Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the north-western provinces 501
agents for the empire, regularly attacking the Sueves, but also occasionally
turning against their Roman masters. Meanwhile, the high seas were also
routes for piracy: Britannia, which was under threat from Picts in the north,
was plagued by Irish in the west, who took, among other captives, the
young Patrick – not that the British themselves were above piracy, as can
be seen from Patrick’s letter to Coroticus. Nor were the Irish merely plunderers.
The ogham stones of south-west Wales reveal the existence of an
Irish settlement in Demetia (Dyfed) in the fifth century, a segment of
which seems to have split off subsequently to found the kingdom of
Brycheiniog (Brecon). 10 To the south of Britain, maritime Franks and
Saxons presented a constant threat, as they did to the coasts of Gaul. 11
Heruls are even known to have raided the coast of north-western Spain. 12
Presumably they had set sail from Denmark, where part of the tribe was to
be found in the sixth century. 13
Imperial control of much of northern Gaul and Spain can only have
been intermittent after the first two decades of the century, 14 and it seems
to have depended increasingly on the use of barbarians federates, not only
the Visigoths in Toulouse, but also from the late 430s or early 440s the
Alans in Aremorica and the Burgundians in Sapaudia. 15 Britain, which had
effectively had to fend for itself since 407, was left to its own fate, and its
decision to copy imperial policy in employing Saxons backfired badly with
a Saxon revolt. 16 On the continent, however, the policy was successful
enough for Aetius, or rather his Gallic henchmen, to be able to put
together a sizeable confederacy to oppose Attila at the Catalaunian Plains
in 451. 17 In the event, this was to prove the last major intervention of the
Huns within the lands of the western empire – and although the west survived,
it did so only just, and, to judge by the hagiography of the period,
with a considerable scar on its psyche. The murder of Aetius in 454, or,
perhaps more important, that of Valentinian III a year later, undermined
what fragile unity still remained. Avitus, as a Gallo-Roman, and Majorian
had some short-lived successes in Gaul and Spain, but the rapid turn-over
of emperors in the ensuing period exacerbated the divisions between the
Romans and their federates, and from the 460s onwards individual barbarian
groups carved out kingdoms for themselves. The Vandals had
already done so in Africa, as had the Sueves in Spain, but now in the 470s
the Visigoths under Euric followed suit, to be followed after 476 by the
10 Thomas (1994) 51–87, 113–62. 11 Wood (1990); Haywood (1991).
12 Hydat. Chron. n. 164, 189, ed. R. W. Burgess, The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia
Constantinopolitana (Oxford 1993), pp. 106–7, 110–11.
13 Procop. Wars vi.15, ed. H . B. Dewing (London 1914–40). 14 Wood (1987) 256–60.
15 Chronicle of 452, 124, 127, 128, ed. T. Mommsen, MGH, AA 9 (Berlin 1892).
16 Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 23, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom, Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and
Other Works (Chichester 1978).
17 Jordanes, Get. 36.191, ed. T. Mommsen, MGH, AA 5 (Berlin 1882).
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