ly as _Menapiae civis_. The Gaulish Menapii were well known; the
Irish Menapii were very obscure, and the brief reference can only refer
to the former.]

[Footnote 4: Mommsen, _Roem. Gesch_., v. 177. Zosimus, vi. 5 (A.D. 408),
in a puzzling passage describes Britain as revolting from Rome when
Constantine was tyrant (A.D. 407-11). It is generally assumed that when
Constantine failed to protect these regions, they set up for themselves,
and in that troubled time such a step would be natural enough. But
Zosimus, a little later on (vi. 10, A.D. 410), casually states that
Honorius wrote to Britain, bidding the provincials defend themselves, so
that the act of 408 cannot have been final--unless, indeed, as the
context of Zosimus suggests and as Gothofredus and others have thought,
the name 'Britain' is here a copyist's mistake for 'Bruttii' or some
other Italian name. In any case the 'groans of the Britons' recorded by
Gildas show that the island looked to Rome long after 410. On
Constantine see Freeman, _Western Europe in the Fifth Century_, pp. 48,
148 and Bury, _Life of St. Patrick_, p. 329.]

Such is, in brief, the positive evidence, archaeological, linguistic,
and historical, which illustrates the Romanization of Britain. The
conclusions which it allows seem to be two. First, and mainly: the
Empire did its work in our island as it did generally on the western
continent. It Romanized the province, introducing Roman speech and
thought and culture. Secondly, this Romanization was perhaps not uniform
throughout all sections of the population. Within the lowlands the
result was on the whole achieved. In the towns and among the upper class
in the country Romanization was substantially complete--as complete as
in northern Gaul, and possibly indeed even more complete. But both the
lack of definite evidence and the probabilities of the case require us
to admit that the peasantry may have been less thoroughly Romanized. It
was covered with a superimposed layer of Roman civilization. But beneath
this layer the native element may have remained potentially, if not
actually, Celtic, and in the remoter districts the native speech may
have lingered on, like Erse or Manx to-day, as a rival to the more
fashionable Latin. How far this happened actually within the civilized
lowland area we cannot tell. But we may be sure that the military
region, Wales and the north, never became thoroughly Romanized, and
Cornwall and western Devon also l