¹ Bury, J. B., ‘The Homeric and the Historic Kimmeriansr’, Klio vi (1906), 79–88, at 80 n. 3, referring to Bell. Goth. 6.15.4 ff. (p. 215, Haury). The title of this important paper would not lead the reader to suppose that it includes a discussion of Procopius on Britain; and that perhaps is why so many recent historians have overlooked it.Google Scholar

² Bell. Goth. 8.20.1, 4, 6, 7, 10, et saepe.

³ Bury, p. 82 n. 2, cf. Rubin, B., Prokopios von Kaisereia (Stuttgart, 1954), col. 240.Google Scholar

⁴ Stein, E., Histoire du bas-empire, (Paris, 1949), pp. 718 f.Google Scholar

⁵ Bury, pp. 82 f. So also Freeman, E. A., Western Europe in the Fifth Century (London, 1904), p. 160 n., ‘Nothing can be plainer than that here Brittia and not Britannia is Britain’, but Gibbon, iv, 157 n. 168 (ed. Bury) thought that Brittia and Britannia were one and the same place though Procopius ‘weakly attempts to distinguish the islands’.Google Scholar

⁶ Not ‘400 stades’, as Dewing says by a lamentable slip, and is strangely followed by Ure, P. N., Justinian and His Age (London, 1951), p. 246Google Scholar (‘fifty miles’), and Burn, A. R., ‘Procopius and the Island of Ghosts’, English Historical Review lxx (1955), 258–61, at 258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ For references see conveniently Ogilvie and Richmond on Tacitus, Agr. 10.2; Gibbon, iv, 156 f., ed. Bury.

⁸ Bury, p. 83 n. 1. For his earlier view see his Gibbon, iv, 157 n. 168. Burn, p. 258, thinks that there can be no doubt that both Brittia and Britannia alike represent Britain.

⁹ Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England ² (Oxford, 1947), p. 6.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ekwall, E., ‘Tribal Names in English Place-Names’, Namn och Bygd xli (1953), 129–77, at 151–3.Google Scholar

¹¹ On Bede and the Frisians see some interesting remarks by Myres, J. N. L., ‘The Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes’, Proceedings of the British Academy lvi (1970), 145–74, at 151.Google Scholar

¹² Stenton, op. cit., p. 6. Incidentally, there might not seem to be much difficulty in translating this sentence of Procopius; yet Mrs Chadwick, N. K., ‘The Colonization of Brittany from Celtic Britain’, Proceedings of the British Academy li (1965), 235–99Google Scholar, at 260, speaks as though only women and children migrated, while Blair, P. Hunter, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1956), p. 18, represents the English and Frisians as emigrating without any reference to the Britons.Google Scholar

¹³ Mrs Chadwick, p. 262.

¹⁴ Gildas, De Excidio 10.2.

¹⁵ Stenton, loc. cit.

¹⁶ Contra, Stenton, pp. 5, 7, followed by Mrs Chadwick, p. 262. 1 do not think that the Translatio S. Alexandri, on which they rely, is of value in this connection.

¹⁷ Bury, pp. 81 ff., but in his History of the Later Roman Empire, ii (London, 1923), p. 258 n. 4, Bury changed his mind and says that the Angles in the embassy ‘doubtless supplied Procopius with the material for his curious account’ of Britain.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. 9.26; Bede, Hist. Eccles. 1.25, cf. Stenton, p. 59 (‘dependent’), Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 5 (‘equality’). The mysterious words subiectos vestros of Gregory the Great, Reg. 6.49, are too late to concern us.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. 4.4; cf. Procopius, Bell. Goth. 5.12.12 ff. My scepticism seems to have been anticipated by Freeman, op. cit., p. 160, ‘To be sure we have to put up with hints that the Frankish kings claimed the overlordship of the island’, etc.

²⁰ Marius, s.a. 560.2 (Chronica Minora, ii, 237).

²¹ Bell. Goth. 5.12.9 and 13 ff.

