INTRODUCTION

The third century had been a difficult time for many parts of the empire. A succession of short-lived emperors had fought for control. There was pressure around its borders as barbarian tribes clamoured to be admitted, with incursions into areas where everyone had thought themselves safe for centuries. Britain had been peripheral to much of this turmoil, though Saxon raiding of the east and southern coasts was a problem. The political chaos of the third century was brought under a semblance of control by the reforms of Diocletian who came to power in AD 284. The empire that emerged from these in the fourth century was a very different place than that of the empire of the first and second centuries.

In continental scholarship there is a tradition of studying the world of late antiquity as a period that extends from the late third century into the seventh century. On this side of the Channel there is not this tradition as Roman Britain was long thought to end in AD 410 after the army had left Britain in AD 407. What happened then is a very big question. It sometimes seems that there are as many answers as there are authors prepared to write books and papers on the end of Roman Britain, and they are legion. People tend to divide into two camps.