When did the Romans first use the names Picts and Scots? The question sounds simple. The answer takes us from Tacitus and the Caledonians to imperial praise speeches, an early fourth-century list of peoples, and accounts of raids on Roman Britain. Along the way, the Romans also changed the way they described Ireland and its inhabitants.
The crucial evidence is not just which names occur, but when the texts were written, which events they claim to describe and why their authors chose those names.
At a glance: the changing names
| Date of source | Names used | Text |
|---|---|---|
| c. AD 98 | Caledonia; inhabitants of Caledonia | Tacitus, Agricola |
| Early 3rd century | Caledonians; Maeatae | Cassius Dio, Roman History |
| AD 297 or 298 | Picti; Hiberni | Panegyrici Latini VIII(5), 11.4 |
| AD 310 | Caledonians; other Picts; Hibernia | Panegyrici Latini VI(7), 7.2 |
| c. AD 312–314 | Scoti; Picti; Calidoni | Laterculus Veronensis, 13 |
| Events of AD 359–360 | Scotti; Picti | Ammianus, Res Gestae 20.1.1 |
| Events of AD 367–368 | Dicalydones; Verturiones; Scotti; Attacotti | Ammianus, Res Gestae 27.8.5 |
| AD 398 | Scotti linked with Ireland; Picts | Claudian, Fourth Consulship of Honorius |
1. Before the Picts: Tacitus and the Caledonians
In his biography of the governor Agricola, composed around AD 98, Tacitus describes the peoples of northern Britain as inhabitants of Caledonia. In chapter 11 he refers to their reddish hair and large frames while speculating about their origins:
rutilae Caledoniam habitantium comae, magni artus
The red hair and large bodies of those living in Caledonia…
Tacitus, Agricola 11 (translation of the quoted phrase)
Tacitus’s ideas about ancestry were Roman ethnographic speculation, not genetic evidence. In the account of Agricola’s campaigns, the Caledonian communities are capable of military cooperation, but Tacitus does not describe them as one permanent, unified state.
The narrative culminates in the battle traditionally called Mons Graupius, where Tacitus presents Calgacus as a leader speaking against Rome. Readers can explore the wider background in our account of the Caledonian tribes.
2. The Caledonians and Maeatae in the Severan period
Writing in Greek in the early third century, Cassius Dio describes two principal northern groupings during the campaigns of Septimius Severus: the Caledonians and the Maeatae (Roman History 77.12). The Maeatae appear closer to the Roman frontier, the Caledonians further beyond it.
Dio says that other peoples’ names had largely become subsumed under these two. This is revealing: Roman authors might compress a complicated landscape of communities into a few convenient group names. It does not tell us how many political units actually existed.
See also our separate article on the Maeatae.
3. AD 297/298: Picts and Hiberni in a Roman imperial speech
The most important early passage is in the Panegyrici Latini, a collection of speeches praising emperors. In a speech honouring Constantius Chlorus after the recovery of Britain from Allectus in AD 296, an anonymous orator compares the Britons faced by Julius Caesar with the Roman province reclaimed by Constantius.
Ad hoc natio etiam tunc rudis et solis Pictis modo et Hibernis adsueta hostibus adhuc seminudis…
Moreover, the people were then still inexperienced, accustomed to enemies such as the Picts and Irish, who were still half-naked…
Panegyrici Latini VIII(5), 11.4; excerpt and close translation
This is generally treated as the earliest surviving explicit reference to the Picts by name. The Hiberni are people associated with Ireland. The speech is usually dated to AD 297, though AD 298 is also found in scholarship.
But notice the difficulty. The orator is describing Caesar’s expeditions in 55–54 BC from a perspective more than three centuries later. We cannot use this sentence as proof that Caesar himself knew the Picts by that name, or that Picts and Irish had formed an alliance in Caesar’s day.
The comparison served a rhetorical purpose: Caesar’s enemies are portrayed as unsophisticated so that Constantius’s recovery of a developed Roman Britain looks all the more impressive.
What it establishes: by the late third century a Roman orator could speak of Picti and Hiberni as recognisable opponents associated with Britain. It does not establish when these names originated or how these peoples identified themselves.
4. AD 310: the Caledonians as ‘other Picts’
A second imperial panegyric, delivered in praise of Constantine in AD 310, recalls the achievements of his father Constantius. The orator alludes to territories he did not need to conquer:
non dico Calidonum aliorumque Pictorum siluas et paludes
I do not mean the forests and marshes of the Caledonians and the other Picts.
Panegyrici Latini VI(7), 7.2
The Latin phrase aliorumque Pictorum — “and other Picts” — is striking. It appears to treat the Caledonians as one people within a wider category of Picts. The passage then goes on to mention neighbouring Ireland (Hibernia proxima) and distant Thule.
The wording supports an interpretation of Picti as a Roman collective name for more than one northern group. It does not show that every community beyond the frontier shared a single Pictish identity. Like the earlier speech, this is imperial praise, not a neutral ethnographic survey.
The historical setting is discussed further in our article on Constantius’s northern campaign.
5. Around AD 312–314: the earliest surviving Scotti
A less familiar source is the Laterculus Veronensis (the Verona List), a compilation of Roman provinces and peoples. Its list of “barbarian peoples who emerged under the emperors” begins with names conventionally transcribed as:
Scoti, Picti, Calidoni
Scots, Picts, Caledonians.
Laterculus Veronensis, 13
This is generally considered the earliest surviving explicit use of Scotti, and the compilation is commonly dated around AD 312–314. Exact dating and the history of the surviving manuscript have been debated; a 2025 reassessment also argues for a date around AD 314.
The list is not a map, nor a statement that all three groups lived in separate territories. Names could be gathered from reports produced at different times. Nevertheless, its inclusion of Scoti, Picti and Calidoni is valuable evidence for Roman administrative vocabulary.
