Frercuson—On the Legend of Dathi. U7) 
temporary, to have died in 434; and it may be that Socrates’s Rougias 
is but Rougeascois misunderstood, and designates, not the object, but 
the place of the catastrophe. 
The Huns in Pannonia appear to have crossed the frontier and in-~ 
vaded the imperial provinces in great force immediately—within three 
days it is said—after the death of John, which took place sometime in 
the summer of 425. This seems to be the movement of the friends of 
the usurper referred to by Socrates, but can hardly have been the 
occasion on which their leader was struck by lightning; for that 
seems to have been subsequent to Proculus’s episcopate, and these 
discrepancies, it must be allowed, do somewhat detract from the 
particular accuracy of his narrative (Anc. Univ. Hist., 16, p. 216, 
citing Philostorgius, p. 538, and Cassiodorus). 
It is also observable that although Proculus regarded the invaders 
as Huns, or rather indeed as a horde of Russians, Theodoret’s descrip- 
tion of them as wandering Scythians would be equally applicable to 
the Scots of the Irish chronicles, and that the passage of the Danube 
would be equally incidental to their progress if we suppose them, de- 
clining the neighbourhood of the Roman legions, to have reached 
Rheetia through the country of the still Pagan Suevi, and of their 
own kindred tribes of the Brigantes, also Pagans. 
Having the attention thus quickened to the value of the Irish 
material, it will be less tedious to proceed with its remaining inci- 
dents. The gloss-writer, at the close of his list, adds:—‘‘ These are 
the battles that were gained around Dathi, through his exhibition to 
the hosts, and he dead.” This refers to a statement, not found in Lebor 
na W? Uidhri, but detailed with much curious minuteness as well as 
picturesqueness by Mac Firbis :— 
“‘Mur do conneadar fir Ereann sin, do ¢uirsiod sbonge re lasad i m-beol an 
rig ionnus go saoilfead gac aon go m-bet ’n-a deataid agus gur ob 1 a anail do 
bet ag teat tara beul . . . Gabas tra Amalgaid mac Dati ceandus fear n-Ereann, 
agus adnaid a atair les ar iomvar, gur ro bris naoi g-cata ris for muir, agus dech 
g-cata for tir, agus sé marb, a’: uil do taispendis a muintir fen corp an rig, ro 
mugiead rompa for na sluagaib teaginad riu.’’49 
‘¢ When the men of Erin perceived this (the death of Dathi), they put a lighted 
spone in the King’s mouth, in order that all might suppose that he was living, and, 
that it was his breath that was coming out of his mouth. . . . Amhalgaidh, the son 
of Dathi, then took the command of the men of Erin, and he carried the dead body of 
his father with him, and he gained nine battles by sea, and ten battles by land, by 
means of the corpse; for, when his people exhibited the body of the king, they 
used to rout the forces that opposed them.”’ 
Strange as this device for inspiring terror into an enemy may 
seem, it is not without parallel in what Florus has told us of the cen- 
turion Domitius, or Cronidius, who, in the Dalmatic war, in Augustus’s 
40 Hy Fiachrach, 22. 
