Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

THE JERA OF OSSIAN. 7
Geta. He fcarcely had entered the enemy's country,
when news was brought him that Severus was dead. A
fudden peace is patched up with the Caledonians, and,
as it appears from Dion CafTius, the country they had loft
to Severus was reftored to them.
The Caracul of Fingal is no other than Caracalla, who,
as the fon of Severus, the emperor of Rome, whofe do-
minions were extended almofl over the known world, was
not without reafon called in the poems of Oflian, the Son
of the Kin^ of the World. The fpace of time between 211,
the year Severus died, and the beginning of the fourth
century, is not fo great, but Offian the fon of Fingal,
might have feen the Chrifiians whom the perfecution un-
der Dioclefian had driven beyond the pale of the Roman
empire.
Offian, in one of his many lamentations on the death
of his beloved fon Ofcar, mentions among his great ac-
tions, a battle which he fought againft Caros, king of fliips,
on the banks of the winding Carun*. It is more than
probable, that the Caros mentioned here, is the fame with
the noted ufurper Caraulius, who aflumed the purple in
the year 2S7, and feizing on Britain, defeated the em-
peror Maximian Herculius, in feveral naval engagements,
which gives propriety to his being called in Offian's
poems, the King of Ships. The winding Carim is that
fmall river retaining ftill the name of Carron, and runs
in the neighbourhood of Agricola's wall, which Caraufius
repaired to obftrucft the incurfions of the Caledonians.
Several other paffages in the poems allude to the wars of
the P.omans ; but the two juit mentioned clearly fix the
epoch of Fingal to the third century ; and this account
agrees exadly with the Irifli hiftories, which place the
death of Fingal, the fon of Comhal, in the year 283, and
that of Ofcar and their own celebrated Cairbre, in the
year 296.
Some people may imagine, that the allufions to the
Roman hiffory might have been induflrioully inferted in-
to the poems, to give them the appearance of antiquity.
This fraud muft then have been committed at leaif three
ages ago, as the paflages in which the alluiions are made,
are alluded to often in the compofitions of thofe times.
Every
• Car-ravon, ivitiding river.