered the whole land up to the Wall of Pius in A.D. 368 and to have established there a province, Valentia. A province with that name was certainly organized somewhere. But its site and extent is quite uncertain and its duration was exceedingly brief. Throughout, Scotland remained substantially untouched by Roman influences, and its Celtic art, though perhaps influenced by Irish, remained free from Mediterranean infusion. Even in the south of Scotland, where Rome ruled for half a century (A.D. 142-180), the occupation was military and produced no civilizing effects. Of the actual condition of the land during the period of Roman rule in Britain, we have yet to learn the details by excavation. The curious carvings and ramparts, at Burghead on the coast of Elgin, and the underground stone houses locally called "wheems," in which Roman fragments have been found, may represent the native forms of dwelling, &c., and some of the "Late Celtic" metal-work may belong to this age. But of the political divisions, the boundaries and capitals of the tribes, and the like, we know nothing. Ptolemy gives a list of tribe and place-names. But hardly one can be identified with any approach to certainty, except in the extreme south. Nor has any certainty been reached about the ethnological problems of the population, the Aryan or non-Aryan character of the Picts and the like. That the Caledonians, like the later Scots, sometimes sought their fortunes in the south, is proved by a curious tablet of about A.D. 220, found at Colchester, dedicated to an unknown equivalent of Mars, Medocius, by one "Lossio Veda, nepos [ =kin of] Vepogeni, Caledo." The name Caledonia is said to survive in 1 This, not Grampius, is the proper spelling, though Grampius was at one time commonly accepted and indeed gave rise to the modern name Grampian.
the second syllable of Dunkeld and in the mountain name Schiehallion (Sith-chaillinn).
Authorities. - Tacitus, Agricola; Hist. Augusta, Vita Sevens; Dio lxxvi.; F. Haverfield, The Antonine Wall Report (Glasgow, 1 899), pp. 1 54168; J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (ed. 3). On Burghead, see H. W. Young, Proc. of Scottish Antiq. xxv., xxvii.; J. Macdonald, Trans. Glasgow Arch. Society. The Roman remains of Scotland are described in Rob. Stuart's Caled. Roman y (Edinburgh, 1852), the volumes of the Scottish Antiq. Society, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. vii., and elsewhere. (F. J. H.)
|
<< Caledon |
Categories: C-CAL | History of Scotland and Ireland
Caledonia (genitive Caledoniae); f, first declension
| nominative | Caledonia |
|---|---|
| genitive | Caledoniae |
| dative | Caledoniae |
| accusative | Caledoniam |
| ablative | Caledoniā |
| vocative | Caledonia |
| locative | Caledoniae |
  | ''Anglia Scotia et Hibernia'' - Old map by MERCATOR -Anglia Scotia et Hibernia. |
| | "Rock and roll years: the 1970s" - Rock and roll years: the 1970s - Scotsman.com News |
| | "Caledonia" - 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Caledonia - Wikisource |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Misc
Search
