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Britain, A.D. 406–410

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

E. A. Thompson
E. A. Thompson
Affiliation:
The University, Nottingham
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Extract

We know more about the years 406–410 than we know about any other quinquennium of Romano-British history, apart from the periods that Tacitus describes for us. The standard account of what happened is that which C. E. Stevens published in an Italian journal in 1957. In the first part of this article I propose to argue that Stevens's paper contains a number of fundamental errors, that its chronology is untenable, that it ascribes monstrous mistakes to our authorities when they are not mistaken at all, and that its influence on later discussion of the problems has been unfortunate. It has left an unhappy mark, for instance, on the last chapter of Sheppard Frere's monumental Britannia, where it is generously described as ‘a very valuable discussion of sources and chronology’. Having considered the chronology of the period I shall attempt in the second part of this article to describe the nature of the events which brought about the end of Roman rule in Britain.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 8 , November 1977 , pp. 303 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © E. A. Thompson 1977. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Stevens, C. E., ‘Marcus, Gratian, Constantine’, Athenaeum, xxxv (1957), 316–47Google Scholar; cf. Myres, J. N. L., ‘Pelagius and the End of Roman Rule in Britain’, JRS 1 (1960), 21–36Google Scholar; Frere, Sheppard, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (London, 1967), 366Google Scholar n. 2. I cite these three works by author's name only. I have not found it necessary to refer to ‘Zosimus on the End of Roman Britain’, Antiquity, xxx (1956), 163–7Google Scholar.

2 Prosper, 1230 (i, 465), ‘Wandali et Halani Gallias traiecto Rheno ingressi ii k. Ian.’ Bury, J. B., A History of the Later Roman Empire (London, 1923), i, 185Google Scholar, rightly takes the date to be that of the start of the invasion. (The figures in brackets after references to the Chronicles denote the volume and page of Mommsen's edition.)

3 Jerome, Ep. cxxv. 15.

4 Olympiodorus, frag. 12, gives the date, ‘before Honorius was consul for the seventh time’. Honorius's seventh consulship fell in 407. Olympiodorus's authority, of course, outweighs that of Zosimus. Cf. Bury, op. cit. (note 2), 187.

5 Orosius, vii. 40. 4, ‘his per Gallias bacchantibus apud Britannias Gratianus, municeps eiusdem insulae, tyrannus creatur et occiditur’. The period of four months is mentioned by Olympiodorus and, following him, Zosimus and Sozomen. Note Zosimus, vi. 2. 1, 3. 1; Sozomen, Hist. Eccles. ix. 11. 2.

6 Zosimus, vi. 3. 1.

7 Ibid. Stevens, 319–21, who has misled Frere, 364. The date 406 is also given by the Additamenta ad Prosp. Haun. (i, 299).

8 Stevens, 320, 334 n. 116; cf. Myres, 32; Frere, 364.

9 We know that Stilicho at Ravenna in 407 heard simultaneously the false news that Alaric had died in Epirus and the true news of Constantine's crossing to Gaul. We would have a clue to the date of the landing in Gaul if we could date the false report about Alaric; but unfortunately that cannot be done. Nothing is proved in this connexion by Cod. Theodos. xi. 17, with Mazzarino, S., Stilicone: La crisi imperiale dopo Teodosio (Rome, 1942), 283Google Scholar. Another red herring is the tombstone of Eventius, AÉ (1953), 200. This inscription tells us that Eventius went from Vienne to Italy to be promoted to a higher office, but died in Rome in July or August 407 before receiving his new distinction. There is nothing whatever to suggest that he had fled from Vienne to Italy because of Constantine's appearance in Boulogne. Stevens, 323 n. 52, has been misled by Marrou, H. I., ‘L'épitaphe vaticane du consulaire de Vienne Eventius’, RÉA liv (1952), 326–31Google Scholar.

10 Stevens, 317 f.

11 Idem, 322.

12 Frere, 364, 367, 369.

13 Olympiodorus, frag. 12; Zosimus, vi. 1. 2; Sozomen, ix. 11. 3; Procopius, BV iii. 2. 31; Courtois, C., Les Vandales et l'Afrique (Paris, 1955), 49Google Scholar, puts Constantine's crossing in the autumn at the earliest of 407. Unhappily, his chronology is vitiated (ibid. 49 n. 2) by his assumption that Marcus was elevated in order to meet the expected threat of the barbarians. Bury, loc. cit. (note 2), says rightly that the crossing ‘may have been in the early summer of A.D. 407’.

14 Zosimus, vi. 3. 2; cf. Courtois, op. cit. (note 13), 49.

15 Zosimus, vi. 3. 3.

16 Orosius, vii, 40. 5; Sozomen, ix. 11. 4.

17 Zosimus, vi. 5. 2 f. The phrase kat' exousian, which occurs twice in the passage, is difficult.

18 As Myres, 23, does.

19 Chronica Minora, i, 654, ‘Britanniae Saxonum incursione devastatae’.

20 I am not convinced by the suggestion of Courtois, op. cit. (note 13), 49, that Chron. Gall. a. cccclii, 63 (i, 564), means that Constantine subjugated one part of the barbarians.

11 Bury, op. cit. (note 2), i, 200.

12 Stevens, 335, n. 120, followed by Myres, 32, and Frere, 366. Confusion is confounded by J. Morris, ‘Dark Age Dates’, apud M. G. Jarrett and B. Dobson (editors), Britain and Rome: Essays Presented to Eric Birley (1966), 145–85, at 146, who dates the events narrated by Zosimus here later than the letters sent by Honorius to Britain in 410. In his rendering of Zosimus, vi. 5. 2, ‘the rest of the Gauls' is an elementary mistranslation.

