axons.=--The Saxons, who were no less deadly enemies of the
Roman government, were as fierce and restless as the Picts and Scots,
and were better equipped and better armed. At a later time they
established themselves in Britain as conquerors and settlers, and
became the founders of the English nation; but at first they were only
known as cruel and merciless pirates. In their long flat-bottomed
vessels they swooped down upon some undefended part of the coast and
carried off not only the property of wealthy Romans, but even men and
women to be sold in the slave-market. The provincials who escaped
related with peculiar horror how the Saxons were accustomed to torture
to death one out of every ten of their captives as a sacrifice to
their gods.
34. =Origin of the Saxons.=--The Saxons were the more dangerous
because it was impossible for the Romans to reach them in their homes.
They were men of Teutonic race, speaking one of the languages,
afterwards known as Low German, which were once spoken in the whole of
North Germany. The Saxon pirates were probably drawn from the whole of
the sea coast stretching from the north of the peninsula of Jutland to
the mouth of the Ems, and if so, there were amongst them Jutes, whose
homes were in Jutland itself; Angles, who inhabited Schleswig and
Holstein; and Saxons, properly so called, who dwelt about the mouth of
the Elbe and further to the west. All these peoples afterwards took
part in the conquest of southern Britain, and it is not unlikely that
they all shared in the original piratical attacks. Whether this was
the case or not, the pirates came from creeks and inlets outside the
Roman Empire, whose boundary was the Rhine, and they could therefore
only be successfully repressed by a power with a good fleet, able to
seek out the aggressors in their own homes and to stop the mischief at
its source.
35. =The Roman Defence.=--The Romans had always been weak at sea, and
they were weaker now than they had been in earlier days. They were
therefore obliged to content themselves with standing on the
defensive. Since the time of Severus, Britain had been divided, for
purposes of defence, into Upper and Lower Britain. Though there is no
absolute certainty about the matter, it is probable that Upper
Britain comprised the hill country of the west and north, and that
Lower Britain was the south-eastern part of the island, marked off by
a line drawn irregularly from the Humber to the Severn.[1]
|