Area of the Vicarii Britanniarum showing Valentia province, from a 15th-century copy of a Carolingian copy of a Roman map in Notitia Dignitatum of 4th or 5th cent., Digital Bodleian
AN ABSENCE OF DETAILS
There is no controversy regarding the existence of the Roman period Valentia in Britain - although whether it was an actual province or division of a province or even a diocese is still being debated (see "The British 'Provinces' of Valentia and Orcades: Tacitean Echoes in Ammianus Marcellinus and Claudian", J. G. F. Hind, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte Bd. 24, H. 1, 1st Qtr., 1975, pp. 101-111 at https://www.jstor.org/
At one time or the other, Valentia has been put pretty much everywhere. The area around Hadrian's Wall is often favored. Wales has also been proposed. One of the most recent Welsh proponents is Ann Dornier. ("The Province of Valentia", Britannia, Vol. 13 (1982), pp. 253-260, https://www.jstor.
32 Dornier (1982) placed Valentia in the West, from northern Wales till
the Wall. She deemed this province was created by Constans.
Bartholomew (1984, 178), who was followed by Thompson (1990, 9)
thought that the southern province of Maxima Caesariensis was
transformed into Valentia. On the other hand Frere (1987, 200)
considered that the province of Britannia Secunda, whose capital was
Eburacum (York), was divided in the year 369 in two provinces and one
of them was Valentia. On the contrary, Birley (2005, 399-400; 416)
placed its creation under the reign of Constans and its location in
northern Britain around the Hadrian Wall. Hind (1975) argued that
Theodosius renamed the entire diocese as Valentia.
Alas, none of the offered arguments have been convincing. Thus, our problem regarding Valentia is still trying to determine the location and extent of this mysterious province.
Our best account of the formation of Valentia is that of Ammianus. I am here quoting it in full before embarking on a discussion of its significance.
***
AMMIANUS XXVII, 1-10
8 1 When the Picts, Attacotti, and Scots, after killing a general and a count, were devastating Britain without resistance, Count Theodosius routed them and took their booty from them.
1 Having set out then from Amiens and hastening to Treves,84 Valentinian was alarmed by serious news which showed that Britain was brought into a state of extreme need by a conspiracy of the savages, that Nectaridus, the commanding general of the seacoast region, had been killed, and that another general, Fullofaudes, had been ambushed by the enemy and taken prisoner. 2 This report aroused great horror, and the emperor sent Severus, who at that time was still commander of the household troops, to set right the disasters, if chance should offer the desired opportunity. But he was recalled a little later, and Jovinus . . . having set out for the same regions, allowed them to return at quick step, intending to seek the support of a strong army; for he declared that this was demanded by the pressing necessities of the situation.85 3 Finally, because of the many p53 alarming things which constant rumours reported about that same island, Theodosius, a man most favourably known for his services in war, was chosen to be sent there with all speed, and having enrolled legions and cohorts of courageous young men, he hastened to depart, preceded by brilliant expectations.
4 And, since in giving an account of the history of the emperor Constans I described the ebb and flow of the ocean86 and the situation of Britain, as well as my powers permitted, I have thought it superfluous to unfold again what has once been set forth, just as Homer's Ulysses among the Phaeacians87 shrinks from repeating the details of his adventures because of the excessive difficulty of the task.
5 It will, however, be in place to say, that at that time the Picts, divided into two tribes, called Dicalydones [1] and Verturiones, as well as the Attacotti, a warlike race of men, and the Scots, were ranging widely and causing great devastation; while the Gallic regions,89 wherever anyone could break in by land or by sea, were harassed by the Franks and their neighbours, the Saxons, with cruel robbery, fire, and the murder of all who were taken prisoners.
