Architecture of Scotland in the Roman era England. Around 141 CE they moved up to construct a new "limes", a sward-covered wall made of turf known as the Antonine Wall, the largest Roman structure in modern Scotland. They soon retreated to Hadrian's Wall, with occasional expeditions that involved the building and reoccupation of forts, until the collapse of Roman power in the early fifth century. Caledonia was the name that the Romans gave to the land north of their province of Britannia. In his "Geographia", Ptolemy, possibly drawing on earlier sources of information as well as more contemporary accounts from the Agricolan invasion, identified 19 "towns" in
Scotland during the Roman Empire in Scotland. He is briefly mentioned by Bede who states that around 397 he set up his base at Whithorn in the south-west of Scotland, building a stone church there, known as Candida Casa. More recently it has been suggested that Ninian was the 6th-century missionary Finnian of Moville, but either way Roman influence on early Christianity in Scotland does not seem to have been significant. Although little more than a series of relatively brief interludes of military occupation, Imperial Rome was ruthless and brutal in pursuit of its ends. Genocide was a familiar part of its foreign policy and