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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
16. Repeated Devastation
The legion returned home in great triumph and joy when their old enemies, like rapacious1 wolves, fierce with excessive hunger, jump with greedy maw into the fold, because there was no shepherd in sight. They rush across the boundaries, carried over by wings of oars, by arms of rowers, and by sails with fair wind. They slay everything, and whatever they meet with they cut it down like a ripe crop, trample under foot and walk through.
Notes
- Ambrones: Eutrop. v, i, 1: Romani consules M. Manlius et Q. Caepio a Cimbris et Teutonibus et Tagurinis et Ambronibus, quae erant Germanorum et Gallorum gentes victi sunt . . . . Oros. v, 16, 9: Teutones Cimbri et Tigurini et Ambrones. A fanciful explanation of the word as used here by Gildas is given in Verr. Flacc. ap Fest., ep., p. 17: “The Ambrones were a Gallic race, who, because they had suddenly lost their lands, owing to an inundation of the sea, began to support themselves and theirs by plunder and pillage. . . . . For this reason it came to pass that men of low character are called ambrones.” Holder’s Altkeltische Sprachsshats gives numerous extracts from Glossaries, e.g., ambrones = luxuriori, profusi, devoratores hominum, devolatores, consumptores patrimoniorum. Nennius, Hist. Brit., has the word twice, c. 63: Omne genus ambronum (Stevenson prints, Ambronum); c. 27, Saxones ambronum (in error, apparently). The word is derived from a root, ambh(a)r, which may be the original of ὄ(μ)βριμος = strong.