About 343 the Picts, hitherto more or less quiescent, again took to the war-path. Apparently the defences of the North had been somewhat neglected; the Wall of Severus was pierced, Corstopitum burned. The Emperor Constans came in haste from Gaul in the winter to face the danger, drove back the raiders, and appears to have received some sort of homage from them, for Julius Firmicus speaks of the Emperor as having ‘extended the Empire.’ His coercion was at any rate severe enough to impose peace for seventeen years. But in 360 troubles again broke out. The Picts renewed their raids, and for the first time we hear of a new enemy to Britain--the Scots. They were destined to give their name to the northern part of Britain in the far future, but for the present they were probably neither more nor less than adventurers from Ireland. The name may signify a ‘broken’ or landless man, though the Scots as a whole appear to have had their home in north-east Ireland. Perhaps they were a confederation of broken clans and war-bands. They crossed to Caledonia, and established a settlement in the modern Argyll. At the same time some of the Picts had effected a small settlement in Ireland and in Galloway. The two peoples were thus in close communication, and a united attack from them was what might have been expected. About 360, then, Picts and Scots began to direct raids upon the north and west of Roman Britain. After a while they were joined by the Attacotti, who seem to have been a confederation of the Britons beyond the Roman Wall--_i.e._, between Tyne and Forth. For a time these raids produced only slight effect, and in 360 Britain was exporting quantities of grain to Gaul for the relief of suffering provincials there. But by 364 the invaders were growing more daring. There is reason to think that other Irish tribes were assisting them, and now the ‘Saxons’--that is Angles, Frisians, Jutes, as well as Saxons--appear once more on the scene. Ammianus Marcellinus says that they were ‘in conspiracy’--that is, were acting in unison--and this is very probable. In 367 they made a combined attack and broke up the defence by two almost simultaneous victories. The Roman Army of the North was defeated; its commander, Fullofaudes, was slain, and the force broken up and dispersed; while Nectarides, Count of the Saxon Shore, was defeated and slain by the Saxons. The results were very serious. Probably here and there detachments of troops held out behind the walls of the larger towns and fortresses; but the invaders seem to have overrun a great part of the country north of the Thames. Ammianus says that they dispersed over the country in small marauding bands.