6 In order to prevent these outrages, if favourable fortune gave an opportunity, that most energetic leader hastened to the world's end, and reached the coast of Bononia,90 which from the spacious lands opposite is separated only by a narrow space of sea wont in turn to swell with dreadful surges, and again, without any danger for sailors, to sink to the form of a level plain. From there he quietly crossed p55 the strait and landed at Rutupiae,91 a quiet haven on the opposite coast. 7 When the Batavi, Heruli, Jovii, and Victores, who followed him, had arrived, troops confident in their strength, he began his march and came to the old town of Lundinium,92 which later times called Augusta.93 There he divided his troops into many parts and attacked the predatory bands of the enemy, which were ranging about and were laden with heavy packs; quickly routing those who were driving along prisoners and cattle, he wrested from them the booty which the wretched tribute-paying people had lost. 8 And when all this had been restored to them, except for a small part which was allotted to the wearied soldiers, he entered the city, which had previously been plunged into the greatest difficulties, but had been restored more quickly than rescue could have been expected, rejoicing and as if celebrating an ovation.
9 While he lingered there, encouraged by the successful outcome to dare greater deeds, he carefully considered what plans would be safe; and he was in doubt about his future course, since he learned from the confessions of the captives and the reports of deserters that the widely scattered enemy, a mob of various natives and frightfully savage, could be overcome only by secret craft and unforeseen attacks. 10 Finally, he issued proclamations, and under promise of pardon summoned the deserters to return to service, as well as many others who were wandering about in various places on furlough. In consequence of this demand and strongly moved by his p57 offer, most returned, and Theodosius, relieved of his anxious cares, asked that Civilis be sent to him to govern Britain as deputy-prefect, a man of somewhat fiery temper, but steadfast in justice and uprightness, and also Dulcitius, a general distinguished for his knowledge of the art of war.
AMMIANUS XXVIII, 3-7
3 1 Theodosius restores the cities of Britain which had been devastated by the savages, repairs the fortresses, and recovers for the island the province which was called Valentia.
1 But Theodosius,80 that leader of celebrated name, filled with courageous vigour sallied forth from Augusta, which was earlier called Lundinium, with a force which he had mustered with energy and skill, and rendered the greatest aid to the troubled and confused81 fortunes of the Britons. He secured beforehand everywhere the places suitable for ambushing the savages, requiring nothing of the common soldiers in which he himself did not smartly take the first tasks. 2 In this way, while he performed the duties of an active common soldier and observed the care of a distinguished general, after having routed and put p133 to flight tribes which an insolence fostered by impunity was inflaming with a desire to attack the Romans, he completely restored the cities and strongholds which had been founded to secure a long period of peace, but had suffered repeated misfortunes.
3 But while he was thus engaged, a dread event had taken place, which would have resulted in grave danger, if it had not been crushed in the very beginning of its attempt. 4 A certain Valentinus, born in Valeria, a part of Pannonia, a man of haughty spirit, brother-in‑law of that pernicious vice-governor Maximinus, who was afterwards prefect, had been exiled to Britain because of a serious crime. There, impatient of quiet like a noxious beast, he roused himself to new and destructive plans, nursing a certain grudge against Theodosius, since he perceived that he was the only one who could resist his abominable designs. 5 However, after a good deal of looking about secretly and openly, driven by the swelling gale of his vast ambition, he began to tempt exiles and soldiers by promising for bold deeds as enticing rewards as his circumstances at the time permitted. 6 And already the time for carrying out the plans was near at hand, when that leader,82 eager for deeds of daring, learning of this from a prearranged source,83 resolved with lofty heart to punish those who were found guilty: Valentinus indeed, along with a few of his closest associates, he had consigned to the general Dulcitius,84 to be punished with death; but with the military knowledge in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, he divined future dangers, and as to the rest of the conspirators forbade the carrying on of investigations, p135 lest by spreading fear among many the disturbances in the provinces, which had just been lulled to sleep, should be revived.
7 Then, after the danger had been wholly removed, since it was common knowledge that propitious fortune had failed him in none of his undertakings, he turned his attention to making many necessary improvements, restoring the cities and defences, as we have said, and protecting the frontiers by sentinels and outposts. And so completely did he recover a province which had passed into the enemy's hands and restore it to its former condition, that, in the words of his report, it had a legitimate governor; and it was henceforth called Valentia,85 in accordance with the emperor's wish, who, one might almost say, celebrated an ovation in his joy on hearing the priceless news.
