Attacotti Totally Explained

Everything about Attacotti totally explained

Attacotti (variously spelled) refers to a people who despoiled Roman Britain between 364 and 368, along with Scotti, Picts, Saxons, Roman military deserters, and the indigenous Britons themselves. The Attacotti were defeated by Count Theodosius in 368, along with the Scotti and Picts, and thereafter they likely provided military service to the Romans as auxiliary units until about 400, at which time they disappear from the historical record. Their existence as a distinct people is given additional credence by an incidental reference to them in the writings of Saint Jerome.
   There is no other information available on the Attacotti other than their brief mention in these sources, and based on historical evidence, there's nothing more to be said of them.
   However, an eighteenth century forgery (De Situ Britanniae) specifically mentioned the Attacotti and gave the impression that the Attacotti might have Irish origins. When De Situ Britanniae was later shown to be a fiction, speculations on an Irish origin for the Attacotti continued, and still continue to the present day.
   This article discusses the historical Attacotti of Roman Britain, their likely service as Roman auxiliaries, and their possible link to Ireland.

Ammianus: Roman Britain in 364–369

The historian Ammianus provides an account of the tumultuous situation in Britain between 364 and 369, and he describes a corrupt and treasonous administration, native British troops (the Areani) in collaboration with the barbarians, and a Roman military whose troops had deserted and joined in the general banditry. The situation was a consequence of the failed imperial power-grab by Magnentius a decade earlier, followed by a bloody and arbitrary purge conducted by Paulus Catena in an attempt to root out potential sympathisers of Magnentius in Britain, and aggravated by the political machinations of the Roman administrator Valentinus.
Ammianus describes the marauders as bands moving from place to place in search of loot. Nevertheless, one Roman commander was killed in a pitched battle and another was taken prisoner in an ambush and killed. As there was no longer an effective military force in the province, a substantial one was sent from Gaul under Count Theodosius, who quickly and ruthlessly restored order. His efforts were then focused on the repair of political problems within the province.
There is nothing to suggest that the Attacotti, Scotti, Picts, and Saxons (all mentioned in passing by Ammianus) were more than incidental participants in these events.

Notitia Dignitatum: Roman auxiliaries

The Notitia Dignitatum is a list of offices of the early fifth century Roman Empire, and includes the locations of the offices and the staff (including military units) assigned to them. The names of several units resembled that of the Attacotti who were mentioned by Ammianus, and in an 1876 publication Otto Seeck assigned the name Atecotti to various spellings ("acecotti", "atecocti", "attecotti", "attcoetti", "[illegible]ti", and "arecotti") in the Notitia Dignitatum, and documented his assignments within the publication. This produced four conjectural occurrences of Atecotti-related units:

Atecotti
Atecotti juniores Gallicani
Atecotti Honoriani seniores
Atecotti Honoriani juniores

The discovery of a contemporary funerary dedication to a soldier of the "unit of Ate[g,c]utti" in the Roman Diocese of Illyricum supports this reconstruction, as the Notitia Dignitatum places one Atecotti unit in that diocese.

Saint Jerome: incidental references

St. Jerome was a Christian apologist whose writings contain two incidental references to the Attacotti. His account is particularly noteworthy because he was in Roman Gaul c.365-369/70, while the Attacotti were known to be in Britain until 368 and may have entered Roman military service soon after. Thus it's credible that Jerome had seen Attacotti soldiers, and he'd certainly have heard Roman accounts of the recent fighting in Britain.
In his Letter to Oceanus, he's urging a responsible attitude towards marriage, at one point saying that one shouldn't be like the promiscuous Atacotti, Scotti, and the people of Plato's Republic.
The Attacotti are also mentioned in his Treatise Against Jovinianus, and it has been the topic of much debate, scholarly and otherwise. In a passage where he notes that the peoples of different regions have different dietary preferences because the food available varies from region to region, he's quoted as saying:

Quid loquor de ceteris nationibus, cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Atticotos, gentem Brittanicam humanis vesci carnibus et cum per silvas porcorum greges et armentorum pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates et feminarum papillas solere abscindere et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?

