He was a priest, well educated, and well acquainted with Latin, which he once calls _nostra lingua_.

He was also not unfriendly to the Roman party among the Britons, and not unaware of the relation of Britain to the Empire.[1] Yet he knew substantially nothing of the history of Britain as a Roman province.

He drew from some source now lost to us--possibly an ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical writer--some details of the persecution of Diocletian and of the career of Magnus Maximus.[2] For the rest, his ideas of Roman history may be judged by his statement that the two Walls which defended the north of the province--the Walls of Hadrian and Pius--were built somewhere between A.D.388 and 440.

He had some tradition of the coming of the English about 450, and of the reason why they came.

But his knowledge of anything previous to that event was plainly most imperfect.
[Footnote 1: Mommsen, Preface to _Gildas_ (Mon.Germ.