Votadini (Celtic tribe )
Nation | Defunct
1 CE to 500 CE
The Votadini are a people of the Iron Age in Great Britain, and their territory is briefly part of the Roman province Britannia.
Their territory is in what is now southeast Scotland and northeast England, extending south of the Firth of Forth and extends from the Stirling area down to the English River Tyne, including at its peak what are now the Falkirk, Lothian and Borders regions of eastern Scotland, and Northumberland in north east England.
Their capital is probably the Traprain Law hill fort in East Lothian, until that is abandoned in the early 400s, moving to Din Eidyn (Edinburgh).The name is recorded as Votadini in classical sources.
Their descendants are the early medieval kingdom known in Old Welsh as Guotodin, and in later Welsh as Gododdin.One of the oldest known pieces of British literature is a poem called 'Y Gododdin', written in Old Welsh, having previously been passed down via the oral traditions of the Brythonic speaking Britons.
This poem celebrates the bravery of the soldiers from what was later referred to by the Britons as 'Yr Hen Ogledd' - The Old North; a reference to the fact that this land was lost in battle to an invading force at Catraeth,(modern day Catterick).
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Considerable reorganization is undertaken in Britain, including the creation of a new province named Valentia, probably to better address the state of the far north.
Count Theodosius strengthens the defenses of the towns with external towers designed to mount artillery.
Claudian suggests that naval activity took place in northern Britain.
It is possible that Theodosius mounted punitive expeditions against the barbarians and extracted terms from them.
Certainly, the Notitia Dignitatum later records four units of Attacotti serving Rome on the continent.
The Areani were removed from duty and the frontiers refortified with cooperation from border tribes such as the Votadini, marking the career of men such as Padarn Beisrudd (which literally translates as Paternus of the Scarlet Robe), who will serve from 389-39 as a native British governor.
One traditional interpretation identifies Padarn as a Roman (or Romano-British) official of reasonably high rank who had been placed in command of Votadini troops stationed in Clackmannanshire in the 380s or earlier by the Emperor Magnus Maximus.
Alternatively, he may have been a frontier chieftain in the same region who was granted Roman military rank, a practice attested elsewhere along the empire's borders at the time.