From the early fourth century Latin authors applied the term Scot(t)i to hostile peoples from Ireland engaged in periodic attacks against Britannia. Along with other similarly homogenised groupings — Picti, Saxones and, to a lesser degree, Atecotti — Scotti play an ill-defined and poorly documented role in the transition from late Roman to sub-Roman Britain. Whether these intrusive barbarians should be considered agents or mere beneficiaries of this transformation is subject to shifting scholarly fashion, but the longer-term historical significance of Germanic infiltration, conquest and settlement of the southern and eastern lowlands of England from the early fifth century has naturally received by far the highest degree of attention, even if the intensity or actuality of Saxon raids on Britannia in the fourth century has come under closer scrutiny in recent decades.Footnote 1 In contrast, the Irish or ‘Scottic’ dimension has attracted much less interest from Roman scholars, partly owing to long-established historiographic trends (and perhaps national agendas) dating back to the nineteenth century, but also reflecting the complexities of the evidence for Irish raiding and settlement. Few individuals combine expertise in Roman artefacts found in Ireland, the archaeology of defensive installations along the western littoral of Britannia, Welsh toponymy, Latin- and/or ogham-inscribed memorials and early medieval Irish and Welsh historico-genealogical traditions. Even from a purely classicist's perspective, however, while the archaeological aspects of Roman-Irish contacts are relatively well served in recent and older literature, a comprehensive collection of Greco-Roman texts relating to Ireland and its inhabitants was first accomplished only in 2001, despite the endeavours of some nineteenth-century philologists.Footnote 2 Inevitably much about the Irish threat to Britannia in the fourth and early fifth centuries is, and will remain, obscure: sporadic and terse reports in Roman literature allow little scope for gauging the scale, frequency and locations of incursions or the aims and precise identity of the perpetrators, even if archaeology and the later Irish evidence can potentially elucidate some of these questions. In these circumstances the most slender thread of evidence contributes to the larger historical tapestry. The modest purpose of this short article is to draw attention to two references to the Scotti, hitherto overlooked even in specialist studies, which not only rank among the earliest witnesses to this term, but also represent a unique occurrence of Scotti, or rather Σκόττοι, in a Greek source.
A full assessment of the evidence for Irish raiding cannot be attempted here, but a brief survey of Roman written sources will be instructive.Footnote 3 In each case it is important to distinguish the date of composition from the historical events described. The evidence first hints at Irish raiding towards the end of the third century. Anonymous panegyrics to Constantius Caesar in a.d. 297 and Constantine in a.d. 310 reveal a dim awareness of a potential but apparently not pressing threat posed to Britannia by Hiberni, mentioned in the context of Constantius' campaigns in the diocese in a.d. 296 and 305–6, although Roman-Hiberni contact or hostilities are explicitly denied.Footnote 4 A somewhat obscure passage of Eusebius' Vita Constantini, completed c. a.d. 337–40, alludes to otherwise unreported military operations undertaken by Constantine in Britain at some point in the period c. a.d. 306–12, when he apparently suppressed rebels and repelled invaders. If the account is accurate, the adversaries may have included Irish raiders, although no particulars can be divined in Eusebius' vague circumlocutory language.Footnote 5
The term Scot(t)i is first attested in an appendix to an inventory of provinces known as the Laterculus Veronensis (or Nomina provinciarum omnium). The sole manuscript witness places Scoti, Picti, Calidoni at the beginning of a list of forty ‘barbarian peoples which have sprung forth under the emperors’ (‘gentes barbarae quae pullulaverunt sub imperatoribus’), arranged in a rough geographical sequence running south-eastwards along the entire length of the European and Near Eastern limites. The most recent scholarship concurs that this is a homogeneous document dating to a.d. 314; although the possibility of subsequent revision or addition cannot be entirely excluded, the received text is nowhere inconsistent with the broader evidence for this period and a case for interpolation has not been argued.Footnote 6 The etymology of Late Latin Scot(t)i is notoriously obscure, as are the reasons for its supersession of the former term Hiberni and cognates. Clearly Scot(t)i did not evolve from an organic development in Latin, but nor does it correspond to any known indigenous (Goidelic) term which the Irish, in whole or in part, applied to themselves. Whatever its derivation, the occurrence of this new name in the Laterculus Veronensis implies a change in Roman relations with or at least perceptions of the inhabitants of Ireland. From a Roman perspective Scot(t)i possibly originated as a generic descriptive designation, perhaps signifying raiders and pirates, later misconceived as an ethnonym.
