230 The Picts. 



large and robust form of limbs, while the Silures, who inhabited 

 what is now called South Wales (and formerly the maritime coasts 

 of South Britain), are declared to be of a Spanish race, from their 

 swarthy dark skins and curly hair. 



"After Tacitus" says Betham, "we hear little of the Caledonians 

 by that name, for, it may almost be said, that they disappear from 

 history. At the period of the decline of the Roman power in 

 Britain, the country which they inhabited was in the possession of 

 a people called the Picts, because they painted their bodies, the very 

 reason their ancestors received the name of Britons from the Phoeni- 

 cians. It would appear, therefore, that the Phoenician Gaelic inva- 

 ders exterminated or expelled the Cymbric Britons from the South 

 of Britain and Ireland; those who escaped were driven to the north, 

 where they were found by Agricola many centuries afterwards, 

 and received a name from the Romans, exactly indicative of that 

 they obtained on their first discovery by the Phoenicians." 1 



These Belgae are supposed in time to have become amalgamated 

 with the Romans, and to have acquired their customs and language. 

 Gildas, when he describes Cuneglas, speaks of the Latin as his own 

 language, " In lingua nostra lanio fulve;" and other authorities 

 inform us that the Britons boasted of their knowledge of the Latin 

 language : Tacitus remarks that the Britons in Domitian's time, 

 "affected even the eloquence of the Latin tongue." 



The British Cymbri after many engagements with Caesar were 

 ultimately driven by him towards the Northern Provinces, and 

 finally founded a Pictish Kingdom in Caledonia or Scotland, in the 

 district of Strathclyde near Glasgow and Dumbarton, having Edin- 

 burgh or Dunedin as their capital. Under the name of Picts these 

 Cymbri long retained possession of the Southern division of 

 Scotland, and engaged with Agricola near the Grampian Hills, as 

 recorded by Tacitus in Agricola. The Welsh have constantly af- 

 firmed (that is, the better informed of their writers) that they came 

 from Scotland, and are descendants of the Strathclyde Britons, who 

 were Caledonians or Picts. These Picts or Caledonians we 

 have seen, were regarded by the Romans as the same race, and the 



1 Betham, p. 329. 



