IMIPERATC~OERSAI RIT. ITO. CELIO. HADKIANO
ANTONINOA.U G. Pro. PATRIP. ATRIB.
Although the Roman military causeway-o
which some fragments still remain--from Brittano
dunum to Alterva (i.e. from Dunbar ta Cramond
passed close to it, the Castle rock never appear!
to have become a Roman station; and it is suf
ficiently curious that the military engineers of thc
invaders should have neglected such a strong an(
natural fortification as that steep and insulatec
mass, situated as it was in Valentia, one of thei
six provinces in Britain.
Many relics of the Romans have been turnec
up from time to time upon the site of Edinburgh
but not the slightest trace has been found to indicatc
that it was ever occupied by them as a dwelling
place or city. Yet, Ptolemy, in his ? Geography,?
speaks of the place as the Casfrum alaturtz, ??2
winged camp, or a height, flanked on each sid<
by successive heights, girded with interinediatt
valleys.?? Hence, the site may have been a nativt
fort or hill camp of the Ottadeni.
When cutting a new road over the Calton Hill,
in 1817, a Roman urn was found entire; anothei
(supposed to be Roman), eleven and a half inches
in height, was found when digging the foundation
of the north pier ol
the Dean Bridge,
that spans a deep
ravine, through
which the Water ol
Leith finds its way
to the neighbouring
port. In 1782 a
coin of the EmperoI
Vespasian was found
in a garden of the
Pleasance, and is
now in the Museum
of Antiquities ; and
when excavating in ROMAN URN FOUND AT THE DEAN.
(Frwtn th Anfiqnanan Museum.) St. Ninian?s Row, on
the western side of
the Calton, in 1815, there was found a quan?tity of
fine red Samian ware, of the usual embossed character.
In 1822, when enlarging the drain by which
the old bed of the North Loch was? kept dry,
almost at the base of the Castle rock, portions of
ar. ancient Roman causeway were discovered, four
feet below the modem road. Another portion of
a Roman way, composed of irregular rounded
stones, closely rammed together on a bed of
forced soil, coloured with fragments pf brick, was
discovered beneath the foundations of the Trinity
College Church, when it was demolished in 1845.
The portions of it discovered in 1822 included a
branch extending a considerable way eastward
along the north back of the Canongate, towards the
well-known Roman road at Portobello, popularly
known as ? The Fishwives? Causeway.? ? Here,?
says Dr. Wilson, ?we recover the traces of the
Roman way in its course from Eildon to Cramond
and Kinneil, with a diverging road to the importanttown
and harbour at Inveresk, showing beyond
doubt that Edinburgh had formed a Zink between
these several Roman sites.??
Within a few yards of the point where this road
crossed the brow of the city ridge were built into
the wall of a house, nearly opposite to that of
John Knox, two beautifully sculptured heads of
the Emperor Septimius Severus and his wife Julia.
These busts, which Maitland, in his time (I~so),
says were brought from an adjacent building, Wilson
the antiquary conjectures were more probably
found when excavating a foundation; but under
the causeway of High Street, in 1850, two silver
denarii of the same emperor were found in excellent
preservation.
These busts were doubtless some relic of the
visit paid to the colony by Septimius Severus, for
Alexander Gordon, in his ? Itinerarium Septentrionale,?
published in 1726, says :-? About this
time it would appear that Julia, the wife of Severus,
and the greatest part of the imperial family, were
in the country of Caledonia; for Xephilin, from
Dio, mentions a very remarkable occurrence which
there happened to the Empress Julia and the wife
3f Argentocoxus, a Caledonian.??
Passing, however, from the Roman period, many
listant traces have been found of people who
lwelt on, or near, the site of Edinburgh, in what
may be called, if the term be allowable, the preiistoric
period.
In constructing the new road to Leith, leading
iom the centre of Bellevue Crescent, in 1823,
several stone cists, of circumscribed form, wherein
:he bodies had been bent double, were found;
ind these being disposed nearly due east and west,
were assumed, but without evidence, to have been
.he remains of Christians. In 1822 another was
ound in the Royal Circus, buied north and south ;
he skeleton crumbled into dust on being exposed,
ill save the teeth.
During the following year, 1823, several mde
tone coffins were discovered when digging the
oundations of a house in Saxe Coburg Place, near
;t. Bernard?s Chapel. One of them contained two
irns of baked clay, from which circumstance it was
#upposed that this was a place of interment, at the
ieriod when the Romans had penetrated thus far
