‘Summer Time and the Living is Easy’
Can you hear that song play in your head?
by Nancy Jardine
This post is about Summer time – Ancient Roman Military Style.
When is summer actually summer? And when was summer actually summer?
They are really hard questions to answer and it must have been just as difficult for people to answer them two thousand years ago. As I write this in mid-August 2023 in Aberdeenshire (Scotland), I really do consider it presently to be summer. These last summers have been warmer for me than in previous decades, with less rain and slightly higher temperatures, though rarely reaching the mid-twenties centigrade. (Fear not, I’m not getting into climate change in this post!)
I’ve read information which suggests that the temperatures and weather conditions in Scotland, some two thousand years ago, would have been fairly similar to those of today. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that invading Roman Legions chose the summer months to attack hostile tribes in barbarian territory, barbarian meaning land not yet part of the Roman Empire.
Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman writer living in the late first century AD, briefly mentions seven summer military campaigns led by his father-in-law – Gnaeus Iulius Agricola – during General Agricola’s Governorship of Britannia in approximately AD 77-84. (De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae)
While writing Agricola’s Bane, the fourth book of my Celtic Fervour Series, I asked myself when Agricola’s summer campaigns in Caledonia (Scotland) would have begun? That question led to some interesting research and lots of sideways reading.
From the era of the earliest Roman Republic the 23rd March was a day when the trumpets used for giving military commands – during practice regimes and in battle – were symbolically cleansed and purified. That ancient festival was named the Tubilustrium. The ritual process was a signal that all was ready to begin the new military campaign season, once the spring planting was over. The farmer/soldier would leave the land-tending to others and they would converge at a nominated place e.g. Rome. They were then ready to resume an ongoing battle with some other country. Or, they were prepared to begin a new invasion with their weapons all spick and span, and polished to the sharpest edges!
Would the Tubilustrium Festival still have been an important time in the annual calendar of Agricola’s forces? There seems little evidence to say that it wasn’t still an important ritual by the late first century AD, since the Romans seemed to have been driven daily by their religious observances. After the Tubilustrium Festival new attack could then be launched in the areas of Britain still to be conquered, mainly those in the north. A large difference would have been that Agricola’s troops were annually-paid professional soldiers, unlike those of the very early Roman Republic, and any tending of land would have been around the fort or fortress they were garrisoning. This would, presumably, have been continued by slaves, or those soldiers who remained to defend the fort. This seems to have been the case at Trimontium Roman Fort, Newstead, Melrose, in the Scottish borders.
During the months of April and into May in Scotland the days lengthen quite substantially, especially the further north you travel. Longer days and shorter nights meant more potential progress in claiming virgin territory as the huge Roman Legions literally tramped a swathe across the landscape. Of course, after the summer solstice of 20th/21st June, the opposite happens and the nights begin to lengthen. However, the warmest months in Scotland have tended to be June, July and August and are normally associated with summer.
Therefore, if Agricola’s summer campaigns began at approximately the end of March and continued through August, when would he have considered summer to be over? Tacitus also mentions that Agricola campaigned late in the season in Caledonia, even claiming that Agricola fought and won a pitched battle against the Caledonian armies somewhere in northern Caledonia (Mons Graupius).
How late is late in a summer campaign? Would that be September, October, or even November? Unfortunately, no evidence of a battle has been found but if it were to be found, I’d imagine that soil scientists and various other archaeological disciplines would be able to make reasonable predictions of when the conflict took place. Till then, we can only guess and extrapolate from other situations.
The October Armilustrium Festival was the opposite to the Tubilustrium. In mid-October, the earliest Ancient Roman armies symbolically wiped-off their weapons and packed them away till the following month of March. In October, the men went back to their homes and helped with any crop gathering that still needed to be done, then stayed home till the spring call to arms.
If Tacitus is to be believed, the Agricolan forces retreated to southern defences where they overwintered in relative safety, it being unlikely that many (if any) went home to whichever part of the empire they had come from, since their contract with the Roman Army was for twenty-five years, or twenty-seven in some cases if they were equestrian or particular auxiliary forces. I suspect that ‘home leave’ would have been very rare for the rank-and-file soldiers if posted very far-flung from their birth place.
I personally find it more believable that Agricola campaigned on in Caledonia when the weather conditions were still favourable enough, regardless of it being beyond the beginning of October. I think he removed his troops to a position of strength somewhere in territory that he believed was safe to over-winter in when the weather descended into misery – cold, windy and early dark.
What do you think?
Summer, Roman military style when in Caledonia, seems to have been the opposite of ‘The Living is Easy’.
Connect with Nancy:
Thank you for the opportunity to visit the Coffee Pot blog today, it's always a pleasure.
ReplyDeleteThe pleasure is all ours, Nancy. Thank you for another fascinating post.
DeleteI loved this series - gripping, immersing me in the lives and practices of the so-called "barbarians," so well done!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you like the series. It's an intriguing glimpse into the distant past.
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