The Scotti in this period are principally associated with Ireland, not automatically with the territory of modern Scotland. Their subsequent connection with western Scotland is a longer story.
6. AD 359–360: Picts and Scots in Ammianus
The historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes renewed insecurity in Roman Britain during the winter of AD 359–360. The emperor Julian, then in Gaul, sent the commander Lupicinus to address attacks across the province’s frontier districts.
Scottorum Pictorumque gentium ferarum excursus
Raids by the fierce peoples of the Scots and Picts.
Ammianus, Res Gestae 20.1.1
Unlike the AD 297 panegyric’s backward-looking account of Caesar, Ammianus is describing a crisis relatively near his lifetime, though he wrote his history some decades later. His account implies that the Romans recognised these as groups capable of threatening the British provinces, but tells us little about the exact origins or organisation of the raiders.
7. AD 367–368: Dicalydones, Verturiones and the Scotti
Ammianus gives more detail about the serious British crisis of AD 367 and the campaign led by Theodosius to restore order. He describes Picts, Scots and Attacotti operating during the same general period of unrest.
Picti in duas gentes divisi, Dicalydonas et Verturiones
The Picts, divided into two peoples, the Dicalydones and the Verturiones.
Ammianus, Res Gestae 27.8.5
The Dicalydones have long been connected with the earlier Caledonians. The Verturiones have been connected linguistically with later Fortriu, a significant Pictish political name. Both connections invite further study, but neither justifies treating an ethnic label as unchanged over centuries.
The homeland of the Attacotti is uncertain. And although these raids are often grouped under the modern label “Barbarian Conspiracy”, Ammianus does not demonstrate a single central command linking every participant.
8. The Scotti appear in Greek, too
The eastern Christian writer Epiphanius of Salamis used the Greek ethnic name Σκόττοι in works composed in the early AD 370s. Philip Rance’s study of these passages shows that knowledge of this western people had travelled far beyond Britain and Gaul. Rance suggests that news of the British crises might help explain this wider awareness, without claiming that such a link is certain.
9. Around AD 398: Claudian links the Scotti with Ireland
In a poem praising the imperial dynasty, Claudian imagines northern peoples mourning Roman victories. His language is vivid and politically charged:
Orcades; incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thyle; Scottorum cumulos flevit glacialis Hiverne
Thule grew warm with Pictish blood; icy Ireland wept for the heaps of Scots.
Claudian, Panegyric on the Fourth Consulship of Honorius, lines 32–33 (excerpt)
The association between the Scotti and Ireland is unmistakable. But poetry exaggerates: Claudian’s imagery cannot be used to count casualties or reconstruct the location of a specific battle. It shows how late Roman elite writers imagined the peoples beyond the empire’s British frontier.
So were the Hiberni and Scotti the same people?
Roman authors used Hiberni and Hibernia for Ireland and its people, while Scotti became a prominent term in late Roman discussions of Irish raiders and groups associated with the island. These labels often overlap in geographical reference, but need not have been exact synonyms in every period or context.
We cannot tell from the earliest sources whether Scotti initially described all inhabitants of Ireland, certain groups, or a label applied by outsiders to raiders. There is also no reason to assume that the first appearance of the name records a sudden migration to Scotland.
What changed: the peoples or Rome’s names for them?
- Changing Roman categories: Caledonii, Picti and Scotti could reflect outsiders applying different names to partly overlapping populations.
- Changing politics: alliances, rivalries and larger group identities may also have evolved north of the frontier and across the Irish Sea.
- Different kinds of evidence: a military historian, a praise-orator, a provincial list and a poet had different purposes. Their descriptions should not simply be combined as if they were one consistent census.
The scholar Nicholas Evans has argued that Picti could develop from a name used by Roman outsiders into an identity with meaning for communities themselves. This is a useful framework, but the early imperial texts alone cannot tell us precisely how or when such a change happened.
Conclusion
The first appearance of a name in Roman literature is not the birth of a people. It is the earliest surviving point at which a particular writer used that name.
What the texts do show is an evolving Roman view of Britain’s neighbours: Tacitus and Dio knew the Caledonians and Maeatae; the AD 297/298 panegyric named the Picts and Hiberni; the AD 310 speech could place Caledonians among the Picts; the Verona List named Scotti around AD 312–314; and later writers associated Picts and Scots with military threats to Roman Britain.
For the history of Roman Scotland, the next task is to compare those written labels with the archaeology — settlements, forts, artefacts and networks of contact — rather than assuming that the Latin names themselves give us a complete map of peoples.
Primary sources and further reading
- Tacitus, Agricola — especially chapters 10–11, 24–25 and 29.
- Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 77 — Caledonians and Maeatae.
- Panegyrici Latini VIII(5), 11.4 (AD 297/298) and VI(7), 7.2 (AD 310). See the Panegyrici Latini Project and Nixon & Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (1994).
- Laterculus Veronensis, 13. See Porena’s 2025 study of the Verona List for dating and transmission.
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 20.1.1 and 27.8.5 — Latin accounts and an English translation.
- Claudian, Panegyric on the Fourth Consulship of Honorius — especially lines 24–33.
- Nicholas Evans (2022), ‘Picti: from Roman name to internal identity’, Journal of Medieval History.
- Philip Rance (2012), ‘Epiphanius of Salamis and the Scotti’, Britannia 43.
Source note: Short English renderings are offered for the Latin extracts. Spellings such as Calidoni/Caledonii and the numbering of the Panegyrici Latini vary across editions. Dates given for texts may differ from dates of events they describe.
For more ancient accounts and guides to using them, visit Ancient Writers on Roman Scotland and Explore Primary Sources.
