Transactions. 63 
About the same time the notorious forgery, ‘“‘ De Situ Britanniz,” 
falsely ascribed to Richard of Cirencester, and introduced to the 
notice of antiquaries by Dr Wm. Stukeley, was causing no small 
stir. Believing in its genuineness Roy resolved to make a study of 
the recently discovered “camps” by the aid of the new light 
supposed to be thrown on them. The fruit of this was ‘The 
Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain.” When 
finished, Roy deposited one copy of the MS. with drawings in the 
Library of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and another in 
the King’s Library. In 1793, shortly after the author’s decease, 
the work was published at the expense of the London Society. 
In fulfilment of his design Roy gives first of all a general view 
of the transactions of the Romans in North Britain, drawn from 
the classical writers. He next explains the constitution of a 
Roman legion and a consular army in the days of the republic 
and the system of castrametation then in use as described by 
Polybius. This enables him to compare the form and apparent 
arrangements of the Strathmore and similar camps with those of 
the Roman encampments of republican times. That they had the 
same essential characteristics appeared to him beyond dispute. 
From the size of our northern camps he inferred the number of men 
they were intended to contain, and, since the large majority of them 
were, in his opinion, Polybian, the probable strength of Agricola’s 
army, and the route followed by him in his northern campaigns. 
A lengthened commentary on the De Situ of “ Richard” succeeds, 
and the work concludes with an account of the Antonine wall. 
The whole is illustrated by a series of drawings of camps, &c, 
In an appendix there is discussed among other subjects another 
system of Roman castrametation known as the Hyginian. It 
was, he believes, introduced soon after Agricola’s time in 
consequence of the changes in the constitution of the Roman 
army that gradually took place under the empire. By these 
studies Roy was led to conclude that Birrens had been a Roman 
station, possibly as Horsley conjectured “‘ Blatum Bulgium.” Its 
date he does not attempt to fix; in fact, the notice of it in his 
text is provokingly meagre, and gives one the impression that 
he knew it and Birrenswark only by the plans sent him through 
Sir David Baird, under whom the survey of the southern 
lowlands was conducted. The Birrenswark camps Roy held to be 
Hyginian. They were not, therefore, made by Agricola. He is 
of opinion that they were probably occupied by the Sixth Legion, 
