On The Ruin of Britain | Page 8

thus, as if a road were made across the
sea, like wild beasts of all descriptions, and darting the poison of every
heresy from their jaws, they inflicted dreadful wounds upon their
country, which is ever desirous to hear something new, and remains
constant long to nothing.
13. At length also, new races of tyrants sprang up, in terrific numbers,
and the island, still bearing its Roman name, but casting off her
institutes and laws, sent forth among the Gauls that bitter scion of her
own planting Maximus, with a great number of followers, and the
ensigns of royalty, which he bore without decency and without lawful
right, but in a tyrannical manner, and amid the disturbances of the
seditious soldiery. He, by cunning arts rather than by valour, attaching
to his rule, by perjury and falsehood, all the neighbouring towns and
provinces, against the Roman state, extended one of his wings to Spain,
the other to Italy, fixed the seat of his unholy government at Treves,
and so furiously pushed his rebellion against his lawful emperors that
he drove one of them out of Rome, and caused the other to terminate
his most holy life. Trusting to these successful attempts, he not long

after lost his accursed head before the walls of Aquileia, whereas he
had before cut off the crowned heads of almost all the world.
14. After this, Britain is left deprived of all her soldiery and armed
bands, of her cruel governors, and of the flower of her youth, who went
with Maximus, but never again returned; and utterly ignorant as she
was of the art of war, groaned in amazement for many years under the
cruelty of two foreign nations--the Scots from the north-west, and the
Picts from the north.
15. The Britons, impatient at the assaults of the Scots and Picts, their
hostilities and dreadful oppressions, send ambassadors to Rome with
letters, entreating in piteous terms the assistance of an armed band to
protect them, and offering loyal and ready submission to the authority
of Rome, if they only would expel their foes. A legion is immediately
sent, forgetting their past rebellion, and provided sufficiently with arms.
When they had crossed over the sea and landed, they came at once to
close conflict with their cruel enemies, and slew great numbers of them.
All of them were driven beyond the borders, and the humiliated natives
rescued from the bloody slavery which awaited them. By the advice of
their protectors, they now built a wall across the island from one sea to
the other, which being manned with a proper force, might be a terror to
the foes whom it was intended to repel, and a protection to their friends
whom it covered. But this wall, being made of turf instead of stone,
was of no use to that foolish people, who had no head to guide them.
16. The Roman legion had no sooner returned home in joy and triumph,
than their former foes, like hungry and ravening wolves, rushing with
greedy jaws upon the fold which is left without a shepherd, and wafted
both by the strength of oarsmen and the blowing wind, break through
the boundaries, and spread slaughter on every side, and like mowers
cutting down the ripe corn, they cut up, tread under foot, and overrun
the whole country.
17. And now again they send suppliant ambassadors, with their
garments rent and their heads covered with ashes, imploring assistance
from the Romans, and like timorous chickens, crowding under the
protecting wings of their parents, that their wretched country might not
altogether be destroyed, and that the Roman name, which now was but
an empty sound to fill the ear, might not become a reproach even to
distant nations. Upon this, the Romans, moved with compassion, as far

as human nature can be, at the relations of such horrors, send forward,
like eagles in their flight, their unexpected bands of cavalry by land and
mariners by sea, and planting their terrible swords upon the shoulders
of their enemies, they mow them down like leaves which fall at the
destined period; and as a mountain-torrent swelled with numerous
streams, and bursting its banks with roaring noise, with foaming crest
and yeasty wave rising to the stars, by whose eddying currents our eyes
are as it were dazzled, does with one of its billows overwhelm every
obstacle in its way, so did our illustrious defenders vigorously drive our
enemies' band beyond the sea, if any could so escape them; for it was
beyond those same seas that they transported, year after year, the
plunder which they had gained, no one daring to resist them.
18. The Romans, therefore, left the country, giving notice that they
could no longer be harassed by such laborious expeditions, nor