Books: A Week in Books

British barbarians find their voice

THE ARMIES of civilisation had pinned down the savage hordes in a distant corner of their island. Now the rabble of 30,000 barbarians would have to stand and fight. Defeat at the hands of law and progress was certain but, before the rout, a tribal chieftain rallied his troops with a tirade against the colonising power. "They have pillaged the world," he thundered. "When the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea... They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and they call it by the lying name of `empire'. They make a wilderness and call it `peace'..."

Up to the minute as ever, this column prepared for the rather pale new dawn in Scotland and Wales by re-visiting a text written 1900 years ago. In AD98, Tacitus wrote an admiring life of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola, who governed Britannia. The Agricola gives a barnstorming anti-colonial speech to Calgacus, a leader of northern Celtic tribes, just before the might of Rome crushed them.

The fight at the Graupian Mountain provoked one of the most thrilling flights of Latin oratory, but where did it take place? Perth? Fife? Aberdeen? Experts differ, but A R Birley explains in his new edition of Agricola for Oxford World's Classics (pounds 6.99) that the name got garbled into "Grampium" when a Renaissance printer first set the text. Scotland boasts a mountain range, a region and a TV station that owe their titles to a typo.

Why did Tacitus lend such eloquence to a shaggy barbarian? Scholars suggest he may have had a hidden agenda: defending the lost Republican virtues against the swagger of the Empire. Whatever the reason, the result is that the first British person ever to speak in world literature delivers a classic denunciation of imperial cruelty. Perhaps Sean Connery could drum up funds for a sword-and-sandal epic, and grab the part of Calgacus. Trouble is, he could hardly play the chief as "Scottish" - an identity that would not exist for many hundreds of years.

Thursday's ambiguous votes mean that the long debate over what it means to be (or not to be) British will still run and run. Well, the Agricola gives one chilly answer to the question. Since the whole island amounted to a Celtic fringe, all its people were despised. If it helps the debate to see ourselves as others do (or did), then these supercilious Roman eyes offer a bracing place to start. Though no one will be much surprised that Tacitus sneered at the weather: "miserable, with frequent rain and mists". Not even new parliaments can do much about that.