The earliest dated incursion by Scotti is reported in the Res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus, compiled in Rome during the mid- to late 380s, but not completed and published until c. a.d. 390–91, possibly in instalments.Footnote 7 Ammianus reports that Scotti and Picts, ‘in breach of the agreed peace’, devastated unspecified ‘places close to the frontiers’ of Britannia in the winter of a.d. 359/60. Julian responded by dispatching a task-force under the magister equitum Lupicinus. The course and outcome of this operation are not recorded.Footnote 8 The existence of a prior truce between the Romans and one or both peoples implies earlier hostilities, possibly reflected in Ammianus' vague allusion to ‘a mass of preceding disasters’, but the dearth of evidence permits only speculation.Footnote 9 While Roman political engagement with Irish peoples is not otherwise documented in literary sources, the presence of officially stamped Roman silver ingots in two late fourth-/early fifth-century hoards in Ireland may point to diplomatic subsidies or mercenary payments.Footnote 10
Subsequently, towards the beginning of Book 26, Ammianus supplies a catalogue of barbarian peoples engaged in harassing peripheral provinces of the Empire, including attacks launched by Scotti, Atecotti, Picts and Saxons on Britannia.Footnote 11 It has been convincingly argued that this notice, coinciding with the accession of Valentinian I and Valens in March a.d. 364, does not report specific events at that time but merely previews diverse barbarian inroads that occurred at different dates during their joint reign, and which are separately described in the following chapters under the years in which they occurred.Footnote 12 Accordingly, the incursions into Britannia foreshadowed here correspond to the so-called barbarica conspiratio of a.d. 367 narrated in Book 27, in which the various enemies of the diocese appeared to co-ordinate assaults on several fronts and threatened to overwhelm the military and civilian administration.Footnote 13 Valentinian responded by dispatching an expedition from Gaul under the command of Theodosius, probably as comes rei militaris, who repelled the invaders and restored order during a.d. 367/8–68/9.Footnote 14 Ammianus supplies the only description of this campaign, which was characterised by small-scale, irregular combat operations against dispersed opponents, a type of warfare that does not necessarily suit a formal military narrative.Footnote 15 His sketch of events is short, chronologically vague and almost entirely lacking in military and geographical detail, certainly in comparison to his lengthy and meticulous account of Theodosius' subsequent campaign in North Africa in a.d. 373–75. The disparity between Ammianus' treatments of the two campaigns has prompted competing explanations, all to varying degrees impressionistic, including a dearth of specific information about British events, Ammianus' artistic and compositional priorities or, for the more conspiracy-minded, his tactful silence or cover-up of Theodosius' failures or limited success in Britain.Footnote 16 Whether wholly successful or not, Theodosius was lauded and well rewarded. Upon his return to the court in a.d. 368/9 Valentinian promoted him to magister equitum and he subsequently became one of the emperor's foremost generals until his obscurely documented fall from grace in a.d. 375/6.Footnote 17 Furthermore, Theodosius' introduction of the provincial name Valentia in Britannia in celebration of the victory in a.d. 368/9, whatever this new nomenclature entailed, implies that the dynasty of Valentinian and Valens was publically honoured in and credited with the restoration of order.Footnote 18 This view is supported by Ammianus' obituary notice for Valentinian, where Theodosius' achievements in Britain are arrogated to the emperor without mention of the general.Footnote 19