8 In the midst of such important events the Arcani,86 a class of men established in early times, about which I said something in the history of Constans,87 had gradually become corrupted, and consequently he removed them from their posts. For they were clearly convicted of having been led by the receipt, or the promise, of great booty at various times to betray to the savages what was going on among us. For it was their duty to hasten p137 about hither and thither over long spaces, to give information to our generals of the clashes of rebellion among neighbouring peoples.
***
Two suspicious things about this account need to be pointed out immediately.
First, Valentia is from the name of the Emperor Valentinian, true, but both words derive ultimately from the Latin root valeo, 'be strong.' The same holds for Valentinus the agitating exile and the Valeria of Pannonia Valeria attached to him (Roger Tomlin, personal communication).
Valeria, as it happens, is part of the name of the Legio XX, which served extensively in Britain and gave its other name Victrix to the legionary fortress Deva at Chester, Wales.
Are we to see Valentinus' presence in the story of the naming of a province called Valentia as purely a coincidence? If so, it is a undeniably a huge one. We could assume that Valentinian has intentionally used is own name for the province after the arrest and execution of Valentinus as a way of showing that he was the greater of the two 'strong' men. It does not seem possible that the province had, instead, been named for this Valentinus and his name was retained after his seditious plans were foiled. It seems equally far-fetched to view Valentinus as a Roman name assumed by a Briton, Pict or Scot that was confused with the identical name of a man known to be from Pannonia Valeria. For the idea that Valentia is to be associated with Valentinus, see https://books.google.com/books?id=spyCIqTzJu0C&q=Valentia#v=snippet&q=Valentia&f=false.
Second, the name of the Verturiones [1] means 'the strong ones.' In other words, their name semantically matches that of Valentia, Valentinian, Valentinus and Valeria. Here is the selection on the tribal name from Rivet and Smith:
* A.L.F RIVET & Colin SMITH : The place-names of Roman Britain, p 496-497 :
SOURCE.
- Ammianus Marcellinus XXVII, 8, 4 : VERTURIONES (acc. pl.), var. VECTURIONES; a people who with the Dicaledones made up the Picti.
DERIVATION.
The older etymology (Stokes, Holder, Rhys, Watson CPNS 68-69) connected the name with a supposed Welsh gwerthyr 'fortress', but Williams and others have doubted if such a word existed. It is found in local names but without early attestation, and seems not to be recorded in literature until 1753 (Thomas Richards's dictionary), after which it was used by antiquarians (GPC, s.v., without reference to the present name for an etymology). F. G. Diack in RC, XXXVIII (1920-21), 121-22, had already indicated a division Verturiones 'very powerful', with intensive prefix *uer- (see VERLUCIO) and Turiones, a tribal name equivalent to Turoni-Turones of Gaul (> Tours). O'Rahilly EIHM 463-64 accepts this. The base is then *treno- (earlier *trexno-) 'strong', now represented by Welsh trenn 'impetuous, strenuorus' (briefly mentioned under our Traxula), with a form of development shown by many Gaulish personal names such as Turos Turus (from which came Turones) and Turio- Turia (from which *Turiones); Holder II. 2006, etc. The British name was taken into Gaelic as Fortrenn, the name of a region, a genitive of a notional nominative *Fortriu (dative Fortrinn), on which see Wainwright PP 21 ; this name has British *uor-, a later stage of *uer-. It may be significant for the history of the North British tribes that the place Dumyat, which préserves the name of the Maeatae, is in Fortrenn.
IDENTIFICATION. A people of Scotland, not recorded earlier than the fourth century, who inhabited Fortrenn (i.e. Strathearn and Menteith, Perthshire).
I should point out, however, that Fortrenn or Fortriu has been sought in two different places. The old view is represented in Rivet and Smith's narrative above. This has been challenged, for instance, by Alex Woolf ("Dún Nechtain, Fortriu and the Geography of the Picts", The Scottish Historical, Vol. 85, No. 220, Part 2, Oct., 2006, pp. 182-201, https://www.jstor.
An artist's reconstruction of the Burghead fort in Moray, Scotland
(probably the primary center of the Verturiones of Fortriu)
Unfortunately, we do not know what territory the Verturiones might have taken from the Roman diocese.
