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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
13. The Tyranni, Particularly Maximus
At length also, as thickets of tyrants were growing up and bursting forth soon into an immense forest, the island retained the Roman name, but not the morals and law; nay rather, casting forth a shoot of its own planting, it sends out Maximus1 to the two Gauls, accompanied by a great crowd of followers, with an emperor’s ensigns in addition, which he never worthily bore nor legitimately, but as one elected after the manner of a tyrant and amid a turbulent soldiery. This man, through cunning art rather than by valour, first attaches to his guilty rule certain neighbouring countries or provinces against the Roman power, by nets of perjury and falsehood. He then extends one wing to Spain, the other to Italy, fixing the throne of his iniquitous empire at Trier, and raged with such madness against his lords that he drove two legitimate emperors, the one from Rome, the other from a most pious life. Though fortified by hazardous deeds of so dangerous a character, it was not long ere he lost his accursed head at Aquileia: he who had in a way cut off the crowned heads of the empire of the whole world.
Notes
- There is a striking resemblance between Gildas’ way of describing the double crime of Maximus and the language of Sulpicius Severus in his Vita Martini. It seems impossible that it could be accidental. St. Martin had been approached by Maximus with great respect; “though repeatedly invited to his table he absented himself, saying that he could not partake of his table qui imperatores unum regno, alterum vita expulisset (V. M., 20, 2). Orosius also describes the double atrocity, but in words that show no close similarity to those of Gildas:” Ubi Gratianum Augustum subita incursione perterritum . . . dolis circumventum interfecit, fratremque eius Valentinianum Augustum Italia expulisset” (Hist., vii, 34, 10).