Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

32 7he Pi as — the PojierUy
queftions will naturally refult. In what Emperor'g
reign were the Caledonians fo exhaufted or degene-
rated to fuch a degree as to yield up their country,
their freedom, and their reputation, to a colony,
or even an army of Scandinavian rovers ? In what
period of time happened thofe devaftations by
which they were exhaufted ? Were they either
annihilated or reduced to a ftate of incurable debi-
lity by Severus, or by his fons Caracalla and Geta?
Did Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander, or Max-
imiinus, did any of the fucceeding Emperors or
thirty tyrants overcome them ?
As therefore there is no ground for fuppofing
that the Caledonians were annihilated or even
much weakened by the legions, generals and Em-
perors of Rome, it is far from being credible that
an army fufficient to overcome or extirpate them,
could be tranfported from the Cimbrica Cherfone-
fus, in the third century. Every body knows
what little progrefs navigation had made at that
time in the North of Europe, A few long boats,
which were the only craft the Scandinavians couid
be fuppofed to have, were very inadequate for the
purpofe of carrying armies acrofs the German
ocean.
The improbability of a great migration of this
kind, at that period, is flrengthened by the filence
of antient writers of credit on that head. It is
therefore too precipitate in any modern antiquary,
to give his authority to a fiction, fo contrary to all
the ideas we can form of the flate of the North of
Europe, in thofe times. The opinion of Camden,
the moft learned as well as mod candid of the an-
tiquaries of England, is decifive on this fubjecft.
After mature confideration of this new fyflem of
Humphrey Lhud, he was far from believing that
the