Gens Saevissima : Superlativity and Rhetorical Framing in Perceptions of the Scotti , 314–461

Abstract: The depredations of the Scotti in the late fourth and early fifth centuries occasioned Honorius’s withdrawal from Britannia in 410 ce. Curiously, these barbarian interlopers have tended not to feature among Rome’s “rogues’ gallery” of marauding barbarians of Late Antiquity. They ought rightly to feature in that story. So essential to this story were the Scotti that Roman ethnic thinkers used references to Scotti as rhetorical placeholders for extreme barbarity. In the works of historians (like Ammianus Marcellinus and Orosius), panegyrists (like Claudian), and theologians (like Jerome)—whether pagan or Christian—the extremity of the Irish formed a rhetorically useful framing device, conferring superlativity on the honorands on whose behalf they wrote. When encountering Scotti in Late Antiquity, we are not encountering flesh-and-blood people but rather rhetoricallyinflected stereotypes that communicate extremity and superlativity.