Posted on 07/10/2005 12:04:17 AM PDT by nickcarraway
And Napoleon, who avoided this policy in the Middle East, got his butt kicked there. He eventually abandoded his army there and fled back to France.
***Yeah, the "Scots" -- name invading Romans to Britain called the people to the north and west -- were "fierce" to the Romans and so they stopped their occupation at a Southern-to-Mid point in England. **
What was it Edward Gibbon said about Scotland? Something about being a wasteland of moors and wind and not worth loosing a Roman soldier to conquer. (Sarcasm off)
"This definitely sounds like a reparations opportunity to me."
I am suffering greatly. But lots and lots of $$$$moola$$$$ will ease my pain.
Of course the Roman advance stopped at the line across Britain where they constructed two walls, the most famous of which is Hadrian's.
Apparently, the goal of defeating the Scots and controlling all of the island wasn't worth the losses in men and treasure.
That left the Scots as one of the few European groups that were never subjugated by the Romans.
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[Ireland] did not offer potential taxes or anything else worth the effort... Actually, the same was probably true of Germania.I'm sure the conquest of Britain showed how much work would be involved. Agricola's campaign conquered what is now the Scottish lowlands, but didn't offer much in the way of potential, particularly for growing grapes (a major industry). And the German frontier was restive for centuries, making it difficult and dangerous (particularly after Augustus reduced the size of the regular army by half -- not counting the Praetorian) to draw down troops and shift legions for a major campaign.
I do recall reading someplace of some Roman commander actually doing the math of what conquest of Scotland would have taken, and doing the math of what that part already taken had yielded in terms of treasure, taxes, and slaves...and concluded that building roads and forts and chasing down every last naked blue man into the hills of Scotland was never going to pay for itself no matter how long the Romans stayed, because effective conquest would mean depopulation (and deserts pay no taxes), and no Roman in his right mind would have ever gone and settled there.
I think that the Antonine Wall is actually built at the narrowest neck of the island, which made the most sense militarily, but it made no strategic sense because behind it were lots of restless Pict savages who had to be constantly policed, and who didn't render a damned thing to Caesar because they had nothing but hair and haggis.
Hadrian's Wall is built across a wider neck, but has the virtue of having settled Britannia behind it, without walling the "Apache" in on the INSIDE of your fort-line.
I don't really think that conquering and civilizing Germania would have ultimately done the trick anyway. The place would have been like Dacia: exposed, taxed more heavily than its meager economy could bear, and with even more howling barbarians further on. The Germans, at least the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, were mostly Christianized before they broke loose within the Empire. Imagine the border pushed to the Elbe, or even the Oder. What difference? So the Vikings sack Rome instead of the Ostrogoths. You end up in the same place. Maybe.
More likely, the Scyths and Norse raid Germania and tear it to shreds, the Romans eventually retreat, and Germania just ends up being a bigger Illyria.
But the Western Empire might have lasted longer.
Actually, I should have mentioned something else, which may be closer to the REAL reason only a bare handful of Caesars ever could have risked a Germanian, Pictish or Hibernian campaign.
Rome's legions would have won, but to take any of those places would have required concentrating a truly massive army. 8 to 10 legions to completely conquer Pictum or Hibernia. Perhaps 15 to conquer Germania. And once the intial conquest was complete, unlike in the East, large concentrations of legions would have had to STAY there for a LONG time.
Now, here's the problem. It's not economic. It's that any large concentration of a large percentage of the Roman Army in any one place for any period of time offered a temptation...to the commander of that Army. Some Caesars didn't have to worry about this (Augustus, Vespasian and Titus, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Justinian, Constantine...perhaps Tiberias or even Caligula, had he not been mad; perhaps Septimius Severus (or then again, perhaps not)). But all the rest did. Having 15 legions concentrated in communications' distance in Germania would not be HEALTHY to most of the emperors of Rome, unless the stronger of them went and took command in the field. But that would have meant practically SETTLING in Germany, since the huge legionary presence would have had to go on, and on, and on. What Imperator in his right mind would trade the Flavian palaces for Frankfort. Even TODAY? Really, 15 legions bivouaced in Germany probably would have been a greater menace to most of the Roman Emperors than the Germans themselves.