THE OTHER BARBARIANS
The Dicalydones are not much of a mystery. Whether or not the Di- in the name is for 'two' or 'double' or is an error (perhaps wrongly copied from Ptolemy's 'Oceanus Duecalydones' , the 'sea left or north of Caledonia' or scribal dittography from the previous word in Ammianus, diuisi; see http://www.clanntuirc.co.uk/JSNS/V9/JSNS9%20Broderick.pdf), there is agreement that they lived on either side of the Mounth/Grampians. Ptolemy's map clearly shows them stretching between Loch Long and Beuly or Moray Firth. The "Caledonii" place-names at Schiehallion, Dunkeld and Rohallion
"...reflect the fact that it was there where the earliest Gaelic-speaking colonisation of Pictland apparently occurred... The new settlers formed those with the name still used for themselves by the local 'Pictish' inhabitants (Alan James, personal communication)."
The Attacotti I have dealt with elsewhere (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-attacotti-british-name-for-ui_7.html). These 'very old ones' are a British name for the Irish Ciannachta and Ui Liathain tribes, both of which invaded and settled in Wales and Cornwall.
As for the Scots, well, this is a name that has confounded pretty much everyone. But it seems to have been a generic term for Irish raiders. The best etymology, in the author's opinion, is Irish scoth2, 'point or edge (or a weapon)', from Proto-Celtic *skut-ā-, 'cut,' Early Irish scoth ‘cut, tip’, Scottish Gaelic sgath ‘lop off’. They would be the 'ones with sharp weapons' or 'the cutters/loppers', a name which reminds us of the Irish Laigin, the 'spear-men' (whose name is preserved in the Lleyn place-name in Gwynedd and in that peninsula's Dinllaen) and on the Germanic side of things, the Saxons, named for their seax knife. There are a fair number of Celtic tribal names derived from various kinds of weapons, e.g. the British Ordovices or 'Hammer-fighters' and the Delgovices or 'Spear-fighters.' This is more satisfactory than adopting what is almost certainly a late figurative use of scoth, 'flower'. [However, according to linguist Ranko Matasovic in his Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, both scoth words likely developed from the same root *skuta-.] The name probably was extended to all Irish because an early attested Scotraig tribe (http://research.ucc.ie/celt/document/G105012) was the first group to be encountered while raiding in Britain.
The Barbarian Conspiracy would then involve Caledonians and Verturiones from Highland Scotland, and Irish tribes. We know two of the Irish tribes assailed Wales and, at some point, Cornwall as well. Clearly, the Irish came from the sea. We do not know how the Picts arrived in Roman territory. We lack evidence that they were ever a sea-faring people. However, if they traveled by land, they would have had to pass through other Pictish tribes in the Scottish Highlands and then through British kingdoms in the Scottish Lowlands. This seems improbable in the extreme. The Verturiones, at any rate, had extensive sea coast in their domain and the Caledonians not only had sea access through the Great Glen, but actually had a sea named after them to the west.
We really only have Ammianus' testimony on the areani, i.e the arcani, to guide us - and, alas, this is not much of a guide.
The description of the function performed by these men leaves little doubt in my mind (especially when combined with the 'miles arcanu' inscription of the Vindolanda Tablet; https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1373032&page=1&partId=1&searchText=writing%20tablet%20romano%20british&sortBy=imageName, http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/4DLink2/4DACTION/WebRequestTablet?thisLeafNum=1&searchTerm=all&searchType=number&searchField=TVII&thisListPosition=45&displayImage=1&displayLatin=1&displayEnglish=1) that arcani is correct, and areani is an error. These men would have been responsible for moving among the "barbarians" to the North, and certainly would have been in contact, directly or indirectly, with the Verturiones.
