Terminus Britanniae: Tacitus’ Scotland

Scotland has always remained on the fringes of the Roman world.

And yet it was by no means an unknown land to the ancient world.The Italian Institute of Culture in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh invite you to a lecture on Tacitus’ Scotland delivered by Professor Renato Oniga, Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Udine and curator of a complete works of Tacitus for Einaudi.In his ‘Agricola’, Tacitus offers one of the oldest and most insightful accounts of Scotland and the peoples who inhabited it, exploring not only the military campaigns of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, but also the geography, customs and resistance of the local populations.

This account is not only of literary value but also constitutes a fundamental historical source for understanding the relations between Rome and the northern provinces, revealing the dynamics of power, military strategy and cultural conflicts that shaped the island’s history.The event will continue with a presentation on the latest findings from the excavation campaigns carried out by the Italian archaeological mission “Hadrian’s Wall and the Frontier of the Roman Empire: Archaeological Research at the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle”, led by Professor Emanuela Borgia, holder of the Chair of Classical Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces at the University of Rome La Sapienza.