Why should I speak of other nations when I, a youth, in Gaul beheld the Attacotti, a British tribe, eat human flesh, and when they find herds of swine, cattle, and sheep in the woods, they're accustomed to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds, and the paps of the shepherdesses, and to consider them as the only delicacies of food.

Disagreements continue over nuances (such as where to place punctuation marks), but disagreements over the major point of cannibalism divide up as:

This passage is an assertion by Jerome that he witnessed cannibalism.

"vidirem" should be read in the sense of "understood" rather than "saw", so it's an implication rather than an assertion.

This passage is out of context with the rest of the text and makes no sense, so perhaps there's a transcription corruption; likely the single word "humanis" should be "inhumanis" (meaning animal flesh, not human flesh), in which case "pastorum nates" means "haunches of fatted animals" (not "buttocks of shepherds") and "fœminarum papillas" means "sow belly" or "cow udder" {not "paps of shepherdesses"); and then the passage makes sense and becomes as innocuous as the other dietary habits that Jerome mentions. The passage then also becomes an accurate description of the preferences of pastoral peoples, such as those who lived in northern Roman Britain at that time. References to Irish cannibalism The reference to cannibalism in the medieval copies of Saint Jerome's text have brought forth other supposed references to Irish cannibalism by ancient writers. Diodorus Siculus was a Sicilian-born Greek historian of the mid-first century BC, known for his Bibliotheca historica ("Library of History"). Strabo was a Greek historian, geographer, and philosopher who wrote his Geographica ("Geography") approximately 2000 years ago. Both authors say that they'd heard reports of Irish cannibalism, and neither gives the reports any particular credence. Ancient writers often included salacious and incredible accounts of far-away peoples for the enjoyment of their literary audiences, as do some modern writers.

De Situ Britanniae: an Irish connection

De Situ Britanniae was a fictitious account of the peoples and places of Roman Britain, made available in London in 1749. Accepted as genuine for over a hundred years, it was virtually the only source of information for northern Britain (ie, modern Scotland) for the time period, and historians eagerly incorporated its spurious information into their own accounts of history. The Attacotti were mentioned in De Situ Britanniae, and their homeland was specified:

Lower down, to the banks of the Clotta [ Firth of Clyde ] inhabited the Attacotti, a people once formidable to all Britain.
(footnote) The Attacotti occupied a considerable part of Argyle, as far as Lochfyn [ Loch Fyne ].

This placed the Attacotti in the same part of Scotland as the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata, and certain Irish historians were quick to connect the Attacotti to Ireland. In 1753 the influential Charles O'Conor asserted that the Attacotti of De Situ Britanniae were the historical Irish people known as the "Athech-tuatha" (or "Aitheach-thúath"), who had migrated to northern Britain. However, when De Situ Britanniae was exposed as fiction in 1845 (and repeatedly confirmed as such through 1869), any tangible evidence of a connection disappeared with it.
However, assertions continued without a basis in the historical evidence. Authors merely stated in passing that the translation of "Aitheach-thúath" was "Attacotti". This was criticised by Gaelic-speaking scholars, to no effect. These included Eugene O'Curry in his 1855 translation of The Battle of Magh Leana ("... the Aitheach Tuatha, or Democratic tribes, commonly but corruptly called Attocots.") and James Henthorn Todd in his 1870 work on manuscripts of The Book of Fermoy ("... in true Celtic pronunciation the name Athech-tuatha bears no similarity to Attacotti"). In his 1859 lectures, O'Curry had diplomatically added that:

These revolutionists have been called Attacotti by modern Irish writers; but, whether they really were the Attacotti of Romano-British history is a question that, I fear, will never be cleared up.

If there's an accepted etymology that connects the historical Attacotti of Ammianus to Ireland, the case is yet to be made.

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