A good discussion of the arcani is given by Edwin Hustwit's 2015 dissertation
(https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b262/027a7cbb360cffa5b4f43ece2d4276809aec.pdf?_ga=2.140029299.1121139885.1582759941-1257624454.1582759941):
"The areani were perhaps successors to the third-century exploratores, discussed above; and given the activities of the earlier exploratores [investigators, those who search out; scouts, spies; http://archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wordz.pl?keyword=exploratores], it is likely that the neighbouring gentes through whom the areani moved were the intramural peoples, plotting with them to pass information to the ‘Pictish’ Verturiones and Dicalydones [emphasis mine], the main culprits, according to Ammianus. However, unlike the exploratores the areani, despite performing a similar function gathering information from beyond the frontier, may not have been regular Roman forces. Ammianus considered the areani to be genus hominum a veteribus institutum, ‘a rank of men established from ancient times’.204 He spoke of them in his discussion of Constans’visit to Britain in 343, though this does not necessarily mean he considered Constans to have formed the areani. Hind suggests that genus hominum was applied by Ammianus to civilian communities, in this case the inhabitants of the settlements associated with the Wall forts and possibly those of the old intramural forts.205 Collusion between the areani and the intramural peoples, and even the Pictish gentes, might have been a result of the close association between these groups, perhaps one reinforced through kinship. Knowledge of the vernacular would have been essential. The conspiracy between the intramural peoples and the Picts has been taken as extraordinary, the result of pressure from northern Picts on the peaceable Britons. However, when St Patrick again sheds light on northern affairs, we once again find Britons and Picts colluding to raid external territories and divide the spoils. Rather than exceptions fortuitously caught in our sources at widely separated chronological junctures, the combination of Pict and Briton as raiders in the north would appear to be the normality."
It has been customary to view the arcani as residing in the North, but there is really no reason not to permit their presence in Wales as well. As Ammianus does not specifically tell us where the arcani belong, they may have been anywhere in Britain.
CAN WE NOW PINPOINT THE LOCATION OF VALENTIA?
Well, there is no doubt that the Irish were targeting Wales. But the problem with the whole 'Barbarian Conspiracy' idea is that we are led to believe the various barbarian factions acted in tandem with a single goal. Modern scholars think this is probably not the case.
However, it is (as I've already stated above) pretty much inconceivable that the Picts invaded by land. They must have come by sea. And if that is so, then they certainly could have joined the Irish is assailing western Britain. Or, they could have done something perhaps even more devastating: split the Roman forces by attacking from the east. Logical points of entry would be directly opposite Wales, where the joint forces could combine to literally cut Britain in half. Going up the Humber to York would be especially effective, as that city was the capital of Britannia Secunda. Although, we read in Ammianus that London itself was sorely beset. We don't know who the enemy was at and in the vicinity of London, other than it was 'barbaris'.
All in all, we appear to be no closer to being able to isolate Valentia's location than when we started!
Ironically, it may be early Welsh poetry that supplies us with at least a tentative solution to the mystery.
ARTHUR, GUAURDUR AND THE VERTURIONES
On p. 118 of John Koch's CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, the hero Gwawrddwr, whose fighting at Catraeth in the GODODDIN of Aneirin is unfavorably compared to the military might of Arthur, is said to be the tribal name of the Verturiones:
"The allusion to Arthur occurs in the following
lines, defined by end-rhyme as a distinct section within
an elegy of a hero whose name is given as Guaur[dur]
(probably a corrupt spelling for Guordur, possibly with
Old Welsh d for th, from the old north British tribal
name Verturiones):
Go.chore brein du ar uur
caer—ceni bei ef Arthur—
rug c[um n]erthi ig [cl]isur,
ig kynnor guernor—Guaur(dur).
He used to bring black crows down in front of the wall
of the fortified town—though he was not Arthur—
amongst equals in might of feats,
in the front of the barrier of alder wood [shields]—
Guaurdur."
Now, this may seem unimportant. After all, the Gododdin poem gathers heroes from all over Britain to fight at Catraeth (Catterick in North Yorkshire). Like the later famous battle of Arderydd, at which Merlin went mad, these great battle sites became magnets for heroes in the same way Troy did in the Greek tradition.
However, if Gwawrdur is emblematic of the Verturiones, and he was placed at Catterick, we should note that the fort in question was an important one on Dere Street not far north of York. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Verturiones were operating in this area during the Barbarian Conspiracy, they would have been at the heart of Britannia Secunda. While no one likes to rely on what may be a folk memory of the Pictish invasion of 367 A.D., we really have nothing else to go on. Still, we should ask ourselves a simple question: if the Verturiones were not thought to have been in North Yorkshire, why put them there? As a Pictish tribe in the extreme North of Scotland, their presence at Catraeth would otherwise seem bizarre.
