m
Scotica, ne Pictum tremerem, ne litore toto Prospicerem dubiis
venturum Saxona ventis."[352]

[Then next, with Caledonian bearskin cowled, Her cheek
steel-tinctured, and her trailing robe Of green-shot blue,
like her own Ocean's tide, Britannia spake: "Me too," she
cried, "in act To perish 'mid the shock of neighbouring
hordes, Did Stilicho defend, when the wild Scot All Erin
raised against me, and the wave Foamed 'neath the stroke of
many a foeman's oar. So wrought his pains that now I fear no
more Those Scottish darts, nor tremble at the Pict, Nor mark,
where'er to sea mine eyes I turn, The Saxon coming on each
shifting wind."]

C. 2.--Which legion it was which Stilicho sent to Britain is much more
questionable. The Roman legions were seldom moved from province to
province, and it is perhaps more probable that he filled up the three
quartered in the island to something like their proper strength. But
a crisis was now at hand which broke down all ordinary rules. Rome was
threatened with such a danger as she had not known since Marius, five
hundred years before, had destroyed the Cimbri and Teutones (B.C.
101). A like horde of Teutonic invaders, nearly half a million
strong, came pouring over the Alps, under "Radagaisus the Goth," as
contemporary historians call him, though his claim, to Gothic lineage
is not undisputed. And these were not, like Alaric and his Visigoths,
who were to reap the fruits of this effort, semi-civilized Christians,
but heathen savages of the most ferocious type. Every nerve had to be
strained to crush them; and Stilicho did crush them. But it was at a
fearful cost. Every Roman soldier within reach had to be swept to the
rescue, and thus the Rhine frontier was left defenceless against the
barbarian hordes pressing upon it. Vandals, Sueves, Alans, Franks,
Burgundians, rushed tumultuously over the peaceful and fertile fields
of Gaul, never to be driven forth again.

C. 3.--Of the three British legions one only seems to have been thus
withdrawn,--the Twentieth, whose head-quarters had been so long at
Chester, and whose more recent duty had been to garrison the outlying
province of Valentia, which may now perhaps have been again abandoned.
It seems to have been actually on the march towards Italy[353] when
there was drawn up that wonderful document which gives us our last and
completest glimpse of Roman Britain--the _Notitia Dignitatum Utriusque