Romanized part of Britain had been lost by his time, or that, if some
part was still held by the British, long war had destroyed its
civilization. Unfortunately we cannot trust the traditional English
chronology of the period. As to the date of Gildas, cf. W.H. Stevenson,
_Academy_, October 26, 1895, &c.; I see no reason to put either Gildas
or any part of the _Epistula_ later than about 540.]

It is this Celtic revival which can best explain the history of
Britannia minor, Brittany across the seas in the western extremity of
Gaul. How far this region had been Romanized during the first four
centuries seems uncertain. Towns were scarce in it, and country-houses,
though not altogether infrequent or insignificant, were unevenly
distributed. At some period not precisely known, perhaps in the first
half or the middle of the third century, it was in open rebellion, and
the commander of the Sixth Legion (at York), one Artorius Justus, was
sent with a part of the British garrison to reduce it to obedience.[1]
It may therefore have been, as Mommsen suggests, one of the least
Romanized corners of Gaul, and in it the native idiom may have retained
unusual vitality. Yet that native speech was not strong enough to live
on permanently. The Celtic which is spoken to-day in Brittany is not a
Gaulish but a British Celtic; it is the result of British influences.
Brittany would have sooner or later become assimilated to the general
Romano-Gaulish civilization, had not its Celtic elements won fresh
strength from immigrant Britons. This immigration is usually described
as an influx of refugees fleeing from Britain before the English
advance. That, no doubt, was one side of it. But the principal
immigrants, so far as we know their names, came from Devon and
Cornwall,[2] and some certainly did not come as fugitives. The King
Riotamus who (as Jordanes tells us) brought 12,000 Britons in A.D. 470
to aid the Roman cause in Gaul, was plainly not seeking shelter from
the English.[3] We must connect him, and indeed the whole fifth-century
movement of Britons into Gaul, with the Celtic revival and with the same
causes that produced for instance, the Scotic invasion of Caledonia.

[Footnote 1: C. iii. 1919=Dessau 2770. The inscription must be later
than (about) A.D. 200, and it somewhat resembles another inscription (C.
iii. 3228) of the reign of Gallienus, which mentions _milites vexill.
leg. Germanicar. et Britannicin. cum auxiliis earum_. Presum