Calgacus at Mons Graupius

The Battle of Mons Graupius was fought in AD 83, or possibly 84, somewhere in northeast Scotland. Its exact site has never been found. Gnaeus Julius Agricola, governor of Britain, had pushed his army and fleet far north, and the tribes of Caledonia gathered, Tacitus says, more than 30,000 strong. Among their many chiefs, one stood out for courage and birth. Tacitus calls him Calgacus, and he is often named as the first person in Scottish history known to us by name.

Tacitus, Agricola's son-in-law, gives Calgacus a speech before the battle. It speaks of the Britons as the last free people at the edge of the world, and of Rome's endless hunger for land and plunder. Its most famous line, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, is usually translated as 'they make a desert and call it peace.' Whether Calgacus said anything like it, no one can know. In the fighting that followed, Agricola's auxiliary troops broke the Caledonian line, and Tacitus reports 10,000 Caledonians dead.