Why did the Romans fail to subject and conqueror Scotland? From what I read, there are many fortifications and evidence of military campaigns with lots of success in Caledonia/Scotland yet it ultimately petered out?
So my question is why?
>>865052
>So my question is why?
It wasn't worth the cost.
>>865052
Because conquering Scotland is one thing, but keeping it entirely subjugated is another much more expensive matter.
In addition there isn't much there in the ways of easily accessible ressources, making the investment in an occupation not profitable even in the longer term.
Much easier to crush them a couple of times and deal with isolated raids over the wall.
>>865065
Can you elaborate further and in detail?
It wasn't worth the cost, as another Anon said.
The fact that the Saxons, who had to cross the Northern sea, managed to conquer England instead of any of the Scottish tribes do sort of prove that they really wasn't that much of a threat.
>>865052
Same reason they never conquered Germany, the tribes living there were too primitive to be worth the effort.
>>865052
BUILD A WALL
MAKE THEM PAY FOR IT
>>865052
>inb4 Scotfags say they got defeated
Conquering the whole area just wasn't worth the trouble. The southern Caledonians were all good friends of Rome, for example the Votadini, and they provided a buffer to the hardier more dangerous ones further north. Occasionally under emperors like Septimius Severus the Romans launched massive punitive expedition but it large-scale conquest just wasn't worth the decades of pacification it would have required. The Roman Empire was prone to civil wars so no emperor could risk stretching his army too thin. Really if they'd conquered it all the history of the Empire would have been very different, imagine not having to waste so many legionaries and auxiliaries on Britain and having them available on the Rhine. The issue of Roman geographical knowledge is still very contentious to this day, Luttwak's Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire is a pretty good read on the subject, with Benjamin Isaac's Limits of Empire being a good (and probably more correct) counter to it.
>>865087
There were already tens of thousands of Saxons, Jutes, Angles and Frisians not to mention others like Alemanni and Sarmatians in England before the Adventus Saxonum.
>>865052
It just wasn't worth it.
>>865085
There wasn't enough wealth there for the Romans to plunder like there was in Carthage, Greece, Dacia, etc etc etc to make the conquest worth it.
>>865052
>Very edge of Roman Empire, and an administrative nightmare
>Winning battles =/= controlling population (see: Nazi occupation of France; Britain in Ireland; NATO in the Middle East)
>Sheer cost
>>865093
>>>>>>the tribes living there were too primitive to be worth the effort.
That is precisely not the reason. I can't think of a single instance in which the Romans were like "lol fuck these forest/mountain/sand/hill niggers they're not developed enough"
Like other anons said, it was the land, not the people. There's no use in specifically owning a bunch of mountains in extension to their already wealthy island.
