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station at Maryport suffered the same disaster as is described in 
his life:—a weakened garrison, a successful onslaught of the 
Picts, the camp seized, the town burnt, the people slain or 
carried into slavery. All along the wide frontiers of the falling 
empire scenes like these were being enacted. The legions had 
been withdrawn to defend more important districts, and the 
borders were left exposed. Here in Britain, the provincials, freed 
from allegiance to their imperial master, were expressly bidden to 
see to their own defence. Unused to warfare, and enervated by 
a long continued peace, the hapless citizens proved unequal to the 
task. The barbarians, revelling in the novel luxury of victory, 
swarmed over the Walls, seized the stations, and sacked the wealthy 
cities of the province. In a few years the entire Roman polity in 
Britain was overwhelmed ; and nothing remained to mark the long 
dominion of the imperial race save the slabs and altars and coins 
that fill our museums, the long straight lines of highways stretching 
over the country, and the skeletons of camps and cities still strewn 
throughout the land. 
But we must return to our immediate subject, and we are now 
in a better position to gather up the threads of our argument. Two 
points then emerge with some clearness from the records of the 
fourth century which we have been considering. (1) That 
St. Patrick was born in some place in which there lived a fairly 
large Christian population. (2) ‘That the place was known as 
Banaven of the camps. Now the first fact cannot be verified of 
the neighbourhood of the Wall of Antonine, or indeed of any part 
of Valentia, a province continually devastated by the barbarians 
and at the date of his birth only recently re-acquired to the empire. 
But it fits in exactly with what we know of the vicinity of the Wall 
of Hadrian, with its numerous well fortified camps, and its colonies 
that had existed for three hundred years. I believe that the 
mistake has arisen from the common error of not distinguishing 
between the two great Roman Walls. The northern Wall of 
Antonine has been confounded in this, as in other matters, with 
the more important Wall to the south which bears the name of 
Hadrian. Later writers, living at a distance, and forgetting the 
