the Teutons or Germans inhabiting the opposite
continental coast. "It seems hardly conceivable," observes Mr. Kemble,
"that Frisians who occupied the coast (of modern Holland) as early as
the time of Caesar, should not have found their way to Britain."[186] We
know from an incident referred to by Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola,
that at all events the passage in the opposite direction from Britain to
the north-west shores of the Continent was accidentally revealed--if
not, indeed, known long before--during the first years of the Roman
conquest of Scotland. For Tacitus tells us that in A.D. 83 a cohort of
Usipians, raised in Germany, and belonging to Agricola's army, having
seized some Roman vessels, sailed across the German Ocean, and were
seized as pirates, first by the Suevi and afterwards by the Frisians
(_Vita Agricolae_, xlv. 2, and xlvi. 2). In Agricola's Scottish army
there were other Teutonic or German conscripts. According to Tacitus, at
the battle of the Mons Grampius three cohorts of Batavians and two
cohorts of Tungrians specially distinguished themselves in the defeat of
the Caledonian army. Various inscriptions by these Tungrian cohorts have
been dug up at Cramond, and at stations along the two Roman walls, as at
Castlecary and Housesteads. At Manchester, a cohort of Frisians seems to
have been located during nearly the whole era of the Roman
dominion.[187] Another cohort of Frisian auxiliaries seems, according to
Horsley, to have been stationed at Bowess in Richmondshire.[188]
Teutonic officers were occasionally attached to other Roman corps than
those of their own countrymen. A Frisian citizen, for example, was in
the list of officers of the Thracian cavalry at Cirencester.[189] The
celebrated Carausius, himself a Menapian, and hence probably of Teutonic
origin, was, before he assumed the emperorship of Britain, appointed by
the Roman authorities admiral of the fleet which they had collected for
the purpose of repressing the incursions of the Franks, Saxons, and
other piratical tribes, who at that date (A.D. 287) ravaged the shores
of Britain and Gaul.[190]

In the famous Roman document termed "Notitia utriusque Imperii," the
fact that there were Saxon settlers in England before the arrival of
Hengist and Horsa seems settled, by the appointment of a "Comes Littoris
Saxonici in Britannica."[191] The date of this official and imperial
Roman document is fixed by Gibbon between A.D. 395 and 407. About forty