History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) by Nennius
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10.* Respecting the period when this island became inhabited
subsequently to the flood, I have seen two distinct relations.
According to the annals of the Roman history, the Britons deduce
their origin both from the Greeks and Romans. On the side of the
mother, from Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, king of Italy, and
of the race of Silvanus, the son of Inachus, the son of Dardanus;
who was the son of Saturn, king of the Greeks, and who, having
possessed himself of a part of Asia, built the city of Troy.
Dardanus was the father of Troius, who was the father of Priam and
Anchises; Anchises was the father of Aeneas, who was the father
of Ascanius and Silvius; and this Silvius was the son of Aeneas
and Lavinia, the daughter of the king of Italy. From the sons
of Aeneas and Lavinia descended Romulus and Remus, who were the
sons of the holy queen Rhea, and the founders of Rome. Brutus
was consul when he conquered Spain, and reduced that country to
a Roman province. He afterwards subdued the island of Britain,
whose inhabitants were the descendants of the Romans, from Silvius
Posthumus. He was called Posthumus because he was born after the
death of Aeneas his father; and his mother Lavinia concealed
herself during her pregnancy; he was called Silvius, because he
was born in a wood. Hence the Roman kings were called Silvan,
and the Britons from Brutus, and rose from the family of Brutus.
* The whole of this, as far as the end of the paragraph, is
omitted in several MSS.
Aeneas, after the Trojan war, arrived with his son in Italy; and
Having vanquished Turnus, married Lavinia, the daughter of king
Latinus, who was the son of Faunus, the son of Picus, the son of
Saturn. After the death of Latinus, Aeneas obtained the kingdom
Of the Romans, and Lavinia brought forth a son, who was named
Silvius. Ascanius founded Alba, and afterwards married. And
Lavinia bore to Aeneas a son, named Silvius; but Ascanius [1]
married a wife, who conceived and became pregnant. And Aeneas,
having been informed that his daughter-in-law was pregnant, ordered
his son to send his magician to examine his wife, whether the child
conceived were male or female. The magician came and examined the
wife and pronounced it to be a son, who should become the most
valiant among the Italians, and the most beloved of all men. [2]
In consequence of this prediction, the magician was put to death
by Ascanius; but it happened that the mother of the child dying
at its birth, he was named Brutus; ad after a certain interval,
agreeably to what the magician had foretold, whilst he was playing
with some others he shot his father with an arrow, not intentionally
but by accident. [3] He was, for this cause, expelled from Italy,
and came to the islands of the Tyrrhene sea, when he was exiled
on account of the death of Turnus, slain by Aeneas. He then went
among the Gauls, and built the city of the Turones, called Turnis. [4]
At length he came to this island named from him Britannia, dwelt
there, and filled it with his own descendants, and it has been
inhabited from that time to the present period.
[1] Other MSS. Silvius.
[2] V.R. Who should slay his father and mother, and be hated by
all mankind.
[3] V.R. He displayed such superiority among his play-fellows,
that they seemed to consider him as their chief.
[4] Tours.
11. Aeneas reigned over the Latins three years; Ascanius thirty
three years; after whom Silvius reigned twelve years, and Posthumus
thirty-nine * years: the latter, from whom the kings of Alba are
called Silvan, was brother to Brutus, who governed Britain at the
time Eli the high-priest judged Israel, and when the ark of the
covenant was taken by a foreign people. But Posthumus his brother
reigned among the Latins.
* V.R. Thirty-seven.
12. After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came
the Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands: whence they laid waste
many regions, and seized those on the left hand side of Britain,
where they still remain, keeping possession of a third part of
Britain to this day. *
* See Bede's Eccles. Hist.
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