²² So Dermot Fahy, ‘When Did the Britons Become Bretons?’, Welsh History Review ii (1964–1965), 111–24, at 111, 124.Google Scholar

²³ Contra, Mrs Chadwick, p. 257.

²⁴ Jordanes, Get. 237 ‘Brittonum solacia postulavit’. Sidonius' references to these Britons give no hint that they were subject to the Emperors.

²² Jordanes, Get. 191; cf. Sidonius, caret. vii. 547.

¹⁶ In view of this passage of Jordanes I find it hard to accept the view of Fahy, p. 122, that ‘there is no real evidence for large-scale movements to Brittany in the fifth century.’ The term ‘large-scale’ is a relative one, but it surely applies to a movement which could field 12,000 warriors in the fifth century.

²⁷ Cf. Mrs Chadwick, p. 270.

²⁸ Orosius, Hist. 1.2.53.

²⁹ Canon 9, p. 124, Maassen.

³⁰ Bury, p. 81.

³¹ That the story of Radigis originated in the North was shown by Chadwick, H. M., The Heroic Age (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 979Google Scholar. Cf. Bowra, C. M., Heroic Poetry (London, repr. 1964), p. 44Google Scholar (cf. 283 f.), ‘Procopius’ account … looks like a loan from a poem of Frankish origin.' Chadwick with less than his usual caution wrote that ‘there is no ground for disputing that it has a historical basis’. Burn, p. 259, also speaks of the ‘perhaps basically historical saga of Radigis’, while Lopez, R. S., ‘Le problème des relations anglo-byzantines du septième au dixième siécle’, Byzantion xviii (1948), 139–62Google Scholar, at 141, thinks on the basis of this tale that the Angles could put 400 ships to sea, and that the Angles in the Frankish embassy may have told Procopius about their recent naval victory over the Warni! And Morris, John, The Age of Arthur (London, 1973), p. 287, though not believing that Herrnegis- clus understood the language of birds, accepts practically every other detail of the story, writing vividly of ‘the outraged English virgin’. On the other hand, Gibbon, iv, 157, was sceptical, ‘a singular, though an improbable, adventure, which announces the spirit, rather than the delicacy, of an English heroine’. In his notes to Gibbon, Bury (iv, 157 n. 169), describes the story as ‘legendary’; and that, in my belief, is the correct attitude.Google Scholar

³² Anecdota, 19.13. On this see J. O. Ward, ‘Procopius, Bell. Goth. ii.6.28: The Problem of Contacts Between Justinian I and Britain’, Byzantion xxxviii (1968), 460–71Google Scholar, at 465. It must not be supposed that there is archaeological evidence for much intercourse between Britain and the Mediterranean at this date. See Alcock, Leslie, Arthur's Britain (London, 1971), p. 206Google Scholar, ‘We should probably think of occasional ships, arriving irregularly with long intervals between each visit, rather than any regular, organized and intensive trade’, and the whole judicious pacsage. I am not competent to comment on the Latin inscription found at Penmachno, Caernarvon-shire, and dated ‘in tempore lustini consulis’, i.e. AD 540: see Nash-Williams, V. E., The Early Christian Monuments of Wales (Cardiff, 1950), p. 93Google Scholar, No. 104, who remarks that the inscription seems to indicate contacts between Wales and Gaul (Burgundy). But Johnstone, P. K., ‘A Consular Chronology of Dark Age Britain’, Antiquity xxxvi (1962), 102–9, suggests direct contacts with the Mediterranean by the Atlantic seaways.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ Procopius, Bell. Vand. 3.1.18. I can find no other author who uses the name ‘Brittia’ to denote Britain.

³⁴ Stenton, op. cit., pp. 6 ff.

³⁵ I am deeply grateful to my colleague Malcolm Todd for reading this paper and discussing with me some of the problems which it raises. He asks why there should have been a migration from Britain c.550, as Procopius states. I must leave this question to students of the history of the Anglo-Saxons to answer. It is not easy for a casual reader of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to discover the explanation.