Julius Caesar

I did a talk on Wednesday evening about how the history of Scotland and England are so interconnected that studying one without the other, loses so much colour and vibrancy it is a pale reflection of the real thing. The research into our joint history was fascinating and began with how Cornwall’s monopoly of the ancient tin trade brought Julius Caesar to investigate. When I asked a history buff about Julius Caesar, I was told his historical ‘invasion’ of England was no more than a scouting expedition and hardly ‘Veni, vidi, vici’. I seems that the Roman senate, worried about the growing demand for bronze, sent Caesar to look into the state of the market. From that, I deduced that the real reason he was given a Triumph in Rome was that he went back with a Trade Agreement. Over the next hundred years, the senate became even more worried, decided they needed to own the production capacity and authorised a proper invasion. My researches into that revealed that the wave of Rome’s legionnaires washed against the bens of the Scotland’s Western Highlands and that even the King of the Orkneys submitted to Claudius at the time of the 43AD invasion. Not only that, but Roman galleys swept the North sea of pirates, so there was enough trade along our East coast at that time to be worth a pirate’s time. Not the usual picture we have of England and especially Scotland being overrun by naked blue painted barbarians. I got started on this after researching the old drove roads of Scotland for Drover and finding their extension was down into England and the markets of the south