last gasp; and finally the British writers, Nennius and Gildas, whose
"monotonous plaint" shows that authority dead and gone, with the first
stirring of our new national life already quickening amid the decay.

Of geographical and general information we gain most from Strabo, in
the Augustan age, who tells what earlier and greater geographers than
himself had already discovered about our island; Pliny the Elder,
who, in the next century, found the ethnology and botany of Britain so
valuable for his 'Natural History'; Ptolemy, a generation later yet,
who includes an elaborate survey of our island in his stupendous Atlas
(as it would now be called) of the world;[4] and the unknown compilers
of the 'Itinerary,' the 'Notitia,' and the 'Ravenna Geography.' To
these must be added the epigrammatist Martial, who lived at the time
of the Conquest, and whose references to British matters throw a
precious light on the social connection between Britain and Rome which
aids us to trace something of the earliest dawn of Christianity in our
land.[5]




ANCIENT AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK


NAME. REFERENCE. APPROXIMATE DATE, ETC.

Aelian III. A. 6 A.D. 220. Naturalist.
Appian IV. D. 1 A.D. 140. Historian.
Aristides V.E. 4 A.D. 160. Orator.
Aristotle I.C. 1 B.C. 333. Philosopher.