Where was Valentia Province in Britannia ?

[romanonick]

Salway (and others) place it in the north west in the approximate area (of Cumbria and Westmoreland) that was later to become Rheged. A later offer (Moffat - 'Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms') places it as a buffer state north of Hadrians Wall with Theodosian military appointees heading up the sapling kingdoms of Strathclyde, Gododdin (Votadini) and the southern marches of Rheged to prevent a repeat of the barbarian incursions of 367.
I quite like this theory which appears to support an active Theodosian frontier policy which also has slight archaeological backing in the finds made at Traprain Law supposedly proving a Roman presence in the area in the late 4th century.
Any schools of thought out there ? Plus - did Valentia exist before AD 367 ?

Romanonick/Nick Deacon.

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Nick,

First of all, contrary to popular thought, the 'conspiracy' probably wasn't one. It's common to read that 'Picts, irish and Saxons' attacked Britain, but our only source for the event, Ammianus Marcellinus, never wrote that (Res Gestae, Book XXVII, chapter 8). Picts and Irish attacked Britain, Saxons and Franks attacked Gaul.

Something did happen in Britain, and it was pretty serious, but it was not a concerted raid from all sides.
Anyway, the question was : where was Valentia?

That question cannot be answered with certainty (hence the ongoing discussion). However, I would put Moffat's suggestion aside immediately: Valentia was a full province (as we've seen from the Notitia Dignitatum), but there are no troops assigned to an area noth of the Wall. Therefore, I would find it extremely unbelievable that Valentia would be located north of Hadrian's Wall.

Other candidates are Wales, or indeed a 'proto-Rhedged', or maybe even the north of the diocese - the Wall itself.

Ammianus is clear (Res Gestae, Book XXVIII, chapter 3) that Valentia was created by Theodosius (the Elder) after he restored order in Britain after 369.

I don't agree with Frere (I think it was?) when he proposed that the new province was named after a certain rebel Valentinus. Ammianus wrote (Res Gestae, Book XXVIII, chapter 3) that a brother in law of Maximinus had been banished to Britain and was about to rebel. This may have been due to the heavy illness of Valentinian in 367, which may have cause pretenders to see their chances. Anyway, Dux Theodosius was able to suppress the rebellion before it even got off the ground.

I've always thought this a much more likely cause for the disturbences of 367 than the so-called 'barbarian conspiracy'!

The name of the new province, we may be certain, derived from the emperors Valens and Valentinian.

[Peroni]

The name of the new province, we may be certain, derived from the emperors Valens and Valentinian.

And definately not from 'Vallum' associated with Hadrian's Wall?

[Robert Vermaat]

The name of the new province, we may be certain, derived from the emperors Valens and Valentinian.

And definately not from 'Vallum' associated with Hadrian's Wall?

How would you render 'Vallum' to 'Valentia'?
Besides, this is what Ammianus says:
Res Gestae, Book XXVIII, chapter 3

… He [Theodosius] restored cities and garrison towns, as I have said, and protected the borders with guard-posts and defence works. The recovery of a province which had fallen into the hands of the enemy was so complete that, to use his own words, it now had a legitimate governor, and the emperor, treating the matter as a minor triumph, decreed that henceforth it should be called Valentia.

So yes, I would rule that out, definately. :wink:

[Peroni]

Thanks Robert!

Concise as always.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

What about the area between hadrians wall and the Antonine wall?

[Robert Vermaat]

What about the area between hadrians wall and the Antonine wall?

Discussed in my 08:25 post above Byron.
IF Valentia had been located north of the wall, it would have been undefended according to the Notitia Dignitatum. And while the idea of a buffer state is by no means incomprehensible, it would be incomprehensible that a normal province that bordered the main enemy of the diocese would harbor no troops.

[romanonick]

On military activity north of the wall after 367 Moffatt mentions that Quintilius Clemens is 'ruler' of Strathclyde, Antonius Donatus the commander of the forces in 'south-west Scotland, Catellius Decianus the supreme authority of the northern Gododdin and Paternus Pesrut the commander of the southern Gododdin. He quotes 'northern genealogies' as the source material.
Were these people Dux appointees with the full remit of Rome ? It could explain why Moffat is keen on Valentia existing north of the Wall?
Thanks for all the other info.
Cheers.