My readers will recall that the Verturiones were 'the very strong ones', and that Valentia is derived from valeo, 'be strong.' I had floated the idea that the Emperor Valentinian had used a territorial designation based on his own name partly because of Theodosius' defeat of the Pictish tribe. A Valentia in the northern half of Britannia Secunda has always been a possibility. From "Carlisle: A Frontier and Border City" by Mike McCarthy (Routledge, 2017):
NOTE:
Since writing the above, I became aware of Anthony Birley's opinion on Valentia in his THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT OF BRITAIN:
THE PROBLEM OF VALENTIA
A fifth province, Valentia, is listed by the ND (Occ. 23. 11) and Polemius Silvius
(Laterculus 11)—the latter adding a sixth, Orcades (Orkneys). The name
Valentia is attributed by Ammianus to the elder Theodosius’ victory in 367–8:
‘And he had so completely restored to its former state the recovered province
that had fallen under the enemies’ control that . . . it now received a regular
governor and was then called Valentia by the decision of the emperor’ (28. 3.
7, see below). Considerable discussion has taken place over the location of this
province, without general agreement. According to the ND, Valentia, as well
as Maxima Caesariensis, was governed by a consularis, rather than by a praeses
like the other three. Hind argues that what was renamed was not a single
province, but the entire diocese, for which he gives parallels.¹ He is right that
Ammianus does not call Valentia a newly created province; but it is difficult to
discount the evidence of the ND and Polemius Silvius.²
Another solution could be that a fifth province already existed in 368—but
under another name.³ In that case, its previous name is unknown; but it may
be guessed when it could have been created. Constans’ expedition in 343
involved the areani, surely on the northern frontier. It is plausible that during
this visit he subdivided Secunda.⁴ It is true that Festus, in his Breviarium dedicated
to Valens, gives only the four provinces of the Verona List (6). From this
it has been inferred that he wrote c.368, shortly before Valentia was created;⁵
but he was probably just ignorant or careless.⁶
Bartholomew argued a different case: that of the four entries in the ND
¹ J. G. F. Hind, Historia, 24 (1975), 101ff.
² C. E. Stevens, in Goodburn and Bartholomew, Notitia, 222 n. 31, dismissed Polemius’ sixth
British province, Orcades, as an interpolation from Eutropius 7. 13. 3, against Hind, Historia, 24 (1975),
101, who argues that this was evidence for Polemius’ unreliability about Valentia—although Hind
comments, 111, that ‘Polemius Silvius included Orkney in his list of provinciae in Britain purely on the
evidence of Eutropius and Claudian’. Stevens added that ‘I believe that Hind’s interpretation of
Ammianus is right, but I submit that Ammianus (who was not infallible) made a mistake.’ (By mishap
Hind writes that according to Eutropius ‘Theodosius conquered Britain as far as Orcades
insulae’—whereas it was to Claudius that Eutropius attributed this unlikely conquest; cf. under Gov.
1. However, the slip does not affect his argument.)
³ This view was put forward independently by P. Salway, Roman Britain (1980), 393, and in FRB
(1981), 318 f.
⁴ Another possible context is one of Constantine’s visits to Britain.
⁵ Thus T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, v (1908), 587 (first published in 1862); A. H. M. Jones, The
Later Roman Empire, iii (1964), 381; J. W. Eadie, The Breviarium of Festus (1967), 1. But A. Cameron, CR
19 (1969), 305 f., reviewing Eadie, points out that that date is too early for Festus anyway.
⁶ Thus W. Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians (1972), 198.
A fifth province, Valentia, is listed by the ND (Occ. 23. 11) and Polemius Silvius
(Laterculus 11)—the latter adding a sixth, Orcades (Orkneys). The name
Valentia is attributed by Ammianus to the elder Theodosius’ victory in 367–8:
‘And he had so completely restored to its former state the recovered province
that had fallen under the enemies’ control that . . . it now received a regular
governor and was then called Valentia by the decision of the emperor’ (28. 3.
