fe and pronounced it to be a son, who should become the most valiant
among the Italians, and the most beloved of all men. (2) In consequence
of this prediction, the magician was put to death by Ascanius; but it
happened that the mother of the child dying at its birth, he was named
Brutus; ad after a certain interval, agreeably to what the magician had
foretold, whilst he was playing with some others he shot his father with
an arrow, not intentionally but by accident. (3) He was, for this cause,
expelled from Italy, and came to the islands of the Tyrrhene sea, when
he was exiled on account of the death of Turnus, slain by Aeneas. He
then went among the Gauls, and built the city of the Turones, called
Turnis. (4) At length he came to this island named from him Britannia,
dwelt there, and filled it with his own descendants, and it has been
inhabited from that time to the present period.

(1) Other MSS. Silvius.

(2) V.R. Who should slay his father and mother, and be hated
by all mankind.

(3) V.R. He displayed such superiority among his play-
fellows, that they seemed to consider him as their chief.

(4) Tours.

11. Aeneas reigned over the Latins three years; Ascanius thirty
three years; after whom Silvius reigned twelve years, and Posthumus
thirty-nine * years: the latter, from whom the kings of Alba are called
Silvan, was brother to Brutus, who governed Britain at the time Eli the
high-priest judged Israel, and when the ark of the covenant was taken by
a foreign people. But Posthumus his brother reigned among the Latins. *
V.R. Thirty-seven.

12. After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came the
Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands: whence they laid waste many
regions, and seized those on the left hand side of Britain, where they
still remain, keeping possession of a third part of Britain to this
day. *

* See Bede's Eccles. Hist.

13. Long after this, the Scots arrived in Ireland from Spain. The first
that came was Partholomus,(1) with a thousand men and women; these
increased to four thousand; but a mortality coming suddenly upon them,
they all perished in one week. The second was Nimech, the son of...,(2)
who, according to report, after having been at sea a year and a half,
and having his ships shattered, arrived at a port in Ireland, and
continuing there several years, returned at length with his followers
to Spain. After these came three sons of a Spanish