Romanonick/Nick Deacon.

[Robert Vermaat]

Both A.H.L. Jones, Sheppard Frere and John Morris wre (on different grounds) of the opinion that the dynasties of the later Northern heroic age could and did claim descent from long-preserved pedigrees going back on ancestors with recognizable Roman names.

John Morris was the most extreme in claiming that all of these were Romans who had been planted by the empire to rule over the adjacent tribes. Padarn Pesrut beccame Paternus 'of the Red Cloack', Cynhil became Quintilius, Cluim became Clemens, Coel became Coelestius, etc.

Personally I like the idea but I could not say if the etymology is correct. Also, while some later scribes separated names, it's of course impossible to tell which names (if any) of these were indeed separated, and therefore if there was indeed a 'Quintilius Clemens'.

It is not that far-fetched, because Theodosius the elder, the leader of the rescue expedition, is known to have carried out the same policy on the African borders of the empire only four years later, imposing Roman Christian praefecti over turbulent border tribes.

However, all to often this speculation is taken as 'real' information and the most fantastic castles are built upon that. But we even cannot be sure that the names from the pedigrees are a) historical or b) really derived from Roman names.

It would be useless to look for answers if these people ruled with the blessing of or under command of the Dux Britanniarum, if we can't even be sure if they existed.

[Urselius]

There is evidence that the late Roman authorities tried to make use of native British military resources to bolster their rule. Unfortunately there wasn't very much left of British military capabilities after centuries of Roman de-militarisation of native societies. The only Roman regional army unit recorded is named after a NW Midlands tribe, the Cornovii. It can be no coincidence that it was elements of the Cornovii that were tranferred to Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) to oust Irish invaders, whence the name Cornwall derives.

The ancestor of most of the later Welsh princely houses Cunedda Wledig was imported to Wales from Manau (Votadini) in the Edinburgh area north of the wall. He had the same task as the Cornovii, dealing with Irish invaders. This suggests that the peoples between the Antonine and Hadrianic walls were both sufficiently warlike and sufficiently Roman-influenced to make reliable auxilliaries. It is notable that the Romans took care to have these warbands operate very many miles away from their homelands, to minimise their ability to operate independently of Imperial control. Otherwise the Cornovii, being on the northern Welsh borders would have been a more convenient choice for operating in Wales than the Votadini from what is now Lothian in Scotland.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Wow, that is pretty detailed info Martin, what are the sources? I am pretty ignorant of most later Roman history....Since I live in Scotland, it would be interesting to know!

[D B Campbell]

I don't agree with Frere (I think it was?) when he proposed that the new province was named after a certain rebel Valentinus.

Peter Salway made the link with the rebel Valentinus, but having done so, he curiously stopped short of deriving the name of the province from the name of the rebel. (So why make the link in the first place?!)

My latest copy of Frere's Britannia (3rd edn, 1987) sensibly states (p. 200):
"In 369 a fifth province, Valentia, was established. It was so named in honour of the reigning emperors Valentinian and Valens, and came into being as part of Count Theodosius' reconstruction of Britain."

It's worth noting Frere's subsequent sentence: "The distribution of late Roman pottery assures us that it [Valentia] did not, as has sometimes been suggested, embrace the lowlands of Scotland, for nothing can be more certain than that Hadrian's Wall at this time still marked the limit of Roman Britain."

Although nobody really knows where Valentia was, it seems most sensible to locate it in the north, where all the destruction seems to have taken place. Frere points out that the commander in the north is known as the Dux Britanniarum (plural, implying command over more than one Britannia), so that northern England may have been subdivided into Britannia Secunda (or Flavia, whichever was the York province) and Valentia.

[Urselius]

Wow, that is pretty detailed info Martin, what are the sources? I am pretty ignorant of most later Roman history....Since I live in Scotland, it would be interesting to know!

It can be found in Morris (Age of Arthur), though he is considered to have stretched his extrapolations from the sources rather far. Other books on Late Roman British history have basically the same story.

The Cornovii, later calling themselves the Pagenses (Powis), were the last Welsh of lowland Britain (excepting the Cornish) to remain independent of English rule in modern Shropshire and Cheshire. Cynddylan, their last notable ruler, is the subject of some rather moving poetry.