Nevertheless, the nature of the crisis in Britannia in a.d. 367/8–68/9 continues to harbour uncertainties. The degree (or even the possibility) of co-ordination between the various hostile peoples has been doubted, while the evidence for Saxon participation is ambiguous.Footnote 20 Certainly factors other than barbarian invasion contributed to the reportedly anarchic state into which the diocese descended, including treachery on the frontier, desertions and indiscipline within the garrison, and an attempted usurpation by a political exile, aspects which the government may have preferred to play down or suppress.Footnote 21 Furthermore, it is possible that Ammianus has magnified the scale of the crisis. Theodosius' task-force comprised four units of auxilia palatina, perhaps 2,000–3,000 infantry, apparently intended to augment the existing garrison, but in any case the same size as the force dispatched under Lupicinus to quell border disturbances in a.d. 359/60, of which no further details are reported.Footnote 22 In addition, archaeologists have not succeeded in identifying conclusive evidence of destruction and coin hoarding associated with a.d. 367–68/9 or of Theodosius' programme of urban and military refurbishment, including frontier defences, as delineated by Ammianus.Footnote 23 Above all, it has long been acknowledged that the historian's consistently complimentary depiction of Theodosius as saviour and restorer must reflect political circumstances at the time of writing, when the son of the comes reigned in the East as Theodosius I (a.d. 379–95).Footnote 24 These considerations have prompted some scholars to doubt that barbarian invasion was the main cause of the turbulence or even an important contributory factor.Footnote 25
It is hard to escape the conclusion that, at least in comparison with other fourth-century imperial interventions in Britannia, the events of a.d. 367–68/9 acquired enhanced post eventum significance in Theodosian dynastic image-making after a.d. 379, which to differing degrees permeates all surviving sources.Footnote 26 While this undoubtedly poses problems of interpretation, there is no reason to believe that contemporary incursions by Scotti were propagandistic invention, rhetorical flight of fancy or retrojection of later developments. Almost certainly prior to the publication of Ammianus' Res gestae, Pacatus delivered a panegyric to Theodosius I in Rome in a.d. 389, in which he summarised the martial achievements of the elder Theodosius by alluding to victorious campaigns against Scotti, Saxons, Sarmatians, Alamanni and Moors.Footnote 27 Even allowing for encomiastic licence, the probability that the imperial addressee had himself served under his father in Britain in a.d. 367/8–68/9 would militate against gratuitous fabrication of operations against the Scotti.Footnote 28 A similar spectrum of adversaries may be discerned in the surviving lines of an epigram inscribed on fragments of a statue-base found in the vicinity of Stobi in Macedonia, believed to belong to a posthumous gilded statue of Theodosius the Elder.Footnote 29 This was one of several statues erected throughout the Empire under his imperial offspring, presumably representing an ‘authorised version’ of Theodosius' military career, in which his campaigns in Britain and Africa were apparently singled out for special mention.Footnote 30 In the late 390s Claudian similarly dwells on these two military theatres in encomiastic portraits of the elder Theodosius, though rhetorical opportunities offered by the geographical and environmental extremes of Britain and Africa may have influenced the poet's chosen emphasis. Accordingly, Scotti feature among Theodosius' northern opponents in two panegyrics addressed to Honorius in a.d. 396 and 398, which likewise sought to extol the military record of the emperor's paternal grandfather.Footnote 31 In light of certain fanciful aspects of Claudian's depiction (e.g. Saxon blood spilt in Orkney; Picts slain in Thule), some scholars have been inclined to discard his testimony entirely and, to be sure, one cannot exclude the possibility that in the panegyrist's repertoire Scottus, Pictus and Saxo had become stock characters in a topological scenario of warfare on remote north-western frontiers. Indeed, the same trio turns up again, couched in similarly florid language, in Claudian's praise of the security measures implemented by Stilicho in Britannia in a.d. 398/9.Footnote 32
