Ossian Collection > Essay on the authenticity of the poems of Ossian

OF OSSIAN'S POEMS. 69
tLiries before the alleged expedition of Riada;
a high degree of population, surely, at such
a period, and in such a state of society. Is
it to be supposed, that this numerous and
warlike people, who had so often disputed
the palm of victory with " the sovereigns
" of the world," would allow themselves to
be over-run, and dispossessed of their terri-
tories, by the comparatively small and ill-ac-
coutered horde, which could, at this period,
be thrown in from the adjacent coast of Ire-
land ? Within a century and a half before,
Tacitus informs us, that an Irish chieftain,
who had accompanied his father-in-law to
Rome, and with whom he himself had fre-
quently conversed, assured him, " that, at
" that period, a single Roman legion, with
" a few auxiliaries, would have been sufifi-
" cient for the reduction of the whole island."*
* Tac. Agric. c. 24.