33 Mommsen, Chronica Minora, i, 618.

24 Stevens, 337.

25 Courtois, op. cit. (note 13), 48. Even if these place-names indisputably indicate settlements of Suebi, how do we know that these settlements date from the early fifth century?

29 Stevens, 319. In fact, Zosimus, vi. 2. 2 f., is hardly consistent with Constantine's having to fight an immediate battle for Boulogne.

27 Chron. Min. i, 652, 55.

28 Stevens, 335, n. 120; cf. Bury, op. cit. (note 2), i, 200, n. 2. It is only by an argument of this kind that Stevens can describe the entries at this point in the Chronicle as ‘a single massed picture only appropriate to 410’ rather than as ‘successive entries’, as Bury rightly called them.

29 Stevens, 337 f.

30 Stevens, 317. See Matthews, J. F., ‘Olympiodorus of Thebes and the History of the West’, JRS lx (1970), 79–97Google Scholar, at 87.

31 Stevens, 334 ff., Myres, 33, and Frere, 367, take a different view, and most recently Miller, M., Britannia vi (1975), 145, n. 20Google Scholar.

32 This is a speculative point. My friend and colleague, P. W. Dixon, rightly observes that sea-borne invaders are not obliged to make for the nearest point of the land that they propose to attack.

33 Rutilius, de reditu suo, i, 213 ff. Freeman, E. A., Western Europe in the Fifth Century: an Aftermath (London, 1904)Google Scholar, is still of much interest.

34 Chron Gall. a. cccclii, 117, 119 (i, 660); Merobaudes, Paneg. ii. 8; John of Antioch, frag. 201. 3.

35 Constantius, Vita Germani, 28, 40. I am now sceptical of 445 as the date of Germanus's second visit to Britain, and would withdraw the suggestions advanced in Analecta Bollandiana, lxxv (1957), 135–138Google Scholar. It is a pity that we do not know more about the nature of the revolt of the inhabitants of Noricum which was suppressed in 430: Hydatius, 93 (ii, 22).

36 Stevens, 338, 340, Myres, 33, and Frere, 366, think that the urban authorities took the lead in 409, but they do not mention the evidence on which they are relying. In that passage Frere omits a reference to the Bacaudae when he ought to have put one in, and on his p. 345 he puts one in when he ought to have left it out. In the latter passage he has been misled by Mynors's adoption of Lipsius's conjecture Bagaudicae for the Batavicae of the MSS in Paneg. Lat. vi (vii), 7. 1–2. Lipsius's conjecture was exploded years ago: see Gentilhomme, P. le, ‘Le désastre d'Autun en 269’, RÉA xlv (1943), 233–40Google Scholar. By describing the Bacaudae as the ‘poorer strata' of the countryside I am, of course, oversimplifying for brevity's sake.

37 Constantius, loc. cit. (note 35).

38 Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire, 284–602 (Oxford, 1964), i, 197Google Scholar.

39 The best account of the routes taken by the invaders of Gaul is that of Courtois, op. cit. (note 13), 42–51. Note his map on p. 46, which shows that Armorica was far from the scene of the devastations.

40 Olympiodorus, frag. 30. For cases of resistance see Hydatius, 91, 186 (ii, 21, 30), and for an Eastern example see Priscus of Panium, frag. 5. Add these to Fergus Millar, Dexippus, P. Herennius: The Greek World and the Third-Century Invasions’, JRS lix (1969), 12–29Google Scholarad fin.

41 Theolog, J.. Stud, x (1959), 298Google Scholar. It could perhaps be deduced from Prosper, 1301, s.a. 429 (1, 472), that the British churches were not widely ‘corrupted’ by Pelagianism until the days of the Pelagian propagandist, Agricola, in the 420s.

42 See Myres's paper cited in n. 1 above. It has been refuted by Liebeschuetz, W., ‘Did the Pelagian Movement have Social Aims?’, Historia xii (1963), 227–41Google Scholar; idem, ‘Pelagian Evidence in the Last Period of Roman Britain’, Latomus xxvi (1967), 436–47; cf. Brown, Peter, Religion and Society in the Age of St Augustine (London, 1972), 184Google Scholar, esp. n. 1, Cameron, A., ‘Celestial Consulates’, J. Theolog. Stud, xix (1968), 213–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Frere, 367, however, is inclined to accept that Pelagianism may have been a factor in 409: so, too, Ward, J. H., Britannia iii (1972), 284 f.Google Scholar, who cites Myres's paper approvingly without warning his readers that Liebeschuetz had pulled the carpet from under his feet.

43 Zosimus, vi. 10. 2. In spite of Matthews, J. F., Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court (Oxford, 1975), 320Google Scholar, n. 7, there is no excuse for mentioning, even in a whisper, the conjecture of Gothofredus which would alter ‘Britain’ into ‘Bruttium’ in this passage of Zosimus.

44 Stevens, 332 f., makes a valiant attempt to find one.

45 My colleague, W. R. Chalmers, points out a similar sentence in Zosimus, v. 31. 2, though Stilicho's name is not repeated there as the name of Honorius is repeated in vi. 10. 2.

46 Stevens 333 f., followed by Frere, 366.

47 Procopius, BV iii. 2. 38.

48 Chronica Minora ii, 222.

49 It must be borne in mind, of course, that our British evidence relates to the neighbourhood of St Albans and to that region alone. Whether the Britons of other regions were so perverse is wholly unknown.

50 I am sceptical of north Wales as the site of the Alleluia victory (Frere, 370). It is true that Constantius, Vita Germani, 17 f., throws in for effect some spectacular scenery, including mountains, rocks, a valley, and a river; but he merely wants to describe the scene of an ambush. Is it possible to believe that in 429 communications between the neighbourhood of St Albans and north Wales were easy or even open? And who could credit Saxons in north Wales in 429?