A large force of Sarmatian cavalry, consisting of five thousand five hundred Iazygean men, arrives in Britannia in 175, probably to reinforce troops fighting unrecorded uprisings.

The large fort at Newstead is maintained along with seven smaller outposts until at least 180, when the Romans, in the face of Caledonian pressure, abandon the Antonine Wall, making a permanent withdrawal to Hadrian’s Wall.

Ulpius Marcellus is recorded as governor of Roman Britain in an inscription of 176-80, and apparently returns to Rome after a tenure without serious incident.

He is sent out again by the Emperor Commodus to suppress a serious revolt in 180, which earns him the reputation of a disciplinariian.

Dio Cassius records that tribes from the north breached Hadrian's Wall, which separated them from the empire, and killed a general (possibly Marcellus' predecessor, Caerellius Priscus) with all his guards, presumably during an inspection of Hadrian's Wall.

Little else is known of the revolt except that Dio called it the most serious war of Commodus' reign.