Even if Claudian did lack access to specific information about British events in a.d. 367–68/9 and/or 398/9, this does not in itself vitiate the evidence of Pacatus or Ammianus. The latter, as previously mentioned, reports earlier inroads by Scotti in a.d. 359/60, while the first emergence of this new term in the Laterculus Veronensis points to a shift in Roman perceptions of Irish peoples as early as a.d. 314. In addition, Jerome supplies indirect testimony to the crisis of a.d. 367–68/9 through his later claim (c. a.d. 393) that as a young man in Gaul he had witnessed ferocious and cannibilistic Atecotti, whom, like Ammianus, he associates with Scotti in an ethnological doublet.Footnote 33 Although Jerome's autopsy and colourful depiction have been doubted (see below), his stay at Trier (c. a.d. 365–70), the administrative centre of the Gallic prefecture and once again an imperial residence, coincided exactly with the barbarica conspiratio.Footnote 34 One possible context for his statement is a relocation of captive barbarian warriors from Britannia to the Rhine when Theodosius returned to Trier in a.d. 368/9.Footnote 35 Certainly some Atecotti were recruited into the Roman army and transferred to the Continent in uncertain circumstances before c. a.d. 400.Footnote 36 Furthermore, the reality of the military threat from Ireland is confirmed by the compiler of the Chronica Gallica a. 452, untouched by literary posturing, who reports that Magnus Maximus vigorously suppressed incursions by Scotti and Picts around a.d. 383–84, if not earlier, or at most fifteen years after Theodosius reportedly engaged in similar operations.Footnote 37
As a whole, the evidence points to an escalation of Scotti raids from the early 360s, contributing to or culminating in the barbarica conspiratio in a.d. 367–68/9. The majority of references to Roman-Scotti hostilities during the fourth century relate to this crisis. The heightened profile of Scotti was perhaps reflective of greater political and/or military co-ordination or enhanced naval capabilities. The subsequent raiding reported in c. a.d. 383–84 and, according to Claudian, around a.d. 398/9 foreshadowed in turn further incursions in the early fifth century.Footnote 38 Paucity of evidence does not allow valid assessment of possible changes in conditions or intensity, but diminishing Romano-British military resources could only have left the diocese more vulnerable to Irish aggression and settlement. Other references to the Scotti in Roman sources from the 390s onwards do not refer to particular events, but articulate clichéd and distorted evocations of near-bestial savagery on the periphery of the civilised world, focusing on matrimonial, dietary or moral irregularities, and in part rehearsing classical ethnographic topoi.Footnote 39 The only explicit geographical statement merely adds that the Scotti occupied the Isle of Man at an unknown point before c. a.d. 417, clearly of significance for their transit of the Irish Sea.Footnote 40
To this survey of literary sources relating to the Scotti must now be added Epiphanius of Salamis — monk, abbot, bishop, heresiologist and saint. Born c. a.d. 315 at Besanduc, near Eleutheropolis in Palestine, Epiphanius studied in Egypt, probably at Alexandria, obtaining a thorough education in scriptural and patristic writings, before joining a monastic desert community (c. a.d. 330). Returning to Palestine in c. a.d. 335, he founded a monastery near Eleutheropolis, as abbot of which he was ordained presbyter. In c. a.d. 366/7 he was elected bishop of Salamis (Constantia) on Cyprus, presumably owing to his reputation for asceticism, learning and Nicene orthodoxy, a position he held until his death in a.d. 403.Footnote 41 References to the Scotti occur in Epiphanius' two major works, the Ancoratus and Panarion.Footnote 42 Both passages concern the so-called ‘division of the earth’ or Diamerismos (Διαμερισμὸς τῆς γῆς), Noah's post-diluvian apportionment of the world by lot between his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, from whom all the nations of the globe descend, as originally described in partly conflicting versions in Genesis (10.1–32) and the pseudepigraphic Book of Jubilees (8–9). According to this scheme, Shem was allotted the East (Mesopotamia, the Middle East and India), Ham the South (Africa with parts of the Levant and Arabian Peninsula), and Japheth the North (Asia Minor, Caucasus and Europe). Beyond its biblical historical interest, this episode contributed to long-established arguments of Christian exegesis.
