[36] Sed ipse erat dux bellorum.
[37] This may be either Chester or Leicester.
[38] Ep. i., 7. This is a very important passage, as showing at what an early date British refugees were settled near the mouth of the Loire in such numbers as to be an important element in Gaulish politics. Arvandus, once Prætorian prefect of Gaul, was accused before the Emperor of high treason because he had corresponded with the King of the Visigoths, inviting him to attack “the Britons situated on the Loire,” who were evidently loyal to the empire. In another letter of the same writer (Ep. iii., 9) we find him pleading with his friend Riothamus, a Breton chief (or king), for the restoration of some slaves who have been coaxed away from a friend of his by “Britannis clam sollicitantibus”. This same Riothamus, described by Jordanes as “rex Brittonum,” fought with Euric, King of the Visigoths, on behalf of the empire (Jord. de rebus Geticis, xlv.).
[39] Excerpta e Prisci historia, p. 199 (ed. Bonn).
[40] De Bello Gothico, ii., 6.
[41] De Bello Gothico, iv., 20.
[42] Between 575 and 578, or possibly between 585 and 590.
[43] This story is told in similar but by no means identical words in an early life of Pope Gregory, probably written by a monk of Whitby who was a contemporary of Bede’s, and discovered by Paul Ewald: Hist. Aufsätze an G. Waitz gewidmet. It has been suggested that Bede copied from this biography. To me it seems more probable that Bede and the biographer, independently of one another, repeated the common traditio majorum.
[44] Benedict I., if the earlier date is correct; otherwise Pelagius II. On the fourth day of Gregory’s journey a grasshopper alighted on the page of the Bible which he was reading during the noontide halt. “Ecce locusta,” he said, and interpreted the sign as meaning Loco sta, “Stay where you are”. In that hour arrived the papal emissary commanding him to return to Rome.
[45] “Inter Langobardorum gladios”: a favourite expression of Gregory’s.