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The Name 'Picti': From the Panegyric of 297 to the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367

The Name 'Picti': From the Panegyric of 297 to the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367

Nobody knows what the Picts called themselves in the Roman period. What survives is the name others gave them: Picti. It first appears in a Latin speech of 297 or 298, and seventy years later the soldier-historian Ammianus Marcellinus uses it for the peoples who broke through into Roman Britain in the "barbarian conspiracy" of 367. This is part 15 of our Picts series, a closer look at that name and the Roman texts behind it. As always, history, legend and scholarly debate are kept apart, and the sources are named.

History (The First Picti, 297 to 314)

The earliest surviving use of the name is in a panegyric, a formal speech of praise, for Constantius Caesar, delivered in 297 or 298, probably at Trier (Panegyrici Latini VIII(V).11.4). Praising his recovery of Britain in 296, the orator looks back to Julius Caesar's landing and says the Britons of that time were a rough people, used only to "the Picts and the Hiberni" as enemies, "still half-naked" ("Pictis modo et Hibernis adsueta hostibus adhuc seminudis"). The name is placed back in Caesar's day, centuries before any writer is known to have used it.

A second speech, delivered at Trier in 310 for Constantine (Panegyrici Latini VI(VII).7.2), recalls the last British campaign of his father Constantius, who died at York in 306. It speaks of "the forests and swamps of the Caledones and other Picts" ("Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas et paludes"). A list of peoples compiled between 312 and 314, the Laterculus Veronensis, names the Scoti, Picti and Caledonii among the "barbarian peoples who sprang up under the emperors". The Origo Constantini adds that Constantius died after a victory over the Picts.

The name was not only for scholars. A fourth-century metal dice tower found at Vettweiß-Froitzheim, near Cologne, carries the words PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI: "the Picts are beaten, the enemy wiped out, play without a care".

History (Ammianus: 360 and 364)

Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek-speaking former officer, wrote his Latin history (Res Gestae) around 390. He says that in 360 "the Scots and the Picts", who had broken an agreed peace, were laying waste the lands near the frontier (XX.1.1). The emperor Julian, wintering in Paris, sent his general Lupicinus with light troops from Boulogne to Richborough and on to London.

Describing the start of the reign of Valentinian in 364, he writes that across the empire the most savage peoples were on the move, and that "the Picts, Saxons, Scots and Attacotti were harassing the Britons with constant disasters" (XXVI.4.5).

History (The Barbarian Conspiracy of 367)

In 367 Valentinian, travelling from Amiens to Trier, received grave news. Britain, Ammianus writes, had been brought to the depths of need by a barbarian conspiracy ("barbarica conspiratione"). Nectaridus, count of the coastal region, had been killed, and the dux Fullofaudes had been trapped in an ambush (XXVII.8.1). The emperor sent Severus, then recalled him. Jovinus went next and sent ahead for a strong army. Finally Theodosius was chosen, father of the later emperor Theodosius I (XXVII.8.2–3).

Then comes the one passage where Ammianus describes the Picts themselves: "at that time the Picts, divided into two peoples, the Dicalydones and the Verturiones, as well as the Attacotti, a warlike race of men, and the Scots, were ranging widely and causing great devastation", while Franks and Saxons raided the coasts of Gaul (XXVII.8.5).

Theodosius crossed from Boulogne to Richborough with the Batavi, Heruli, Jovii and Victores, and marched on London. He scattered raiding bands driving prisoners and cattle, and gave the plunder back to its owners, except a small part granted to his tired soldiers. He offered a pardon to deserters, and asked for Civilis to govern Britain and Dulcitius to command its troops (XXVII.8.6–10).

Over the next campaigns he restored cities and forts and recovered a lost province, renamed Valentia in the emperor's honour. He also removed the areani (arcani), frontier scouts whose duty was to range far and report on neighbouring peoples, because they had been bribed with booty to betray Roman plans to the barbarians (XXVIII.3.1–8).