The Ancoratus, written in a.d. 373/4, is an epistolary treatise, addressed to the church of Syedra in Pamphylia, which sets out to explain how the ‘ship’ of the Church, buffeted by winds of heresy and doctrinal error, can become firmly ‘anchored’.Footnote 43 In refutation of Origen's interpretation of Genesis, Epiphanius includes a lengthy treatment of the Diamerismos, in which the progeny of Japheth are listed as follows:
To Japheth, the third son, (there were) fifteen children and children's children up until the actual division of the tongues, [from whom descend]: Medoi, Albanoi, Gargianoi, Armenioi, Arraioi, Amazones, Koloi, Korzenoi, Beneagenoi, Kappodokes, Galatai, Paphlagones, Mariandenoi, Tibarenoi, Chalybes, Mossunoikoi, Kolkoi, Melanchenoi, Sauromatai, Germanoi, Maiotai, Scythai, Tauroi, Thrakes, Basternoi, Illyrioi, Makedones, Hellenes, Libyes, † Phryges, Pannonioi, Istroi, Ouennoi, Dauneis, Iapyges, Kalabroi, Hippikoi, Latinoi who are also Romaioi, Turrenoi, Galloi <who> are Keltoi, Ligustinoi, [Kampanoi], Keltiberes, Iberes, Galloi, Akouitanoi, Illyrianoi, Basantes, Kannoi, Kartanoi, Lusitanoi, Ouakkaioi, Brettanikoi, Skottoi, Spanoi. (Ancoratus 113.5–6)Footnote 44
The Ancoratus suffers from a relatively poor textual transmission. The text depends on two fourteenth-century codices: Mediceo-Laurentianus graecus VI–12 (= L) and Jenensis Bose 1 (a.d. 1304) (= J), which descend collaterally from hyparchetype ψ, from which they have inherited many erroneous readings in common.Footnote 45 This list of ethnonyms abounds in transcriptional errors. Following Βρεττανικοί L and J read Σκόρτοι, which all editors and commentators have recognised as Σκότοι, although Σκόττοι is preferable, assuming a misreading of ΣΚΟΤΤΟΙ as ΣΚΟΡΤΟΙ in a majuscule ancestor.Footnote 46 This identification is corroborated by an earlier, albeit indirect, witness to the text. Around the mid-ninth century an anonymous redactor compiled a spiritual miscellany, which has recently been styled the Sōtērios. It comprises a heavily modified abridgement of the Quaestiones et Responsiones of Anastasius of Sinai (c. a.d. 700), supplemented with many extracts from other patristic authors.Footnote 47 This supplementary material includes a lengthy excerpt from Epiphanius' Ancoratus corresponding to the entire section relating to the Diamerismos (ps.-Anast., Quaest. 28 = Epiph., Anc. 110.3–114.8 (Holl and Dummer 134.5–142.18)). In the absence of a comprehensive critical edition, the place of this excerpt in the textual transmission of the Ancoratus awaits clarification but is of no immediate concern here. It suffices to observe that the ninth-century redactor had at his disposal an exemplar of the Ancoratus that was an older and more accurate witness to the text than the common ancestor of L and J, and which contained the reading Βρεττανικοί, Σκόττοι.Footnote 48
The list of Japhetic nations in the Ancoratus is not of Epiphanius' own devising but, both in plan and content, derives from his principal source, the Chronicon of Hippolytus (c. a.d. 170–236).Footnote 49 This pioneering work of Christian chronography, covering the period from Creation to a.d. 234/5, survives in several recensions via a complex textual tradition.Footnote 50 Hippolytus formulated the earliest known Christian model of the Diamerismos, in which he amplified biblical authorities with Hellenistic geographical and ethnographical knowledge in order to create an inventory of peoples, old and new, of the entire oikoumenē.Footnote 51 Hippolytus' version of the Diamerismos and the descent of nations became the Vorlage for the treatment of this subject in late antique and Byzantine chronographical writing.Footnote 52 Comparison between the Ancoratus and Hippolytus' Chronicon (§§79–82 = Bauer and Helm 14.4–15.8), therefore, permits identification of Epiphanius' editorial interventions into his source, including modifications, additions, deletions and transpositions.Footnote 53 For the present purposes it is sufficient to recognise that Epiphanius chose to insert Σκόττοι after Βρεττανικοί in his model, a unique contemporary supplement to a list of otherwise ancient nations.Footnote 54
