“kings” or “tyrants,” but rather, in some sense, national leaders, and whose position can be best explained by supposing that they represent the traditions of Roman rule, and are, in fact, successors of the Roman dukes and counts of Britain. If in some cases the tyrants may have combined their own irregular position with the title of a Roman official it is what we should expect. [Sidenote: COROTICUS] The man whom we find in the reign of Valentinian III. ruling in Strathclyde, and maintaining such law and order as might be maintained, was named Coroticus or Ceretic, and he founded a line of kings who were still reigning at the end of the following century. His seat was the Rock of Clyde.[203] As the seat of a British ruler, amid surrounding Scots and Picts, this stronghold came to be known as Dún na m-Bretan, “the fort of the Britons,” which was corrupted into the modern Dumbarton. The continuity of the rule of Coroticus with the military organisation of the Empire is strongly suggested by the circumstance that his power was maintained by “soldiers”;[204] and his position seems thus marked as distinct from that of pre-Roman chiefs of British tribes. His soldiers may well be the successors of the Roman troops who defended the north. His position—whether he assumed any Roman military title or not—may be compared to that of the general Aegidius, who maintained the name of the Empire in north Gaul when it had been cut off from the rest of the Empire. Aegidius transmitted his authority to his son Syagrius, as Coroticus transmitted his to his son Cinuit; and if Syagrius had not been overthrown by the Franks, a state would have been formed in Belgica which would have resembled in origin the state which Coroticus formed in Strathclyde. Of course the Gallo-Roman generals Aegidius and Syagrius, while their authority was practically uncontrolled, were in touch with the Empire, maintained the Imperial machinery, and had a position totally different from the irregular position of the semi-barbarous Briton on his rock by the Clyde; but we may be sure that Coroticus was careful to make the most of his claim to represent the Imperial tradition and rule over Roman citizens. And while the contrast is obvious, it is not uninstructive to observe the analogy, which is less obvious, between the position of Britain and its rulers, still attached in theory, name, and tradition to the Empire, though cut off from it, and the position of those parts of the Belgic and Lyonnese provinces, which, aloof from the rest of Imperial territory, maintained themselves under Aegidius and his son Syagrius for a few years amid the surrounding German kingdoms. [Sidenote: OUTRAGE ON NEOPHYTES]