The word, "scot," was/is from the Roman's own language -- they referred to the people in the north of Britain, everywhere they had not conquered, as "the scot" or "scots" and that's where the word, "scotLAND" came from....in other words, "all those people (the scot) who not among those we've conquered, living in their (scot)land..."
The very word, "scot," is from whatever dialect of Latin that the Romans spoke at the time they were doing their deeds in conquering/trying to conquer Britain.
And, to them, "scot" was a generalized term for everyone among the not conquered, and that included people in northern Britain (thus, the term remains there) and in Ireland, since supplanted/replaced...
It was a term for the peoples, not other nations, as originally used.
You're confused as to "the Scot tribe..." and where it's name originated.
THE PEOPLE WHO THE ROMANS DIDN'T CONQUER were called by the Romans, "the scot," and/or "scots."
It a term used by the Romans to describe a status of humans in their semi-conquered domain in Britain: those people were called by the Romans, "scots," and/or "the scot." In Latin...the word, "scot" is from their (the Romans' in Britain) language spoken at that time.
That the term/word/expression stuck in the entire area and later was used by historians to write about a nationality of peoples is evidence of the term having become integrated into the popular dialect by everyone, not just the conquering Romans.
"The Scot tribe" that you refer to is you using/repeating/referring to that integrated language...because everyone who remained in the British Isles, such as they were known to the conquering Romans, who was not conquered, was beyond their new realm there in Britain, were called, by the Romans, "scot" and/or "the scots" and thus, whatever areas of land in which those people inhabited, unconquered, was called, by those conquering Romans, "scotland," or the "land" in which "the scots" lived. Not conquered by the Romans...
Certainly a relatively derisive, if not certainly noteworthy term, to the Romans...such that it is understandable why the people who remained unconquered by the Romans in the entire British Isles would defiantly and proudly claim use of the term as their own: they became, "The Scots" and their land (part of it), "Scotland," used with pride to indicate a non-conquered, strong and independent people.
Later in history, "The Scot tribe" and such...it's just an integrated, reapplied use of the earlier, original and probably rather resentful term used by Romans in Britain to indicate the general people who remained outside their concept of civilization...
And it became, obviously, well used and taken into the land's language as it's own, probably more a symbol to wrankle the Romans who could not conquer them, like, for example, saying, "yeah, YEAH, we're THE SCOTS, alright, and THIS IS OUR LAND, not yours, this SCOTLAND, land of us SCOTS. So, THERE! Conquer THIS!"
The term was reapplied by the locals and used to offend the Romans, to indicate the land that they couldn't/didn't conquer...thus, Scots, the land of the Scots, Scotland, the independent and still unconquered land and peoples the Romans couldn't/didn't assimilate.
Not everyone liked the term and thus, the people in the island to West, rejected the use of the word, "scot," in favor of their own...now called Ireland.
I never wrote that the "scot tribe...entered Scotland from Ireland..."
I wrote something else entirely.
Let me make it really clear fer' ya': there were people of various ancestry and invasion from a lot of other areas living in the Islands now called British long before the Romans invaded the area.
The Romans invaded Southern (now) Britain first. They drove over and conquered whoever they could and reached a point of being stopped by very fierce peoples in the North of that first Island and to the West in the "other" island.
WHOEVER THE PEOPLE WERE who the Romans could not conquer were called by the Romans as "scot," and/or "the scot."
It's shorthand and almost certainly cursory, insulting nearly, terminology by the Romans to say, "we didn't conquer THOSE (scot) people... because we're too busy, don't care to...(whatever)."