The Votadini warriors under Cunedda seem to have expelled most of the Irish from Wales, though some early members of the Dyfed and Gwent princely families have rather Irish-looking names.

It is notable that in post-Roman times there was no distinction drawn between the native peoples of what is now Southern Scotland and those of Northern England all were undifferentiated as "fellow-countrymen" (Cumbrogi - Cymri). The later Welsh writers called them Gwyr-yr-Gogledd "The Men of the North." The Picts and Scots of Argyll were foreigners but the peoples of Strathclyde and Lothian were most definitely not.

The last Welsh king of Strathclyde-Cumbria, Owen the Bald, died around 1018, and of course the surname of Scotland's greatest hero, William Wallace, means "Welshman" (from the Old English wylisc - pronounced "wullish").

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Martin,

Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading John Morris’ Age of Arthur at the time (as much as I enjoyed Lesley Alcock’s Arthur's Britain, History and Archaeology AD 367-634), I think that the book is not strong enough. Not to mention to horrible note apparatus, but in the last decade or so, much better studies have been written, and are to be preferred. I can recommend:
Dark, Ken R. (1994): Civitas to Kingdom, British Political Continuity 300-800, Studies in the Early History of Britain, (Leicester).
Dark, Kenn R. (2000): Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, (Tempus, Stroud).
Esmonde Cleary, A.S. (1989): The Ending of Roman Britain, (London).
Jones, Michael E. (1996): The End of Roman Britain, (Cornell).
Snyder, Christopher A. (1998): An Age of Tyrants, Britain and Britons AD 400-600, (Stroud).

And I bet I forgot a few more.

There is evidence that the late Roman authorities tried to make use of native British military resources to bolster their rule. Unfortunately there wasn't very much left of British military capabilities after centuries of Roman de-militarisation of native societies. The only Roman regional army unit recorded is named after a NW Midlands tribe, the Cornovii. It can be no coincidence that it was elements of the Cornovii that were tranferred to Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) to oust Irish invaders, whence the name Cornwall derives.

I’m not sure I agree with the conclusion about military capabilities. I mean, Gaul was occupied and Romanized for a longer period, yet soldiers from Gaul were described in the Late Roman period as the best infantry. Why would British citizens be different?

As to the ‘move’ of any Cornovii to Dumnonia, that is so far a theory by the late John Morris alone, unsubstantiated in any way but for a similarity of the names. In my opinion, the explanation of the original name of Cornwall by Charles Thomas (the element corn- meaning ‘horn’, which describes the shape of the land.

The ancestor of most of the later Welsh princely houses Cunedda Wledig was imported to Wales from Manau (Votadini) in the Edinburgh area north of the wall. He had the same task as the Cornovii, dealing with Irish invaders

Well, for the Cornovii, see above.

As to the ‘prime objective’, the expulsion of the Irish, best read:
Rance, Philip (2001): Attacotti, Déisi and Magnus Maximus: the Case for Irish Federates in Late Roman Britain, in: Britannia 32, pp. 243-70.
It seems it can be defended that Irish settlers were invited into (southwest) Wales by the Romans. At what stage these settlers or different invaders became a problem (or to whom) is unclear. Besides that, the whole episode reads more like a foundation legend from Maelgwn Gwynedd’s royal archives, promoting the ancestry of his dynasty, the right to rule North Wales and the supposed origin of the cantrefs of Gwynedd as rightful conquests of Cunedda’s sons. Which immediately raises the questions a) why, if supposedly the Irish had settled deep into the north Welsh hills, no traces of them can be found there (with regards to the very many signs of Irish settlement in Dyfed), and
b) why if Cunedda and his sons supposedly made short work of the Irish to begin with, Maelgwn had to do the job all over again.

Anyway, the point is that this material about Cunedda (although it may well be correct) is most probably the view from the later 6th c. at the earliest (which is by itself very valuable information), looking back to Roman times, and may not be a literal account.

I can also recommend for early Irish and British interaction.:
Miller, Molly (1978-80): Hiberni Reversuri, in: Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 110, pp. 305-27, at:
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata ... 05_327.pdf

As to the source for Cunedda, the first information that we receive about that move is from the 9th-century Historia Brittonum which claims that:

Mailcunus magnus rex apud Brittones regnabat, id est in regione Guenedotae, quia atavus illius, id est Cunedag

Read also:
Dumville, David N. (1984): Gildas and Maelgwn: problems of dating, in: Lapidge and Dumville, Gildas: New Approaches, pp. 51-60.
Miller, Molly (1978a): The Foundation-Legend of Gwynedd in the Latin Texts, in: Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 27, part 4 may pp. 515-532.

