Note 27 — Chapter I · SAXON AND WELSH TRADITIONS.

Pancirolus would date this important record in A.D. 438. Gibbon, however, refutes him and places it between 395 and 407. Dec. cap. xvii. I am inclined to think even this date inaccurate, and that the Romans did not maintain any such great establishment in Britain, as that herein described, at so late a period. For even Ammianus tells us in 364, “Hoc tempore Picti, Saxonesque et Scotti et Attacotti Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis,” (Hist. xxvi. 4), which is hardly consistent with a flourishing state of the Roman civil and military rule. The actual document we possess may possibly date from 390 or 400, but it refers to the arrangements of an earlier time, and to an organization of Roman power in more palmy days of their dominion.