To make up for the loss of the earlier books of Tacitus’s Annals we have the history of Dion Cassius, a Greek rhetorician who wrote his Roman History about A.D. 222. Though a useful compiler, Dion is, of course, no contemporary authority for the conquest of Britain under Claudius. Such as he is, however, we have to depend on him almost entirely for our knowledge of that event.
After we lose the guidance of Tacitus, our information as to Roman Britain becomes excessively meagre. Even the work of Dion Cassius after A.D. 54 is lost in the original, and only exists for us in an epitome—a tolerably full one, it must be admitted—made in the twelfth century by Xiphilinus, an ignorant and careless monk of Constantinople. In addition to this, however, we receive a feeble and flickering light from the collection of memoirs called the Historia Augusta. This book, the result of the joint labours of some five or six authors whose very names are a subject of controversy, relates in clumsy and uncritical fashion the chief events in the lives of the Roman emperors during the second and third centuries. Poor as is the performance of these authors, and though they were probably separated by an interval of one or two centuries from the events which they record, we have reason to be grateful to them for the information which they supply to us, especially as to our two most illustrious conquerors, Hadrian and Severus. For the reign of the latter emperor we may also glean a few facts from the work of the Greek historian Herodian.
The story of the imperial pretenders, Carausius and Allectus, and of the suppression of their independent royalty, is told in a certain fashion by two panegyrists, called Mamertinus and Eumenius, in their orations before the triumphant emperors; but it is hard to extract solid history out of their windy rhetoric.
A historian to whom we owe much, and should doubtless owe far more if a perverse literary fate had not deprived us of nearly half of his work, is the life-guardsman Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the latter half of the fourth century and wrote the history of the Roman empire from A.D. 99 to 378. As it is, possessing only those books which tell of the years from 353 to 378, we derive from him some valuable information as to the British campaigns of the elder Theodosius. If we possessed the earlier books of his history, we should almost certainly know much more than we do as to the appearance of Roman Britain in the second century and the mode of life of its native inhabitants, for Ammianus is fond of showing off his geographical knowledge, and resembles Herodotus in the interest which he takes in the manners and customs of half-civilised races. His Latin style—he was a Syrian Greek by birth—is extraordinarily affected and often obscure, but for all that, few literary events could be more gratifying to the historical student than the recovery of the lost books of Ammianus.
For the social, military and religious life of the Romans in Britain an invaluable source of information is contained in the inscriptions which are collected in the seventh volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1873). Many of the most important will be found in the Lapidarium Septentrionale, edited by Dr. Bruce (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1875). Inscriptions discovered more recently must be looked for in the volumes of the Ephemeris Epigraphica, published by the Academie der Wissenschaften at Berlin, or in the Archæological Journal and the proceedings of local antiquarian societies.
Orosius, a disciple of St. Augustine, has done something to lighten the darkness which hangs over the end of Roman rule in Britain. In the last book of his Histories, which were meant to show that the calamities of the empire were not due to the introduction of Christianity, he tells us with some little detail the story of the military revolt of the year 406, of which we also learn some details from the Greek historian Zosimus. A chronicler who generally bears the name of another friend of St. Augustine’s, Prosper Tiro, but who was evidently a theological opponent of that saint, and whose personality is really unknown, inserts in his Chronicle two all-important dates for the Roman evacuation of Britain and for the Saxon invasions. The contemporary poet, Claudian, writing in 403, also gives us in a few lines some important information as to the former event. This is practically the last trustworthy notice as to our island that we find in the works of any classical writer. Henceforth our history for many centuries is written for us entirely by ecclesiastics, and this must be the modern historian’s excuse for the strongly ecclesiastical colour which he is obliged to give even to a political narrative. One such ecclesiastical authority is The Life of Germanus by the presbyter Constantius, as has been previously said. This Life has suffered much from later interpolations. See an elaborate analysis of it by Levison in the Neues Archiv, vol. xxix.
The next writer who lifts any portion of the pall which hides the history of our island in the fifth and sixth centuries is Gildas, the author of the Liber Querulus “concerning the ruin of Britain”. Rightly is the book called querulous, for it is one long drawn out lamentation over the barbarities of the Saxon invaders and the irreligion of the Britons which had brought this ruin upon them. If Gildas, who wrote probably between 540 and 560, had chosen to tell us simply all that he had seen or heard from men of the preceding generation concerning Saxon raids and Cymric resistance, his work would have been one of the corner-stones of English history. As it is, we have to be thankful for the few facts that he imparts to us between sob and sob over the wickedness of the world. A critical edition of this author by Mommsen will be found in vol. xiii. of the Auctores Antiquissimi in the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica. An excellent edition with notes by the Rev. Hugh Williams, Professor of Church History at the Theological College, Bala, is now in course of publication for the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion.
More perplexing, but fuller of matter, good, bad and indifferent, is the work of the much later Welsh ecclesiastic, Nennius, who lived about two centuries and a half after Gildas. This author exhibits a degree of ignorance and puzzle-headedness which gives one a very unfavourable idea of the intellectual condition of a Welsh monastery about the year 800. His chronology is wildly incorrect, and he intermingles with solemn history stories of dragons and enchanters worthy of the Arabian Nights; but he has inserted into the middle of his book extracts from the work of a much earlier author (probably a Northumbrian Celt living under Anglian rule) who described the contests of English and Welsh between 547 and 679. This part of the book (to be found in chapters 57 to 65 of Nennius) has probably a real historic value. It is important to note that it is in this portion that the name of King Arthur is found. As already mentioned (p. 100) we are much indebted to the labours of Prof. Zimmer (Nennius Vindicatus) with reference to this important but most provoking writer.
Turning from the Welsh to the English authorities we come to the illustrious name of Bede, the greatest scholar of his age and the best historian whom any European country produced in the early Middle Ages. His main work, the Historia Ecclesiastica, was finished in the year 731, about four years before his death. There is an excellent edition of this book and of some of the smaller historical works of Bede by the Rev. Charles Plummer (2 vols.: Oxford, 1896). The historical importance of this work begins with its account of the conversion of England to Christianity; and, for all the events of the seventh century and the early part of the eighth, it is priceless. As to the events which marked the Roman occupation of Britain, Bede probably had no other sources of information than those which we also possess. For the two centuries of darkness between the departure of the last Roman soldier and the arrival of the first Roman missionary he had evidently very scanty sources to draw from, and in fact he springs, almost at one bound, from the year 450 to 596.
For the closing years of the seventh century we have another valuable authority in the Life of Wilfrid, written by his contemporary, Eddius (Historians of the Church of York, edited by J. Raine, Rolls Series): and this is the more important as, for some reason or other, Bede shows sometimes a curious reticence as to Wilfrid’s career. There is a very careful comparison of the two narratives, that of Bede and that of Eddius, by Mr. B. W. Wells in the sixth volume of the English Historical Review (1891), pp. 535–50. His conclusions are not favourable to Eddius’s veracity.