While we can’t even date Maelgwn with certainty, the problem of dating Cunedda is even more problematic. Cunedda is described as Maelgwn’s atavus, which literally means ‘great- great- great- grandfather’, or rather more simply ‘ancestor’. In most pedigrees, Cunedda is only the great-grandfather of Maglocunus. But Cunedda was already of advanced age when he came to Wales, his sons being old enough to fight battles. If we should date Mealgwn‘s death to AD 547 (but see http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/gildwhen.htm ), this could mean that Cunedda came to Gwynedd 146 years before Maglocunus’s reign, which would put him in the time of Magnus Maximus. Indeed, that would mean that Cunedda came to Wales with Roman approval (to say the least). But since Magnus Maximus also settled Irish in Wales we must keep in mind that the later account of this move is then at least contradictory where the objective of that move is concerned.

The Cornovii, later calling themselves the Pagenses (Powis), were the last Welsh of lowland Britain (excepting the Cornish) to remain independent of English rule in modern Shropshire and Cheshire. Cynddylan, their last notable ruler, is the subject of some rather moving poetry.

Although it goes way out of the range of this topic, a small note on Cyndyllan:
Cynddylan (or Kyndylan) was not ‘the last notable ruler’ of Powys, but a 7th-c. sub-king of Powys. Apart from the very moving (indeed!) poetry about the demise of his house (see http://www.kmatthews.org.uk/history/can ... index.html ), we have no detailed idea about where he ruled and what the extent of his rule was. He is situated in the area between Wroxeter and Shrewsbury, his kingdom being called Pengwern, most probably a sub-kingdom of Powys bordering Mercia.
The end of the Powys dynasty can be read here: http://www.ancientwalesstudies.org/id14.html

[Urselius]

I would add 'Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons' by Nicholas Higham and 'The End of Roman Britain' by Michael Jones.

Gaul produced good soldiers once they were recruited into the Roman army, the bulk of the citizenry were demilitarised like all Roman civilians. Apart from Ecdicius? and his horsemen they were fairly supine in response to the Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks.

In Gaul and Britain the natives could not be mobilised for war without extensive professional training, the old tribal warlike capabilities had been lost. They were revived in Britain after 410 AD, but not in Gaul, which is why the Anglo-Saxons took from circa 450 to 650 to conquer lowland Britain, and the German tribes dominated all of Gaul within the period 406 - 480.

The term for horn in Old British was 'bannu' not 'cornu.' Also in Brittany there is a region called Cornualle, and this 'Cornwall is not horn-shaped in the slightest. Also the native version of the name Cornwall is Kernow, which fits well with the pronunciation of Cornovii as "Kornowee-ee."

The Irish of Leinster, the Laigin, seem to have named the large peninsula in North Wales "Lleyn" after themselves. The 'Ard Ri' Niall of the Nine Hostages (fl. circa 400AD) is recorded as a great raider of Britain and was supposed to have died in Gaul, I don't see the Irish of the period as purely pacific and acting on Roman orders. The history of St Patrick would seem to support this view of predatory Irish raiders. The Romans granted the Visigoths territory, but it can be hardly imagined that they did this for any reason other than under dire military threat, any Irish settlement in Britain might be rightly viewed in the same light.

Maelgwn is mentioned as reigning in the work of Gildas whose lifespan can be reasonably ascertained (within a few decades).

Cynddylan seems to have been the last British ruler in Lloegria (England), though the kings and princes of Powys continued ruling in highland Wales of course. The end of British rule in the Midlands is somewhat mysterious. The Mercians of the time of Penda were always allied to the Welsh, so an outright English conquest seems unlikely. Even more interesting is that Penda, the first powerful king of Mercia, seems to have had a Welsh name (perhaps related to 'pen' meaning chief or eminent), and his father Pybba also had a non-English name perhaps derived from the Welsh pybyr meaning 'strong.' Penda's son Peada also has a non-Anglo-Saxon name.