Agricola and the Conquest of the North.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Minimally scuffed binding, otherwise in good condition. - Content: My interest in Agricola was fostered at a relatively early age. Though as a schoolboy I struggled with the terseness of Tacitus� phraseology, the biography of his father-in-law left a lasting impression upon me. The subsequent development of my career in archaeology brought me back to Agricola: between 1974 and 1978 I excavated three sites with Agricolan connections and took up a post teaching Roman archaeology in a Scottish university. Any work of synthesis depends largely upon the researches of others, as the length of the bibliography which accompanies it should indicate. I have tried to provide the correct attribution for ideas contained within these pages, but if any have not been credited to their rightful originators I apologise now. Throughout the writing of this book I was constantly reminded of the cyclical nature of our interpretations of the past. It will rapidly become apparent that I take a minimalist view of the achievements of Agricola. If the case is overstated, this should be seen as an attempt to redress the balance of the current consensus. Nonetheless, I am well aware that not only do my views reflect what is becoming the new orthodoxy, but that they are a return to the assessment of earlier generations of scholars, notably Collingwood (Collingwood and Myres 1936, 113�114) and Birley (1953, 10�19). I will not speculate on the reasons for such a process, but it does serve to emphasise that history is not static and is as much a reflection of the present as it is of the past. The book is intended for that most difficult audience, the interested layman and the undergraduate student. I hope also that the work will be judged of some value by my academic colleagues, for throughout I have tried to present all the evidence upon which my interpretations are based. Though there are those who would affirm that archaeological and historical evidence are very different beasts and should be firmly segregated, I do not subscribe to such academic apartheid. The classical training of many established scholars who have studied the Roman period in Britain has tended to result in too much emphasis on the primacy of the written word: archaeology is sometimes even dismissed as concerned in the main only with the nature of objects and their manufacture (Salway 1981, 630). What is being made clear by the work of the younger generation, whose academic background has involved more archaeological study, is that archaeological evidence has at least as much to offer as the brief literary record to our understanding of the Roman period in Britain and that it can be used to write history. The aim of the present work is to re-assess the role of Agricola in the conquest of Britain and to present a coherent account of that process formed from the various strands of evidence available. It is also intended to illustrate the way in which such a study is approached and to highlight its weaknesses as well as its strengths, for the picture will never be complete and will inevitably change as new information comes to light. ISBN 9780389207047