Carausius and Allectus - Rulers in Gaul?

Abstract

The episode of the usurpation of Carausius and Allectus has long attracted scholarly attention, not least because it is a light at the end of the long dark tunnel which comprises the history of Britain in the third century. The literary evidence for the period is comparatively abundant though it is of a tendentious nature. The extensive passage in the panegyric addressed to Maximian in 289 indicates the main events in the early part of the revolt whilst the panegyric presented to Constantius in 297, after his reconquest of the island, contains graphic details of the final defeat of Allectus. There is also a brief resume of the reconquest in the panegyric composed in 310 for Constantius's son Constantine. Perhaps as important as these contemporary references to events is the silence of the panegyric of 291, addressed to Maximian, about affairs in Britain. These entirely laudatory sources are supplemented by the historians Aurelius Victor and Eutropius, both of whom wrote in the middle of the fourth century, and by Orosius who wrote in the early fifth. Medieval sources, which appear to add details of events not recorded in the ancient sources, are best ignored. In addition to these literary sources there is a body of archaeological data which is, at best, ambiguous as to significance and date. There is also a considerable body of numismatic material.