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Under Agricola, the Roman armies vanquished one tribe after another until a final, decisive battle against Calgacus "the swordsman" at Mons Graupius in 84 A.D. This ended effective resistance (the Western Isles and the Highlands were left alone and up until the Clearances of the 18th century remained very much Celtic countries in language and culture). Though Agricola may have wished to add Ireland to his conquests, no Roman expedition was ever taken across the Celtic Sea to that large, relatively unknown western island.
The Romans gave the country north of present-day Stirlingshire the name Caledonia. Much of the terrain is rugged and mountainous. In fact, three fifths of Scotland are mountain, hill and wind-swept moorland, unsuitable for agriculture and therefore not interesting to the Romans. In the Welsh language, widely spoken throughout the area when the Romans arrived, it was known as Coed Celyddon (the Caledonian Forest), inhabited by spectres and madmen, including Myrddyn Wyllt (Mad Merlin). Tacitus refers to the inhabitants of the region as britanni.
It was not only the nature of the terrain that caused the Romans to abandon their attempts at conquest but the unimagined terrors of this Celtic world. After the Roman armies had been recalled to Rome, following Mons Graupius, their strategy towards Scotland was mainly a defensive one. In 121 AD, upon a visit to Britain, the Emperor Hadrian had this still-impressive wall built from Solway in the West Coast to Tyne in the east.
Twenty years later, the turf-built Antonine Wall, stretching from the Clyde to the Forth, followed its more famous stone predecessor. The Caledonians quickly learned to master the art of guerrilla warfare against a scattered, and no-doubt homesick Roman legion in the North, including those led by their aging and frustrated commander Severus. It wasn't long before the Antonine Wall was abandoned, and the troops of Rome withdrew south to the well known and much longer, stronger defensive barrier built by Hadrian. Trouble at home meant that by the end of the fourth century, the remaining Roman outposts in Scotland were abandoned. Any civilized benefits of Roman rule enjoyed by southern Britain were thus denied to their northern neighbors who were having troubles of their own.
At the time of the withdrawal, Scotland (Alba or Alban) was divided between four different races. The Picts of Celtic, perhaps of Scythian stock, predominated lived from Caithness in the north to the Forth in the south. The Britons of Strathclyde stretched from the Clyde to the Solway and further south into Cumbria. The late arriving Teutonic Anglo-Saxons, held the lands to the east south of the Forth into Northumbria and the kingdom of Dalriada, to the west, including present-day Argyll, (the land of the Gael). The Scots, from Northern Ireland occupied Kintyre and the neighboring islands in the third and fourth centuries. In perhaps typical Celtic fashion, the Picts and Scots spent more time fighting against each other than against their common enemies.