question: When the Romans invaded Scotland in A.D. 78-84, which group did they drive out? answer: Scotts paragraph: The city of Edinburgh grew up around the steep, ragged cliff of the Castle Rock and its easily defended summit. Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence of habitation here as long ago as 900 b.c. Very little, however, is known about the Rock and its inhabitants in the centuries between its first occupation and the time of the MacAlpin kings. A few shadowy details have been left to us by the Romans and by an epic poem from the seventh century. Romans and Britons The Romans invaded Scotland in a.d. 78–84, where they met a fierce group called the Picts, whom they drove north. They consolidated their gains by building Antonine's Wall across the waist of Scotland between the Firth of Forth and the River Clyde in about a.d. Roman legions encountered the strongholds of the Castle Rock and Arthur's Seat, held by a tribe of ancient Britons known as the Votadini. Little is recorded about this group, but they were probably the ancestors of the Gododdin, whose feats are told in a seventh-century Old Welsh manuscript. The capital of the Gododdin was Din Eidyn (the "Fort of Eidyn," almost certainly the Castle Rock), whose name lives on in the Edin- of Edinburgh. Din Eidyn fell to the Angles in 638 and became part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. It was the first of many times that the Fort of Eidyn would change hands between the kingdoms of the north and the south. The MacAlpin Kings Four distinct peoples once inhabited the land now known as Scotland: the Picts in the north, the Britons in the southwest, the invading Angles in the southeast, and the Scots in the west. The Scots were Gaelic-speaking immigrants from the north of Ireland. Kenneth MacAlpin, who ruled as king of Scots at Dunadd, acquired the Pictish throne in 843, uniting Scotland north of the River Forth into a single kingdom. He moved his capital — along with the Stone of Destiny (on which Scottish kings were crowned) — to the sacred Pict site of Scone, close to Perth. His great-great-great-grandson, Malcolm II (1005–1034), defeated the Angles at the Battle of Carham in 1018 and extended Scottish territory as far south as the River Tweed. 