10-05-2018, 01:25 PM
(I think this should be in 'Allies and Enemies', not 'Roman Military History')
I agree. As I mentioned on another thread, the theory seems to go back a long way, appearing in British scholarship before the 1950s. Already by 1955 a writer in the journal Antiquity commented that "the evidence for this engrained popular notion is slight indeed"...
In fact, most of our evidence for the Votadini seems pretty slight. Ptolemy calls them Otalini, as you say, and gives them three settlements - all Roman military bases. Of the three, Corbridge was south of Hadrian's Wall, and one of the others, High Rochester, maintained its garrison until c.AD320-350.
Other than Ptolemy, we only have Nennius and Gildas to go on, and some dubious 9th century Welsh genealogies for Cunedda; but, as Stephen Johnson points out in Later Roman Britain (p.65-66), a lot of this was possibly forged for propaganda purposes - he cites a stone inscribed to one Cantioris that was later amended to read 'Venedotis cive fuit' ('he was a Venedotian citizen') - the Venedoti are assumed to be the Votadini, but even this is far from clear.
Cunedda's supposedly 'Romanised' ancestors in the north might have been similarly fanciful, or legendary. Meanwhile, a lot of what earlier writers believed about the situation in the Roman north (including the positioning of 'Valentia') was based on an 18th-century forgery called De Situ Britanniae, which was not fully debunked until the later 19th century.
So we don't really have much on the Votadini at all until their (re)appearance as Gododdin in the 5th-6th century. Presumably, though, some powerful people must have been based at Traprain Law in the earlier period, and we may as well call them the Votadini! But were they a kingdom? Were they independent? No Roman accounts of fighting in North Britain in the 2nd-4th centuries mentions them at all.
If there was a Votadini kingdom, then the Romans might have allied with them. But would that make them a 'client kingdom'? That would involve a formal treaty: the Votadini would pay tribute to Rome, and Rome would protect the Votadinian kings from enemies both internal and external. Did Rome have the need, or even the capability, to do this?
The powerful peoples north of the frontier appear to have been the Maetae and the Caledones, and later the Picts. That these people continued to be a threat is suggested by the ongoing repairs to Hadrian's Wall and the maintenance of garrisons, as well as the new signal towers and forts on the coasts constructed in the later 4th century. Why was all this needed, if the powerful client kingdom of the Votadini stood between Rome and her enemies?
(10-04-2018, 08:33 PM)CaesarAugustus Wrote: we don't have enough information to conclude that Votadini were a client kingdom.
I agree. As I mentioned on another thread, the theory seems to go back a long way, appearing in British scholarship before the 1950s. Already by 1955 a writer in the journal Antiquity commented that "the evidence for this engrained popular notion is slight indeed"...
In fact, most of our evidence for the Votadini seems pretty slight. Ptolemy calls them Otalini, as you say, and gives them three settlements - all Roman military bases. Of the three, Corbridge was south of Hadrian's Wall, and one of the others, High Rochester, maintained its garrison until c.AD320-350.
Other than Ptolemy, we only have Nennius and Gildas to go on, and some dubious 9th century Welsh genealogies for Cunedda; but, as Stephen Johnson points out in Later Roman Britain (p.65-66), a lot of this was possibly forged for propaganda purposes - he cites a stone inscribed to one Cantioris that was later amended to read 'Venedotis cive fuit' ('he was a Venedotian citizen') - the Venedoti are assumed to be the Votadini, but even this is far from clear.
Cunedda's supposedly 'Romanised' ancestors in the north might have been similarly fanciful, or legendary. Meanwhile, a lot of what earlier writers believed about the situation in the Roman north (including the positioning of 'Valentia') was based on an 18th-century forgery called De Situ Britanniae, which was not fully debunked until the later 19th century.
So we don't really have much on the Votadini at all until their (re)appearance as Gododdin in the 5th-6th century. Presumably, though, some powerful people must have been based at Traprain Law in the earlier period, and we may as well call them the Votadini! But were they a kingdom? Were they independent? No Roman accounts of fighting in North Britain in the 2nd-4th centuries mentions them at all.
If there was a Votadini kingdom, then the Romans might have allied with them. But would that make them a 'client kingdom'? That would involve a formal treaty: the Votadini would pay tribute to Rome, and Rome would protect the Votadinian kings from enemies both internal and external. Did Rome have the need, or even the capability, to do this?
The powerful peoples north of the frontier appear to have been the Maetae and the Caledones, and later the Picts. That these people continued to be a threat is suggested by the ongoing repairs to Hadrian's Wall and the maintenance of garrisons, as well as the new signal towers and forts on the coasts constructed in the later 4th century. Why was all this needed, if the powerful client kingdom of the Votadini stood between Rome and her enemies?
Nathan Ross
