The Ethnology of the British Islands

by R. G. Latham

A little consideration will tell us that the three names of this important pedigree—Constans, Constantius, and Constantinus, have no etymological connexion with the substantive Constantia; in other words, that Constans does not mean the constant Man, just as prudens means the prudent, or sapiens the wise. No[95] such signification will account for the forms in -ius and -inus. To this it may be added that the family was of foreign extraction, as were the families of nearly half the later emperors. The name, I believe, was foreign also. If so, it was most probably Keltic; since con, both as a simple single term, and as an element of compounds is a common Keltic proper name. The only fact against this view is the descent of the first of the three emperors—Constantius. He was not born in either Gaul or Britain. On the contrary, his father was a high official in the Diocese of Illyricum, and his mother, a niece of the Emperor Claudius;[10] circumstances which, at the first view, seem to contradict the inference from the name. They do so, however, in appearance only. The most unlikely man to have been high in office in Illyricum was a native Illyrian; for it was the policy of Rome to put Kelts in the Slavonic, and Slavonians in the Keltic, provinces; just as, at the present moment, Russia places Finn regiments in the Caucasus, and Caucasian in Finland. If this view be correct, a Keltic name is evidence, as far as it goes, of Keltic blood.

In the next generation we have to deal with both historical facts and traditions connected with the pedigree of Constantine the Great. That he was born in Britain, and that his[96] mother was of low origin, are the historical facts; that she was the daughter of King Coel of Colchester is the tradition. The latter is of any amount of worthlessness, and no stress is laid upon it. The former are considered confirmatory of the present view. The chief support, however, lies in the British character of the name.

In the Panegyric of Mamertinus on the Emperor Maximian, one of the Augusti, who shared the imperial power with Diocletian, we have the first mention of the Picts. Worthless as the Panegyrists are when we want specific facts, they have the great merit of being cotemporary to the events they allude to; for allusions of a tantalizing and unsatisfactory character is all we get from them. However, Mamertinus is the first writer who mentions the Picts, and he does it in his notice of the revolt of Carausius.

More important than this is a passage which gives us an army of Frank mercenaries in the City of London, as early as A.D. 290—there or thereabouts. It is a passage of which too little notice has, hitherto, been taken—"By so thorough a consent of the Immortal Gods, O unconquered Cæsar, has the extermination of all the enemies, whom you have attacked, and of the Franks more especially, been decreed, that even those of your soldiers, who, having missed their way on a[97] foggy sea, reached the town of London, destroyed promiscuously and throughout the city the whole remains of that mercenary multitude of barbarians, that, after escaping the battle, sacking the town, and, attempting flight, was still left—a deed, whereby your provincials were not only saved, but delighted by the sight of the slaughter."

One German tribe, then at least, has set its foot on the land of Britain as early as the reign of Diocletian; and that as enemies. How far their settlement was permanent, and how far the particular section of them, mentioned by Mamertinus, represented the whole of the invasion, is uncertain. The paramount fact is the existence of hostile Franks in Middlesex nearly 200 years before the epoch of Hengist.

Were there Saxons as well? This is a question for the sequel. At present, I remark, that Mamertinus mentions them by name but without placing them on the soil of Britain. They merely vexed the British Seas.

Were there any other Germans? Aurelius Victor suggests that there were. A.D. 306, Constantius dies at York, and Constantine, his son, "assisted by all who were about, but especially by Eroc, King of the Alemanni, assumes the empire." Now Eroc had accompanied Constantius as an ally (auxilii gratii); so that there were Alemanni[98] in Yorkshire, as well as Franks in Middlesex, with powers, more or less, approaching those of independent populations; at any rate, in a different position from the mere legionary Germans, of whom further notice will soon be taken.

In Julian's reign the Picts, Scots, and Attacotti harass the South Britons. This is on the cotemporary and unexceptionable evidence of Ammianus Marcellinus. And the same cotemporary and unexceptionable evidence adds the Saxons to his list of devastators—"Picti, Saxonesque, et Scoti, et Attacotti Britannos ærumnis vexavere continuis." Mark the word continuis.

The Alemanni of Britain are noticed by the same writer in a passage which must be taken along with the notice of the Alemanni under Eroc. "Valentinian placed Fraomarius as king over the Buccinobantes, a nation of the Alemanni, near Mentz. Soon afterwards, however, an attack upon his people devastated their country (pa- gum, gau). He was then translated to Britain, and placed over the Alemanni, at that time flourishing both in numbers and power, as tribune."

We may now ask what foreign elements were introduced into Britain by the Roman legions; since nothing is more certain than that the Roman armies consisted, but in a small degree, of[99] Romans. The Notitia[11] Utriusque Imperii helps us here; indeed it may be that it supplies us with a complete list of the imperial forces in all their ethnological heterogeneousness. Some of the titles of the regiments and companies (alæ, numeri, cohortes) are unexplained: several, however, are taken from the country of the soldiers that composed them.