Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

62 Of the Scots.
tain that they, as alfo the Saxons and Attacots,
harraiTed the provincial Britons inceflantly, during
the lliort reigns of Julian and Jovian *. In the
reign of Valentinian, thofe barbarous nations re-
duced the provincial Britons to extreme mifery,
having killed Ttdlofaudes their general, and NeBa-
ndiis the warden of the maritime coaft. In a
word, they carried all before them, till, in the
year 368, Theodofius, the grcatefl general of that
age, marched againft them, at the head of a nu-
merous army, defeated their plundering bands in
every place, recovered all the Roman territories
which they had feized, and ered\ed thofe territo-
ries into a new province, to which he gave the
name of Valentia. Having performed thefe ex-
ploits, he returned in triumph to court, no lefs
eminent for his military virtues, fays the hiftorian,
than Furius Camillus and Papirius Curfor had been
in diftant ages f.
Theodofius,however vidorious upon this occafion,
was either not able, or too much in hafle, to tame
the wild nations of Britain, fo far as to hinder them
from renewing their incurfions and ravages. The
mighty feats he performed in the Orkneys, Thule,
and the Hyperborean ocean, are the poetical creation
of Claudian, who flattered the grandfon of that ge-
neral. The barbarous nations of the north were
pouring in whole inundations of very formidable
troops into the mofl fertile and important provin-
ces of the empire ; of confequence, the prefence
of Theodofius near the throne and principal fcenes
of adion, became indifpenfibly neceflary. We
* Ammian. lib. xxvi.
f Ammiag. lib. xxvii.
have