History (Claudian and Isidore: The Name Read as "Painted")

The court poet Claudian, celebrating Honorius in 396, says the emperor's grandfather Theodosius tamed "the swift Moors and the Picts not falsely named" ("nec falso nomine Pictos"), punning on Latin pictus, "painted" (Third Consulship of Honorius, 54). In 398 he adds that "Thule was warm with the blood of Picts" (Fourth Consulship of Honorius, 31–33). In his Gothic War of 402 he describes a legion from Britain that had read "the iron-marked figures" on dying Picts ("ferroque notatas ... Picto moriente figuras", 416–18).

Around two centuries later Isidore of Seville spelled it out in his Etymologies (XIX.23.7): the Picts take their name from their bodies, which a craftsman marks with tiny needle-pricks and the squeezed juice of a native plant, so that their nobility is spotted with "painted limbs".

Legend (Painted Ancestors from Far Away)

Once Picti was read as "painted", writers looked for painted peoples in older books. Virgil had written of the "painted Agathyrsi" (Aeneid IV.146), a people of the far north-east. Nicholas Evans notes that from the 630s onward Isidore and commentaries on Virgil were used to give the Picts a classical ancestry in Thrace or Scythia.

Bede, writing about 731, tells that the Picts sailed from Scythia, landed in the north of Ireland, and were sent on by the Scots to settle northern Britain, taking Irish wives on condition that the kingship could pass through the female line (Ecclesiastical History I.1). The Irish Roll of the Kings in the Book of Invasions (Mary Jones's text) says the Cruithne came "from the land of Thracia". These are origin legends, not history, and they grew up around a Latin word.

Debate (Nickname or Native Name?)

Most historians now treat Picti as an outsider's word. Alex Woolf (2017) calls it "a loose pejorative term that had come into existence when it became necessary to distinguish the barbarous peoples of northern Britain from those Britons who had by now become mundane and compliant provincials". James Fraser (2009) links the rise of the label to changes in Roman Britain, which made the free peoples beyond the frontier look more distinct from the provincials.

Others look for a native word behind it. Rivet and Smith suggested a link with the Pictish place-name element pett, which Evans calls unlikely. George Broderick (2015) argues that it could come from a native word meaning "fifth", and Evans thinks it plausible that the Romans heard such a name and turned it into Picti, while calling Broderick's wider meanings "highly speculative". A possible spelling "Pecti" in Ammianus XXVI.4.5 has been cited for a native origin, but the earliest manuscript reads "Recti" in a confused passage. Evans concludes that no convincing native etymology has been found, and that on balance a Latin origin is more convincing.

Whatever its origin, Evans (2022) argues that the name was taken up by the people north of the frontier by the end of the Roman period, and that by the late seventh century it was a political title for the expanded kingdom of Fortriu.

Debate (Who Were the Dicalydones, Verturiones and Attacotti?)

The prefix Di- means "two", so Dicalydones may mean a "double" people linked to the Caledones (Rivet and Smith). The Verturiones are closely related in name to the later Pictish kingdom of Fortriu, which Alex Woolf (2006) places around the Moray Firth. The 310 phrase "Caledones and other Picts" suggests the Caledonians could be counted as one group among the Picts, but Evans warns against assuming this was always so.

The Attacotti are a puzzle. They are usually taken to be Irish. Philip Rance (2001) and Kim McCone link the name to the later Irish word aithechthúatha, "vassal peoples", an argument Evans calls inconclusive; Thomas Charles-Edwards suggests a confederation of the Ulaid; Jerome called them a people of Britain.

Debate (Was There Really a Conspiracy?)

Ammianus was not a neutral witness. Guy Halsall doubts that the attacks of 367 were a co-ordinated alliance, and Evans notes that Ammianus may have embellished the threat by creating the idea of a "barbarian conspiracy". On the other hand, if the raiders did co-operate, Evans suggests they needed a shared language, and the prime candidate is Latin.

Pretani and Cruithin

Picti was the Latin name. Older names lie underneath. Greek writers called these islands the Pretanic Isles, and Evans notes that Gaelic Cruithni and British Prydyn both come from a common ancient word, *Kwritenoi, so people in northern Britain may have used a form of it for themselves. The same old name is carried by the Cruthin of Ulster: one root shared across the North Channel, a connection to the land rather than a side in anything.

Sources

History, legend and scholarly debate are marked separately in the headings above.

First shared on X @dalriada36963.

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