58 Transactions. 
was naturally, and perhaps justly, strengthened by seeing 
among the ruins of the Fort long hollow square stones, a 
stone arched vault, marks of stone buildings, and one stone with 
Roman letters upon it, “ but,” he adds, “‘so defaced that it was 
unintelligible.” He also notes that several Roman coins and a 
gold medal of Constantius Chlorus had been found there. 
In the case of Birrenswark Gordon gives two reasons in support 
of his belief that the earthworks are Roman. In situation they 
agree “exactly with Agricola’s march in the second summer’s 
expedition,” and they correspond “ with camps in use among the 
Romans in the reign of Titus Vespasian, as they are beautifully 
and accurately described by Josephus.” Neither of these reasons 
is of itself convincing proof of the origin ascribed to the “ camp ” 
or “camps,” for there are really two. It is by no means an 
ascertained fact that Agricola marched past Birrenswark on his 
way north, and unless the defences that guard the entrances can 
be shown to be characteristically Roman, there is little in the 
form of these entrenchments to connect them with the Romans, 
for neither of the two can be properly said to have been 
“measured out in a square,” as Gordon describes them. All 
their irregularity of outline, as may be seen by a reference to 
Roy’s plan, is carefully concealed in the plan Gordon gives, in 
which they are represented as oblong, with straight sides and 
rounded angles. They are, he assures us,. “vestiges of the first 
Roman Camp of any to be met with in the South of Scotland, 
and the most entire and best preserved one Lever saw.” Birrens 
he regards as an outlying “exploratory castellum,” subordinate 
to Birrenswark. 
Connecting both localities with Agricola, Gordon supposes 
that general, after defeating the Ordovices in North Wales and 
reducing to subjection the island of Anglesey (Mona) to have 
advanced northwards by as direct a course as possible. Having 
crossed the Solway Firth at ebb tide, somewhere due south of 
Birrenswark, he made for that hill, then as now a prominent 
feature in the landscape, and encamped on its slopes. Here are 
still to be seen the remains of the two earthworks already alluded 
to, one on its northern the other on its southern side, which 
Gordon believed to have been raised on that occasion by 
Agricola’s troops. He seems also to have thought that the 
Roman commander had then, or on his retnrn southwards, left a 
detachment there or at Birrens, the latter of which “the 
