voyages which I have made for amber to the Baltic, and the excellent
prices which I obtained for it here, I shall soon be in a position to
retire, and to spend my old age under my own fig tree, or even perhaps
to buy a small villa at Baiae or Posuoli, where I could get a good
sun-bath after the continued fogs of this accursed island. I picture
myself on a little farm, and I read the Georgics as a preparation; but
when I hear the rain falling and the wind howling, Italy seems very far
away.

In my previous letter, I let you know how things were going in this
country. The poor folk, who had given up all soldiering during the
centuries that we guarded them, are now perfectly helpless before these
Picts and Scots, tattoed Barbarians from the north, who overrun the
whole country and do exactly what they please. So long as they kept to
the north, the people in the south, who are the most numerous, and
also the most civilized of the Britons, took no heed of them; but now
the rascals have come as far as London, and the lazy folk in these parts
have had to wake up. Vortigern, the king, is useless for anything but
drink or women, so he sent across to the Baltic to get over some of the
North Germans, in the hope that they would come and help him. It is
bad enough to have a bear in your house, but it does not seem to me to
mend matters if you call in a pack of ferocious wolves as well.
However, nothing better could be devised, so an invitation was sent and
very promptly accepted. And it is here that your humble friend appears
upon the scene. In the course of my amber trading I had learned the
Saxon speech, and so I was sent down in all haste to the Kentish shore
that I might be there when our new allies came. I arrived there on the
very day when their first vessel appeared, and it is of my adventures
that I wish to tell you. It is perfectly clear to me that the landing
of these warlike Germans in England will prove to be an event of