probably from the north-east, a rare
thing with ancient ships. As they neared the British coast the breeze
sank to a dead calm, with a heavy mist lying on the waveless sea, in
which the fleet found it impossible to keep together. One division,
with Constantius himself on board, made their land-fall somewhere in
the west, perhaps at Exeter, the other far to the east, possibly at
Richborough.

A. 8.--But the wonderful luck which attended Constantius, and on which
his panegyrists specially dwell, made all turn out for the best. The
mist enabled both his divisions to escape the notice of the British
fleet, which was lying off the Isle of Wight on the watch for him; and
the unexpected landing at two such distant points utterly demoralized
the usurper. Of the large force which had been mustered for land
defence, only the Frankish auxiliaries could be got together in time
to meet Constantius--who, having burnt his ships (for his only hope
now lay in victory), was marching, with his wonted speed, straight on
London. One battle,[328] in which scarcely a single Roman fell on the
British side, was enough; the corpse of Allectus [_ipse vexillarius
latrocinii_] was found, stripped of the Imperial insignia, amongst the
heaps of slain barbarians, and the routed Franks fled to London. Here,
while they were engaged in sacking the city before evacuating it,
they were set upon by the eastern division of the Roman army (under
Asclepiodotus the Praetorian Prefect)[329] and slaughtered almost to
a man. The rescued metropolis eagerly welcomed its deliverers, and the
example was followed by the rest of Britain; the more readily that the
few surviving Franks were distributed throughout the land to perish in
the provincial amphitheatres.

A. 9.--The Diocletian system was now introduced; and, instead of
Hadrian's old divisions of Upper and Lower Britain, the island south
of his Wall was distributed into four Provinces, "Britannia Prima,"
"Britannia Secunda," "Maxima Caesariensis," and "Flavia Caesariensis."
That the Thames, the Severn, and the Humber formed the frontier lines
between these new divisions is probable. But their identification,
in the current maps of Roman Britain, with the later Wessex, Wales,
Northumbria, and Mercia (with East Anglia), respectively, is purely
conjectural.[330] All that we know is that when the district between
Hadrian's Wall and Agricola's Rampart was reconquered in 369, it was
made a fifth British Province unde