Welsh Journals

because it had become so completely integrated into the Roman system as to be unable to survive without continuation of the extremely complex processes of the highly-centralized late-Roman state. But this disagreement simply illustrates that the fundamental issues of this crucial period in British history still deserve informed debate. PETER SALWAY All Souls College, Oxford THE Lords OF BATTLE: IMAGE AND Reality OF THE Comitatus IN DARK-AGE BRITAIN. By Stephen S. Evans. The Boydell Press, 1997. Pp.169. £ 35.00. For Dr Evans the 'Dark Ages' in Britain span from the last decades of the fifth century and the rise of native military governments to 'the third quarter of the eighth century' and the waning importance of the comitatus or warband (p.l). He sees the comitatus not solely as the lord's personal retinue but as the whole body of armed men which the lord could muster from his own local resources (p.2) and as equally a feature of Celtic and Germanic societies (pp. 3-4). Dr Evans believes that Tacitus's observations on early Germanic warlords and their followers apply as appropriately to the situation in post-Roman Britain (pp.54, 56) and that a warrior's reputation and fidelity to his lord was worth more to him than his own life (p.59). The author considers that it was loyalty which sheltered the lord- retainer relationship 'from those elemental forces that sought to weaken and destroy it in times of stress and hardship' (p.86) and it would have been interesting to have heard more of these elemental forces. Dr Evans does allude to 'bittersweet memories of fallen comrades' (p.85) though he does not perhaps fully bring out that sense of tragic loss when disaster struck which is so recurring a theme of heroic literature, a longing for times past and a yearning for former companions. The volume includes an appendix on the dating of heroic poetry on which Dr Evans has a further book forthcoming very soon-in particular Beowulf, the Gododdin and the historical poems of Taliesin, Dr Evans arguing for Beowulf 's oral composition somewhere within the period 650-700, that of the Gododdin within the decades 550 to 570 and Taliesin's poems in the third quarter of the sixth century. This book was not the place to attempt a general but not particularly expert survey of the historical background of Dark Age Britain. It is not clear why it should have been only the late fifth century which witnessed