Gildas quotes

Gildas was a British cleric and historian, best known for his work "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae". His writings provide a rare contemporary account of post-Roman Britain and are a major source for understanding the period. He influenced later historians and played a crucial role in the preservation of early British history. Here are 6 of his quotes:

[Description of Britain] Its plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of refreshing water.

Gildas

I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."

Gildas

Meanwhile the hooked weapons of their enemies were not idle, and our wretched countrymen were dragged from the wall and dashed against the ground.

Gildas

Again, therefore, the wretched remnant, sending to Aetius, a powerful Roman citizen, address him as follow:-"To Aetius, now consul for the third time: the groans of the Britons". And again a little further, thus:-"The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned".

Gildas

A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in three cyuls, as they call them, that is, in their ships of war.

Gildas