
The Antonine Wall was the real final frontier of the Roman Empire - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190526-did-the-romans-really-reach-scotland
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adrianratnapala
Interestingly, the headline on the BBC page is more accurate than the one I
see on HN. BBC says: "Did the Romans Really Reach Scotland?". And even though
it's a headline, the answer is "yes, duh."

HN headline, "The Antonine Wall was the real final frontier of the Roman
Empire" is misleading, and _final_ is doing strange work there. The Antonine
wall was only briefly defended a couple of times, while the more famous
Hadrian's wall was a fairly fixed frontier.

I find it interesting that the Antonine wall is entirely inside Scotland,
while Hadrian's wall is entirely inside England. Somewhere between them lay
the line where further imperial expansion became overreach.

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maxheadroom
> _...while the more famous Hadrian 's wall was a fairly fixed frontier._

Agreed. Hadrian's Wall has always been considered the last, defensible hard
border of the Roman Empire. As even the article notes:

> _But the story of Rome’s north-west frontier far from ends there, for it was
> the Antonine Wall that, albeit briefly, held the title of the wildest edge
> of the empire._

If the zone between the Antonine and Hadrian's would've been a buffered no-
man's land, the likes of how international borders stand to this day, then the
Antonine - if only the demarcation of the beginning of the no man's land -
really wouldn't have been the final frontier.

I imagine the Roman Army, in all it's due dilligence, would've swept the area
of around five to ten miles from the Antonine - to make sure they weren't
going to get "surprise visitors" whilst they were building the Antonine.

Assuming this posit is true, then the "final frontier" of the Roman Army was
actually much further north than one would assume (in the sense of frontiers
being realms of exploration and not demarcated boundaries).

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teh_klev
> then the "final frontier" of the Roman Army was actually much further north
> than one would assume

In my backyard, Perthshire, it's difficult not to bump into the ruins of some
fairly substantial Roman encampments. This is certainly a good bit north of
the Antonine Wall. The Gask Ridge, just a couple of miles away from me, may
contend as one of the earliest Roman "frontiers":

[http://www.theromangaskproject.org/](http://www.theromangaskproject.org/)

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thrower123
The wall systems the Romans built in Britain get all of the attention, but
that era of emperors were building walls all over the place, including a much
longer and more extensive section between the Rhine and Danube[1], and yet
more across the other far-flung borders, in every quarter of the empire.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_Germanicus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_Germanicus)

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teh_klev
I think it's maybe because of how remote, especially in Scotland, these wall
systems were from the centre of power.

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inflatableDodo
This was the last Roman Emperor who reached it -

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus)

Born in Libya, turned Rome into a military dictatorship then went north and
ruled Rome from York and rebuilt Hadrian's Wall.

edit - This was after fortifying the Sahara. He was a busy guy.

~~~
simplicio
Constantius I (father of the more famous Constantine) led an expedition into
Scotland and probably made it North of the Antonine Wall, though Severus was
the last Emperor to try and permanently fortify it.

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inflatableDodo
Thanks for that. Is often true that the quickest way to find out something
correct on the internet is to write something incorrect, with conviction. :)

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Nomentatus
[Henrik] Ibsen's ploy, although he had to do it in person.

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cafard
Edward Luttwak's _The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire_ is interesting on
the walls in Britain and elsewhere. I am no historian and can't say what one
would think of the book.

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jcroll
A wall in the north you say?

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gerdesj
No, the south.

