Groans of The Britons - Message

Message

The message is recorded by Gildas in his De Excidio Britanniae, written in the second quarter of the sixth century, and much later repeated by Bede. According to these sources, it was as being a last-ditch plea for assistance to Agitius, generally identified as Aetius, military leader of the Western Roman Empire, who spent most of the 440s fighting insurgents in Gaul and Hispania. The formerly Roman Britons had been beset by raids by the Picts and Scots from northern Britain, who were able to pillage far to the south after the Roman armies had withdrawn from the island some time before.

The text describes Aetius as being consul for the third time, dating the message to the period between 446, when he held his third consulate, and 454, when he held his fourth. Leslie Alcock has raised a tentative possibility of the Agitius to whom the gemitus is directed actually being Aegidius – though he was never consul. Aside from Miller, who leaves the possibility open, this has not been pursued. The usurper Constantine III had taken the last Roman troops from Britain in 407, and the civilian administration had been expelled by the natives a little later, leaving the inhabitants to fend for themselves during increasingly fraught times.

The plea as recorded by Gildas in De Excidio 1.20 reads:

To Agitius, thrice consul, the groans of the Britons... the barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians, between these two means of death we are either killed or drowned.

According to Gildas, "The Romans, however, could not assist them", and the Britons were left to their own devices.