The second and more famous work by Epiphanius is the Panarion, a comprehensive heresiological encyclopaedia, written directly after and elaborating the Ancoratus.Footnote 55 This ‘medicine chest’ contains remedies for the sickness of 80 heretical ‘sects’, dating from the earliest days of the Church to the time of writing, compiled at the request of Acacius and Paul, two Syrian abbots, to whom it is addressed. Drawing on earlier heresiological writings, oral reports and personal autopsy on journeys of investigation (proem. II 2.4), it takes the form of a series of expositions of the beliefs and practices of each ‘sect’ followed by a refutation. Comprising three books, it was begun in a.d. 374 or 375 (proem. II 2.3), written at great speed and published a.d. 377/8. In his chapter on Manichaeans (66) Epiphanius returns to the Diamerismos, where again we find Scotti among the Japhetic nations, only here in an abbreviated listing:
From there (Media) this lot assigned to Japheth the northern lands. But in the west <Japheth was assigned> from Europe as far as Spain and Britain, <including Thrace, Europe, Rhodope> and the races who border thereon, the Venetes and Daunii, Iapyges, Calabrii, Latini, Opici [and] Magardes, as far as the inhabitants of Spain and Gaul, and up in the lands of the Scotti and Franks (τῆς τε τῶν Σκόττων καὶ Φράγγων ἄνω χώρας). (Panarion 66.83.9)Footnote 56
Here the text relies on a codex unicus, again J, which is especially corrupt for this passage, and some identifications remain insecure. J reads Σκόπτων, again recognised by all editors as an obvious transcriptional error of πτ for ττ common in both majuscule and minuscule script.Footnote 57 In addition, von Gutschmid proposed that ἄνω χώρας should be read as ἀναχωρήσεως, apparently with the sense ‘and the retreats of the Scotti and Franks’, although this emendation has not gained acceptance.Footnote 58 Earlier in this section Epiphanius provides a precise dating formula, noting that ‘the present’ is ‘the thirteenth year of Valens, the ninth of Gratian, the first of Valentinian the younger and the ninety-third of the era of Diocletian’ (66.20.5); unfortunately the regnal dates do not precisely coincide with the given Diocletianic year, but late a.d. 376 is clearly meant.Footnote 59 As with the previously discussed passage in the Ancoratus, Epiphanius updated a traditional catalogue of antique nations by appending two contemporary groups: the Scotti and the Franks.
What significance, if any, can be attached to Epiphanius' insertion of, in one instance, Scotti and, in another, Scotti and Franks into lists of ancient peoples? On one level these interpolations are unremarkable, as the compilatory character of such ethnological catalogues invites expansion and up-dating. This tendency may also be discerned in related genres: for example, when an anonymous late fourth- or early fifth-century author produced a Latin abridgement of Josephus' Bellum Judaicum, he inserted into Josephus' oration to the defenders of Jerusalem an anachronistic vignette of Scothia and Saxonia trembling in fear of Roman dominion of Britannia, followed by an allusion to contemporary Saxon piracy.Footnote 60 Epiphanius says nothing of hostilities — his rationale in the Ancoratus may have been little more than comprehensiveness, the accommodation of two peoples, newly emerged on the western periphery, within the scheme of the Diamerismos, while in the Panarion he apparently seeks simply to delimit the geographical range of the Japhetic nations. If so, however, this motivation does not explain why he deemed it necessary to append Scotti and Franks in particular but none of the other contemporary or emergent ethnicities on the fringes of the Empire. Furthermore, when compared with the wider body of evidence relating to Scotti, Epiphanius' Ancoratus and Panarion acquire a deeper significance. First, Epiphanius provides unique and hitherto unsuspected testimony to the Scotti in Greek literature. Fourth-century Greek authors very rarely mention barbarian peoples of the North-West — the chief exception is Julian, whose military career in Gaul informs his sole reference to Franks and Saxons, but Scotti and Picts are otherwise unattested