7, see below). Considerable discussion has taken place over the location of this
province, without general agreement. According to the ND, Valentia, as well
as Maxima Caesariensis, was governed by a consularis, rather than by a praeses
like the other three. Hind argues that what was renamed was not a single
province, but the entire diocese, for which he gives parallels.¹ He is right that
Ammianus does not call Valentia a newly created province; but it is difficult to
discount the evidence of the ND and Polemius Silvius.²
Another solution could be that a fifth province already existed in 368—but
under another name.³ In that case, its previous name is unknown; but it may
be guessed when it could have been created. Constans’ expedition in 343
involved the areani, surely on the northern frontier. It is plausible that during
this visit he subdivided Secunda.⁴ It is true that Festus, in his Breviarium dedicated
to Valens, gives only the four provinces of the Verona List (6). From this
it has been inferred that he wrote c.368, shortly before Valentia was created;⁵
but he was probably just ignorant or careless.⁶
Bartholomew argued a different case: that of the four entries in the ND
¹ J. G. F. Hind, Historia, 24 (1975), 101ff.
² C. E. Stevens, in Goodburn and Bartholomew, Notitia, 222 n. 31, dismissed Polemius’ sixth
British province, Orcades, as an interpolation from Eutropius 7. 13. 3, against Hind, Historia, 24 (1975),
101, who argues that this was evidence for Polemius’ unreliability about Valentia—although Hind
comments, 111, that ‘Polemius Silvius included Orkney in his list of provinciae in Britain purely on the
evidence of Eutropius and Claudian’. Stevens added that ‘I believe that Hind’s interpretation of
Ammianus is right, but I submit that Ammianus (who was not infallible) made a mistake.’ (By mishap
Hind writes that according to Eutropius ‘Theodosius conquered Britain as far as Orcades
insulae’—whereas it was to Claudius that Eutropius attributed this unlikely conquest; cf. under Gov.
1. However, the slip does not affect his argument.)
³ This view was put forward independently by P. Salway, Roman Britain (1980), 393, and in FRB
(1981), 318 f.
⁴ Another possible context is one of Constantine’s visits to Britain.
⁵ Thus T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, v (1908), 587 (first published in 1862); A. H. M. Jones, The
Later Roman Empire, iii (1964), 381; J. W. Eadie, The Breviarium of Festus (1967), 1. But A. Cameron, CR
19 (1969), 305 f., reviewing Eadie, points out that that date is too early for Festus anyway.
⁶ Thus W. Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians (1972), 198.
listing Valentia, that in the Index (Occ. 1. 77) and the caption to an illustration
are later insertions, while at 3. 34 and 23. 11 the word nunc was omitted
between Maxima Caesariensis and Valentia; hence that Valentia was the new name
for Maxima. But he did not discuss Polemius Silvius.⁷ Against this, as the dux
commanded troops in more than one British province, and these troops were
all in what had previously been in Inferior and later presumably in Secunda
(see below), it can be inferred that Secunda had been split, with the northernmost
part turned into a new province, later renamed Valentia.⁸
400 The Last Century of Roman Rule
⁷ P. Bartholomew, Britannia, 15 (1984), 178 f.
⁸ J. C. Mann, Antiquity 35 (1961), 320 n. 22, notes that ‘[t]his suggests a subdivision of the early 4th
century York province’. E. Birley, Quintus Congressus, 85, put ‘Valentia as the Wall and its immediate
neighbourhood, with Carlisle as the seat of its consularis’.
are later insertions, while at 3. 34 and 23. 11 the word nunc was omitted
between Maxima Caesariensis and Valentia; hence that Valentia was the new name
for Maxima. But he did not discuss Polemius Silvius.⁷ Against this, as the dux
commanded troops in more than one British province, and these troops were
all in what had previously been in Inferior and later presumably in Secunda
(see below), it can be inferred that Secunda had been split, with the northernmost
part turned into a new province, later renamed Valentia.⁸
400 The Last Century of Roman Rule
⁷ P. Bartholomew, Britannia, 15 (1984), 178 f.
⁸ J. C. Mann, Antiquity 35 (1961), 320 n. 22, notes that ‘[t]his suggests a subdivision of the early 4th
century York province’. E. Birley, Quintus Congressus, 85, put ‘Valentia as the Wall and its immediate
neighbourhood, with Carlisle as the seat of its consularis’.
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