So, the people who remained unconquered by the Romans took the terminology as compliment, not insult and reapplied it to be a point of pride: "we're the people, those scot people, that the Romans couldn't whip."
And THEN the term was used in "tribal" fashion afterward by a lot of regional, unconquered people in the Islands, whoever remained unbeaten/unsubmissive to the invading Romans.
It later became an official term for a regional people, but the word, "scot" is from the invading Roman dialect to indicate, just simply, and probably, a sorta' curse language about anyone who remained apart from their civilization. "Damn scot," or similar...
So, "yeah," some said, "WE'RE the damn scot, WE'RE the scots, our land is ours, not yours, it's our SCOT LAND!"
Thus, the term stuck in and among the locals and remains today as the name of some peoples in a certain area but originally it was regionally based only in the sense that the term indicated the land (wherever it was, in various areas, and that included the Island that today is called Ireland) people (darn scot) lived who were not conquered by the Romans.
I've heard the average settlement is lifetime supply of two topping pizza ;-)
Reparations hell! That's just the beginning. Let's talk hiring quotas. Celtic history classes are to be mandatory in all schools. Anti-Celtic hate crime legislation. Shoot, I'm going to go next door and wake up my Itallian neighbor and tell that SOB to quit keepin me down! We shall over coOOOooooooom......We shall overcoOOOooooooom................
The Romans called the tribes that inhabited what are today Scotland "Pictii", meaning "the Picts", meaning, "the painted ones", for their famous habit of stripping naked and painting themselves blue before battle. They called that land "Pictum".
"Scotii" was a Roman term for some of the people from the island they called "Hibernia", after the Hibernii (or Ivernii) tribes that lived there: Ireland.
The Scotii migrated from Hibernia into parts of Pictum, notably Dalriada, starting in earnest in the fourth century and continuing on until the Pictii and the Scotii were unified by marriage and conquest. Whether or not they were both completely Celtic peoples, or were a mix of Celts and whoever came before the Celts in the British Isles...or even if the same basic population was already there, and the Celtic "invasion" was more of a linguistic change than a population replacement is impossible to say.
Still, the big traces of history are that during the Roman period, the people sitting in what is today Scotland were not called Scots by the Romans, but Picts, and the land was Pictum. It became Scotland when the people called Scots by the Romans, who lived in Northern Ireland, began to settle and rule Dalriada and points inland.
Something roughly akin to the Ulster Plantation of the 1600s in reverse occurred in the 500s, 600s and 700s AD way up in the lands that were not, and never had been, within Roman rule.
Over time, of course, all of those ancient peoples turned into something else, and the modern day "Scots" are a hybrid not just of Irish and Pict, but also English and Norsemen, with some Spaniards and Portuguese and Basque fishermen thrown in. There is not a continuous, unbroken history of A people going back from today through Bannockburn to Hadrian's Wall and before. The place itself has changed names (from Pictum to Scotland...God knows what the natives called it, and its pretty certain that they didn't consider "it" to be an entity, just as there was no native word in any Indian language for the concept of "India" uniting the Dravidian and Aryan parts of India - it took the forced unity of the place under the British to create a national concept out of what was actually a divided and mutually inimical series of territories. The Picts, Scots, Caledonians and whatever other names that external visitors (who were rare) applied to the people of those wild and unorganized parts were not united in brotherly love or anything else. Nationalism is a relatively modern thing. Tribalism is ancient. Scots have killed other Scots more vigorously over the course of their history than they have united to kill anybody else. Ditto for Irish. Ditto for just about everybody, truth be known.
Must be on your mother's side, because your name definitely isn't Celtic.
Yes, and the Romans ALSO USED THE WORD, "scot," to describe people "in the north" and elsewhere who remained outside their conquered realm.
Not like the Romans were limited to only one word for a huge range of peoples and areas in a complex cultural and military war.
Also, the Picts are a known people identified by region. The term, "scot" was a term used by Romans to identify a class of peoples in many/various/any region who remained unconqured. Among which some were Picts, yes, but it's a different concept of language.
