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
north, and theottadeni, in imitation of their practice,
had adopted the cremation of their dead, yvhile
adhering to their ancient form of sepulchre. Similar
evidences of the occupation of the locality by
an ancient people have been found all round
Edinburgh.
The skeleton of a woman buried in the same
fashion, with head and feet together, was found on
the eastern slope of Arthur's Seat in 1858, and
within the cist lay the lid of a stone quern or
hand-mill. Of the same early period was, perhaps,
the cist which was found on the coast of the Firth,
when the Edinburgh and Granton Railway was
made, the skeleton in which had on it ornaments
formed of tlle common cockle-shell.
Some graves of a later and more civilised period
were found in 1850, when the immense reservoir
was excavated on the Castle Hill, on the highest
ground, and in the very heart of the ancient city.
On the removal of some buildings of the seventeenth
century, and after uprooting some portions
of the massive wall of 1450, lower down, at a
depth of twenty-five feet, and entirely below the
foundation of the latter, "the excavators came
upon a bed of clay, and beneath this was a thick
layer of moss, or decayed animal and vegetable
matter, in which was found a coin of the Emperor
Constantine, thus suggesting a date approximating
to the beginning of the fourth century. Immediately
under this were two coffins, each formed of
a solid trunk of oak, measuring about six feet in
length. They were rough, and unshapen externally,
as when hewn down in their native forest,
and appeared to have been split open ; but within
they were hollowed out with considerable care, a
circular space being formed for the head, and,
indeed, the interior of both had considerable
resemblance to what is usually seen in the stone
coffins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
They lay nearly due east and west, with their
heads to the west. One of them contained a male
and the other a female skeleton, unaccompanied
by any weapons or other relics ; but between the two
coffins the skull and antlers of a gigantic deer were
found, and alongside of them a portion of another
horn, artificially cut, forming, most probably, the
head of the spear with which the old hunter armed
himself for the chase. The discovery of such
primitive relics in the very heart of a busy population,
and the theatre of not a few memorable
historical events, is even more calculated to
awaken our interest, by the striking contrast which
it presents, than when found beneath the low,
sepulchral mound, or exposed by the operations
of the agriculturist. An unsuccessful attempt was
made to remove one of the coffins. Even the
skulls were so much decayed that they went to
pieces on being lifted j but the skull and horns of
the deer found alongside of them are now deposited
in the Scottish Museum."*
Many relics and weapons of the bronze period
have been discovered in and around the site of
Edinburgh. Some of the most perfect and polished
of these weapons are now in the Museum at
Abbotsford; and about fifty pieces of swords,
spear-heads, and other fragments of weapons, all
more or less affected by fire, are in the collection
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, The
swords are of the leafshaped form, with perforated
handles, to which bone or wood has been attached,
and many of the large spear-heads are pierced with
a variety of ornamental designs.
During the construction, in 1846, of that part
of the Queen's Drive which lies directly abol-e
the loch, on the southern slope of Arthur's Seat,
two of the most beautiful and perfectly leafshaped
swords ever found in Scotland were discovered in
a bed of charcoal, and are now in the Scottish
Antiquarian Museum. The blade of the largest
measures 26a inches in length, and IQ inches at
the broadest part. Not fa; from the same place a
cup or lamp of clay and Celts of bronze were also
discovered, and, at '' Samson's Ribs," a cinerary urn.
On the green slopes of the same hill may be
seen still the traces of ancient civilisation, in some
now-forgotten mode of cultivating the soil-forgotten
unless we recall the terraces of the Rhine, or the
ancient parallels of the Peruvians in the Cordilleras
of the Andes. " On the summer evenings, while
the long shadows still linger on the eastern slope of
Arthur's Seat, it is seen to rise from the margin of
Duddhgston Loch to the higher valley in a succession
of terrace-steps, in some cases with indications
of retaining walls still discoverable. It is on the
slope thus furrowed with the traces of a long extinct
system of agriculture that the bronze swords
and Celts, and the ancient pottery already described,
have been dug up; while wrought deers' horns,
weapons, and masses of melted bronze, were
dredged from the neighbouring loch in such quantities
as to suggest that qt some remote age weapons
of the Scottish bronze period had been extensively
manufactured on the margin. Following up the
connection between such evidences of ancient art
and agriculture, Mr. Chambers suggests the probability
that the daisses of Arthur's Seat and the
bronze weapons dug up there qr dredged from the
loch are all works of the same ingenious handi-
" Rc-hisMric Annals of scotknd"
