“‘Venit et extremis legio prætenta Britannis,
Quæ Scoto dat fræna truci, ferroque notatas
Perlegit exsangues Picto moriente figuras.’
And of this north part of Britain that verse of Juvenal (Sat., xv. 112):
“‘De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore Thule,’[24]
is also to be understood. Of this the best exposition is taken from Tacitus (Agric., xxi.):
“‘Jam verò principum filios, liberalibus artibus erudire, et ingenia Britannorum studiis Gallorum anteferre, ut qui modò linguam Romanum abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent.’
“Claudian (De III. Consul. Honor., 52-56) yet more particularly gives the name of Thule to the north part of Britain:
“‘Facta tui numerabat avi, quem littus adustæ
Horrescit Libyæ, ratibusque impervia Thule.
Ille leves Mauros, nec falso nomine Pictos
Edomuit, Scotumque vago mucrone secutus,
Fregit Hyperboreas remis audacibus undas.’
And in these lines (De IV. Consul. Honor., 26-33):
“‘Ille, Caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis,
Qui medios Libyæ sub casside pertulit æstus,
Terribilis Mauro, debellatorque Britanni
Littoris, ac pariter Boreæ vastator et Austri.
Quid rigor æternus cœli, quid sidera prosunt?
Ignotumque fretum? Maduerunt Saxoue fuso,
Orcades: incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule:
Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne,’
where, by placing the Moors and Britons as the remotest people then known, and mentioning the Scots and Picts as the inhabitants of Thule and Ierne, he demonstrates clearly that Thule is the north part of the isle of Britain, inhabited by the Scots and Picts. For this Ierne, or, as some read it, ‘Hyberne,’ can no way be understood of Ireland properly so called; first, because Ireland can never deserve the epithet ‘glacialis,’[25] since, by the testimony of the Irish writers, the snow and ice continue not any time there; secondly, the Romans were never in Ireland, whereas, according to the above-mentioned verses, Theodosius passed over the Friths of Forth and Clyde, called by him ‘Hyperboreæ undæ,’ and entered Strathearn, which to this day bears the name Ierne; in which Roman medals are found, and the Roman camps and military ways are to be seen—the undoubted testimonies of their being there; and therefore is so to be understood in the same poet’s lines upon Stilicho (see De Laud. Stilich., lib. ii., 250-254), who was employed in the British war: