Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray, your weekly fix of 10 minutes of ancient warfare related stuff to take a break from what's happening in the real world.

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Anyway, today's question is from Tim Garthet.

I hope I've said that right, Tim.

It's greetings.

I'm wondering why historians

seem to generally accept that Mons Gralpius was indeed a great victory for Agricula. My understanding

is that Tacitus's account is the only written evidence we have, and archaeology has turned

up little physical evidence of the battle. Yes, indeed. Is part of the reason that a great victory

would have been too big of a lie to pass off? So there must have been some truth to the story,

or was it generally accepted for generals to make their victories more impressive? So no one in Rome

battered an eye at Tacitus's account. Okay. Short version is, I think, the reason that people like Mons Gralpius and accept Mons Groutius, and I'm not denying it happened, is that they trust Tacitus. I tend to take a much healthier dose of cynicism with Tacitus. I think Tacitus is fibbing a bit more. And in the Agricola, which is his biography of his father-in-law, which is one of his earliest

works, there's a work on public speaking, which comes earlier.

But it's 80-98.

So he's writing under, you know, the good empress, he's writing under Nerva and Trajan,

and he would go on to write his histories and the annals under Trajan as well. But certainly the era of Domitian, the tyrant Domitian, has gone,

and therefore he and several other authors feel freer to write what really happened.

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