wrote about A.D. 540, three generations after the Saxon
settlements had begun. He was a priest, well educated, and well
acquainted with Latin, which he once calls _nostra lingua_. He was also
not unfriendly to the Roman party among the Britons, and not unaware of
the relation of Britain to the Empire.[1] Yet he knew substantially
nothing of the history of Britain as a Roman province. He drew
from some source now lost to us--possibly an ecclesiastical or
semi-ecclesiastical writer--some details of the persecution of
Diocletian and of the career of Magnus Maximus.[2] For the rest, his
ideas of Roman history may be judged by his statement that the two Walls
which defended the north of the province--the Walls of Hadrian and
Pius--were built somewhere between A.D. 388 and 440. He had some
tradition of the coming of the English about 450, and of the reason why
they came. But his knowledge of anything previous to that event was
plainly most imperfect.

[Footnote 1: Mommsen, Preface to _Gildas_ (Mon. Germ. Hist.), pp. 9-10.
Gildas is, however, rather more Celtic in tone than Mommsen seems to
allow. Such a phrase as _ita ut non Britannia sed Romania censeretur_
implies a consciousness of contrast between Briton and Roman. Freeman
(_Western Europe_, p. 155) puts the case too strongly the other way.]

[Footnote 2: Magnus Maximus, as the opponent of Theodosius, seems to
have been damned by the Church writers. Compare the phrases of Orosius,
vii. 35 (Theodosius) _posuit in Deo spem suam seseque adversus Maximum
tyrannum sola fide maior proripuit_ and _ineffabili iudicio Dei_ and
_Theodosius victoriam Deo procurante suscipit_.]

The _Historia Brittonum_, compiled a century or two later, preserves
even less memory of things Roman. There is some hint of a _vetus
traditio seniorum_. But the narrative which professes to be based on it
bears little relation to the actual facts; the growth of legend is
perceptible, and even those details that are borrowed from literary
sources like Gildas, Jerome, Prosper, betray great ignorance on the part
of the borrower.[1] On the other hand, the native Celtic instinct is
more definitely alive and comes into sharper contrast with the idea of
Rome. Throughout, no detail occurs which enlarges our knowledge of Roman
or of early post-Roman Britain. The same features recur in later writers
who might be or have been supposed to have had access to British
sources. Geoffrey of Monmouth--to take only the most