in Greek sources of any period.Footnote 61 It is legitimate to assume that in the Hellenophone East knowledge of Britain was poor, informants few and interest probably low. Second, and thus all the more striking, is the early date of Epiphanius' awareness of the Scotti. The Ancoratus was written in a.d. 373/4 and the relevant passage of the Panarion in a.d. 376; in terms of date of composition and publication only the appendix to the Laterculus Veronensis, if correctly dated, is older. Aside from this documentary notice, Epiphanius predates the next literary evidence — Pacatus and Ammianus — by some sixteen years. Third, writing at Salamis on Cyprus, Epiphanius is by far the most geographically distant and only eastern witness to the Scotti. It is true that from the early 390s Jerome, then based at Bethlehem, adduces the Scotti and Atecotti as exempla of moral irregularity, but he explicitly clarifies that his knowledge of these peoples dates to his earlier sojourn at Trier c. a.d. 365–70, which coincided with the events of the barbarica conspiratio in Britain and coastal Gaul in a.d. 367–68/9. It is somewhat suspicious, nevertheless, that Jerome begins to mention both peoples only from c. a.d. 393, directly after the publication of Ammianus' Res gestae (c. a.d. 390–91), a work with which he was demonstrably familiar by that date.Footnote 62 In any case, Jerome could not have been Epiphanius' source of information in a.d. 373/4, since their acquaintance began only in a.d. 382.Footnote 63 Epiphanius is therefore the sole Greek, second earliest and most remote witness to the Scotti.
These distinctions naturally raise the question of the source of Epiphanius' information, but only guesswork can be offered in response — the possibilities include official reportage, personal correspondence or oral informant. The evidence provides a marginally firmer basis for conjecture regarding the historical circumstances. During his extraordinarily long episcopacy (a.d. 366/7–403) Epiphanius became renowned for both his erudition and extensive travels in defence of orthodoxy, and in later years he reportedly attracted novices to the monasteries of Cyprus ‘from all over the globe’.Footnote 64 But in a.d. 373/4 all this lay in the future. Before his appointment as bishop of Salamis in a.d. 366/7, Epiphanius had spent the preceding thirty years as abbot of the monastery he founded near Eleutheropolis. During these, admittedly sparsely documented, three decades, although Eleutheropolis was not a backwater, there is no evidence for Epiphanius' travel or contact outside this locality of Palestine.Footnote 65 It is perhaps more than coincidence, however, that the short period between his election as bishop (a.d. 366/7) and his first published reference to Scotti (a.d. 373/4) encompasses the major disturbances of a.d. 367–68/9. Modest support for this association might be gleaned from Epiphanius' apparent conjunction of ‘the Scotti and Franks’ in the Panarion — not an obvious ethnic affiliation, indeed these two peoples are never otherwise linked nor do their spheres of activity intersect except in the context of the barbarica conspiratio, when, according to Ammianus, Picts, Atecotti and Scotti attacked Britannia seemingly in concert with Frankish and Saxon assaults on adjacent maritime districts of Gaul.Footnote 66 This line of reasoning will not be pressed, but it remains an attractive possibility that Epiphanius offers the earliest, albeit oblique, testimony to the barbarica conspiratio. If that were the case, it is worth noting in conclusion that Epiphanius, writing under Valentinian and Valens, predates the post-a.d. 379 panegyricizing of the elder Theodosius that variously pervades all the other sources for these events. Awareness of the Scotti at the eastern extremities of the Mediterranean by a.d. 373/4 suggests that their presence and impact on the north-western periphery of the Empire may have been more widely known than the broader evidence implies, and prompts the conjecture that the barbarica conspiratio that beset Britain in a.d. 367–68/9 was a well-publicised event even before its significance was magnified by Theodosian dynastic propaganda.
