complete than it is now, he could hardly have failed to be struck with it, and, if so, to have mentioned it in his 'Commentaries.' Even, however, if he neglected them, the officers of his army must have seen these stones. They must have been talked about in Rome, and some gossip like Pliny, when writing about stones, must have heard of this wonderful group, and have alluded to it in some way. The silence, however, is absolute. No mediæval rhapsodist even attempts to give them a pre-Roman origin. Such traditions as that of St. Cornely, or Cornelius the Centurion, though absurd enough, point, as such traditions generally do, to the transition time between paganism and Christianity, when, apparently, all mediæval chroniclers seem to have believed that all these rude-stone monuments were erected. Till, therefore, some stronger argument than has yet been adduced, or some new analogy be suggested, the pre-Roman theory must be set aside; and if this is so, we are tolerably safe in assuming that no battle of sufficient importance was fought which these stones could be erected to commemorate during the time when the Romans held supreme sway in the country.
If this is so, our choice of an event to be represented by these great stone rows is limited to the period which elapsed between the overthrow of the Roman power by Maximus, A.D. 383, and the time when the people of the country were completely converted to Christianity—which happened in the early part of the sixth century.[1] But if the history of England is confused and uncertain during that century and a half, that of Brittany is even more so, and has not yet been elucidated by the French authorities to the same extent as ours has been.
No one, I believe, doubts that Maximus, coming with an army from Britain, landed somewhere in Brittany, where he fought a great battle with the forces of Gratian, whom he defeated, and that
- ↑ "C'est en 465 que Vannes reçut pour premier évêque l'Armoricain St. Patern, qui mourut peu d'années après chez les Francs, où les Goths l'avoient forcé de se réfugier. Modestus en 511 mit tout en œuvre pour repandre le Christianisme parmi les Pagani de son diocèse, mais son zèle ne fut pas recompensé, car plus de trente ans après la mort de Patern les habitans de la Vénétie étoient encore presque tons païens. 'Erant enim tunc temporis Venetenses pene omnes Gentiles.' — Ap. Boll. 'Vita St. Melan.' vi. Jan. p. 311."—Courzon, 'Chartulaire de l'Abbaye de Redon,' cxliii.
