SECTION B.
Spread of Gospel—Arianism—Britain orthodox—Last Imperial visit—Heathen temples stripped
—British Emperors—Magnentius—Gratian—Julian—British corn-trade—First inroad of Picts and
Scots—Valentinian—Saxon raids—Campaign of Theodosius—Re-conquest of Valentia.
B. 1.—For a whole generation after the triumph of Constantine tranquillity reigned in Britain. The ruined Christian churches were everywhere restored, and new ones built; and in Britain, as elsewhere, the Gospel spread rapidly and widely—the more so that the Church here was but little troubled[[336]] by the [230] desperate struggle with Arianism which was convulsing the East. Britain, as Athanasius tells us, gave an assenting vote to the decisions of Nicaea (σύμψηφος ἐτύγχανε) [sumpsêphos etunchane], and British Bishops actually sat in the Councils of Arles (314) and of Ariminum (360).
B. 2.—The old heathen worship still continued side by side with the new Faith; but signs soon appeared that the Church would tolerate no such rivalry when once her power was equal to its suppression. Julius Firmicus (who wrote against "Profane Religions" in 343) implores the sons of Constantine to continue their good work of stripping the temples and melting down the images;—in special connection with a visit paid by them that year to Britain[[337]] (our last Imperial visit), when they had actually been permitted to cross the Channel in winter-time; an irrefragable proof of Heaven's approval of their iconoclasm. It is highly probable that they pursued here also a course at once so pious and so profitable, and that the fanes of the ancient deities but lingered on in poverty and neglect till finally suppressed by Theodosius (A.D. 390).
B. 3.—And now Britain resumed her rôle of Emperor-maker.[[338]] After the death of Constans, (A.D. 350), Magnentius, an officer in the Gallic army of British birth, set up as Augustus, and was supported by Gratian, the leader of the Army of Britain, and by his son Valentinian. Magnentius himself had his [231] capital at Treves, and for three years reigned over the whole Prefecture of the Gauls. He professed a special zeal for orthodoxy, and was the first to introduce burning, as the appropriate punishment for heresy, into the penal code of Christendom. Meanwhile his colleague Decentius advanced against Constantius, and was defeated, at Nursa on the Drave, with such awful slaughter that the old Roman Legions never recovered from the shock. Henceforward the name signifies a more or less numerous body, more or less promiscuously armed, such as we find so many of in the 'Notitia.' Magnentius, in turn, was slain (A.D. 353), and the supreme command in Britain passed to the new Caesar of the West, Julian "the Apostate."
B. 4.—Under him we first find our island mentioned as one of the great corn-growing districts of the Empire, on which Gaul was able to draw to a very large extent for the supply of her garrisons. No fewer than eight hundred wheat-ships sailed from our shores on this errand; a number which shows how large an area of the island must have been brought under cultivation, and how much the country had prospered during the sixty years of unbroken internal peace which had followed on the suppression of Allectus.
B. 5.—That peace was now to be broken up. The northern tribes had by this recovered from the awful chastisement inflicted upon them by Severus,[[339]] and, after an interval of 150 years, once more (A.D. 362) [232] appeared south of Hadrian's Wall. Whether as yet they burst through it is uncertain; for now we find a new confederacy of barbarians. It is no longer that of Caledonians and Meatae, but of Picts and Scots. And these last were seafarers. Their home was not in Britain at all, but in the north of Ireland. In their "skiffs"[[340]] they were able to turn the flank of the Roman defences, and may well have thus introduced their allies from beyond Solway also. Anyhow, penetrate the united hordes did into the quiet cornfields of Roman Britain, repeating their raids ever more frequently and extending them ever more widely, till their spearmen were cut [Errata: to] pieces in 450 at Stamford by the swords of the newly-arrived English.[[341]]
B. 6.—For the moment they were driven back without much difficulty, by Lupicinus, Julian's Legate (the first Legate we hear of in Britain since Lollius Urbicus), who, when the death of Constantius II. (in 361) had extinguished that royal line, aided his master to become "Dominus totius orbis"—as he is called in an inscription[[342]] describing his triumphant campaigns "ex oceano Britannico." And after "the victory of the Galilaean" (363) had ended Julian's brief and futile [233] attempt to restore the Higher Paganism (to which several British inscriptions testify),[[343]] it was again to an Emperor from Britain that there fell the Lordship of the World—Valentinian, son of Gratian, whose dynasty lasted out the remaining century of Romano-British history.
B. 7.—His reign was marked in our land by a life-and-death struggle with the inrushing barbarians. The Picts and Scots were now joined by yet another tribe, the cannibal[[344]] Attacotti[[345]] of Valentia, and their invasions were facilitated by the simultaneous raids of the Saxon pirates (with whom they may perhaps have been actually in concert) along the coast. The whole land had been wasted, and more than one Roman general defeated, when Theodosius, father of the Great Emperor, was sent, in 368, to the rescue. Crossing from Boulogne to Richborough in a lucky calm,[[346]] and fixing his head-quarters at London, or Augusta, as it was now called [Londinium vetus oppidum, quod Augustam posteritas apellavit], he first, by a skilful combination of flying columns, cut to pieces the scattered hordes of the savages as they were making off with their booty, and finally not only drove them back beyond the Wall, which he repaired and re-garrisoned,[[347]] [234] but actually recovered the district right up to Agricola's rampart, which had been barbarian soil ever since the days of Severus.[[348]] It was now (369) formed into a fifth British province, and named Valentia in honour of Valens, the brother and colleague of the Emperor.
B. 8.—The Twentieth Legion, whose head-quarters had so long been at Chester, seems to have been moved to guard this new province. Forty years later Claudian speaks of it as holding the furthest outposts in Britain, in his well-known description of the dying Pict: