That a Saxon force, like that mentioned by Ammianus as being joined to the Picts and Scots in A.D. 364, was led by an ancestor of Hengist and Horsa is quite in accordance with all that is known of Saxon laws and customs. As in some other nations, the leaders and kings were generally, if not always, selected from their royal stock. "Descent" (observes Mr. Kemble) "from Heracles was to the Spartans what descent from Woden was to the Saxons--_the_ condition of royalty."[199] All the various Anglo-Saxon royal families that, during the time of the so-called Heptarchy, reigned in different parts of England certainly claimed this descent from Woden. Hengist and Horsa probably led the band of their countrymen who invaded Kent, as members of this royal lineage; and a royal pre-relative or ancestor would have a similar claim and chance of acting as chief of that Saxon force which joined the Picts and Scots in the preceding century. If we thus allow, for the sake of argument, that Vetta, the son of Victus, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, is identical with Vetta the son of Victus commemorated in the Cat-stane inscription, and that he was the leader of those Saxons mentioned by Ammianus that were allied with the Picts in A.D. 364, we shall find nothing incompatible in that conjecture with the era of the descent upon Kent of Hengist and Horsa. Bede, confusing apparently the arrival of Hengist and Horsa with the date of the second instead of the first visit of St. Germanus to Britain, has placed at too late a date the era of their first appearance in Kent, when he fixes it in the year 449. The facts mentioned in the earlier editions or copies of Nennius have led our very learned and accurate colleague Mr. Skene, and others, to transfer forwards twenty or more years the date at which Hengist and Horsa landed on our shores.[200] But whether Hengist and Horsa arrived in A.D. 449, or, as seems more probable, about A.D. 428, if we suppose them in either case to have been born about A.D. 400, we shall find no incongruity, but the reverse, in the idea that their grandfather Vetta was the leader of a Saxon force thirty-six years previously. Hengist was in all probability past the middle period of life when he came to the Court of Vortigern, as he is generally represented as having then a daughter, Rowena, already of a marriageable age.