This is such a simple thing and yet it's preposterous why it's so difficult for some here to grasp as to concept.
Let me think: a person who you don't like might be called "a jerk." To a Roman, a person unconquered by them -- not included in their conquering realm of culture/civilization -- was called "a scot."
Same concept in language.
The term, "scot," however, THEN AND LATER became adapted to mean, as would "jerk" if it was used at that time in the same concept, to represent generally people not conquered (not submitted) to invading Roman culture. If you interchange the two words, you'd get "Jerkland" for the area in which all the "jerks" habitated...
Not that I find present day Scotland the equivalent of a theoretical Jerkland (being part Scot myself), I am just trying to share an illustration of language.
Everyone not wearing a black coat could be called a "whitecoat." They could and can and probably are everywhere, in all areas of "the land." However, later, they concentrate their numbers out of protection for the right to not wear a black coat. Thus, the land in which they congregate might be called, "Whitecoatland." And among those who populate Whitecoatland are the Picts and others.
I hope that helps clarify a very simple point here. It seems that people are confused by the reapplication (reuptake) practice of having presentday witness to a regional, national area called "Scotland" and are unable to understand that THE WORD, 'SCOT' that was later incorporated as reference for a region, a "land," was based in Roman dialect for a human behavior, for and about humans who displayed a behavior, not were of a race or a nation or whatever. Just a behavior...they were "scots" -- people not submitted/submitting to Roman authority, remaining outside the occupied Roman territory, in their land of "scot."
Another/last thing is that in earlier English language, "the land," was an expression used to describe fifedoms, kingdoms, realms, areas occupied or not occupied -- however, not nations, which was until recent history, an unknown concept. Such that, it was a descriptive measure to call parts/directions in the world, "beyondland" or "edgeoftheworldland" or similar, as pretensive examples for to make a point here.
Thus, all those randy 'scots' who were concentrated later into areas where they could increase in numbers and resistance were occupying the "scotland." And, it became a popular term to describe a behavior later, and thus, we got "Scotland" later as official term for a nation.
The area we refer present day to as "Ireland" was considered by the Romans as the same as that to the north of their occupied territory in Britain. Thus, the Romans called all of those unoccupied/unconquerables, "scots" and they included the range outside their occupied areas in Britain....Ireland, however, rejected the term later and once better organized, found it's own name apart from those to the East, among other reasons.
I learned what I know in language theory classes at the University of California, a while ago, within the context of old english language(s) and dialects.
In the context that you use the word, "The Scots," you should not capitalize it.
Because, at that time, as I've tried to explain and explain, ad nauseum, is that "scot" was a Roman descriptive word for a behavior by some humans. Not a proper noun to identify a country, a nationality, a governmental type or even an organized military...
It was a word used by the Romans to describe a behavioral type of person who was not conquered by the Romans who lived in unconquered land in Britain. Since the Romans perceived "Rome" as the epitome of civilization, and "Rome" was to Romans a proper noun for a form of government (not a race, per se, other than to be a citizen of Rome or not posed great distinction to the Romans within a status ideology), then anyone who would "refuse" -- so to speak -- to acknowledge the (superior, to the Romans) government authority of Rome, then you'd be a cad, a stupid, a savage, a "scot."
While I don't know if the term, "scot" was synonymous with "stupid/savage," I do know that the term, "scot," was used by the Romans to describe those who were not conquerable -- given that Romans would not likely admit that they lacked power/authority to conquer, they laid fault on those who "failed to submit," and the like, placing a negative upon those not submitting to Roman authority...
Thus, all those not submitting in Britain, fierce, unconquered, were the darn "scots."
And, the word later became incorporated into the local language from a point of bravery and pride: "we're the scots, we're the people who would not submit to the Romans, and this is our land, this is scotland," later called, popularly and because of that officially later still, "Scotland (a noun)".
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