Scotland during the Roman Empire soon after 160. The destruction of some of the southern brochs may date to the Antonine advance, the hypothesis being that whether or not they had previously been symbols of Roman patronage they had now outlived their usefulness from a Roman point of view. The Roman frontier became Hadrian's Wall again, although Roman incursions into Scotland continued. Initially outpost forts were occupied in the south-west and Trimontium remained in use but they too were abandoned after the mid-180s. Roman troops, however, penetrated far into the north of modern Scotland several more times. Indeed, there is a greater density of Roman
History of the Great Wall of China feature prominently. The French philosopher Voltaire (16941774), for example, frequently wrote about the Great Wall, although his feelings towards it oscillate between unreserved admiration and condemnation of it as a "monument to fear". The Macartney Embassy of 1793 passed through the Great Wall at Gubeikou on the way to see the Qianlong Emperor in Chengde, who was there for the annual imperial hunt. One of the embassy's members, John Barrow, later founder of the Royal Geographical Society, spuriously calculated that the amount of stone in the Wall was equivalent to "all the dwelling houses of England and Scotland" and would