Note 79 — Chapter II · THE ROMAN PROVINCE IN SCOTLAND.

The account of the campaigns of Severus, and of the state of the hostile nations at the time, is given at length in the two independent narratives of Dio (as abridged by Xiphiline) and Herodian, and therefore rests upon peculiarly firm ground. A great deal too much has been made of the Mæatæ by previous historians. It has been stated, as if it were a name in general use and applied to the tribes between the walls during the whole period of the Roman occupation of Britain; but the fact is that the Mæatæ are mentioned by Dio alone, and on this occasion only. We never hear of them before or after. Innes and Chalmers talk of the Mæatæ or Midland Britons (that fatal or of historians implying an identity assumed but not proved), as if there were some analogy between the names. There is none. The term Midland Britons nowhere occurs, and the root of the name Mæatæ is probably the word for a plain, nearly the same in Welsh and Gaelic—Maes, Magh. That both nations were in Caledonia is plain, independently of the position that the wall alluded to by Dio is the wall between the Forth and the Clyde, for Dio styles them both ‘the inhabitants of that part of Britain which is hostile to us,’ that is, extra-provincial. Moreover, Dio’s expression ‘advanced into Caledonia,’ is the equivalent of Herodian’s, ‘he passed beyond the rivers and fortresses that defended the Roman territory.’ That Severus constructed roads and built bridges is emphatically stated by both Dio and Herodian, and it is to him alone that the classical historians attribute such works in Britain.