The name Attacotti (also Atecotti, A(t)ticotti, Ategutti) appears in several late Roman texts. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus includes this ‘warlike race of men’ (bellicosa hominum natio) in a list of peoples disturbing Roman Britain c.364-7, including the Scots, Picts and Saxons. Ammianus' contemporary St. Jerome (writing c.393-7) claims that in his youth he personally saw some Attacotti in Gaul. Jerome highlights the promiscuous marriage customs and savage cannibalism of this ‘British people’ (gens Britannica), apparently identifying Attacotti with classical reports of polyandry practised by the ancient Britons and of cannibalism among the peoples of Ireland. If there is any truth to Jerome’s rhetorical allusion, he probably saw Attacotti already in Roman service, presumably during his stay at the western capital Trier (c.365-70). Certainly by c.395 some Attacotti had been recruited into the Roman Army and the Notitia Dignitatum lists three regiments bearing this title stationed in Gaul, Italy and Illyricum, though it is doubtful that these units remained ethnically distinct. Hostile Attacotti are not recorded after c.367.

Modern commentators have tended to locate the Attacotti on the northern frontier of Roman Britain, in the context of Scottish and Pictish raids, though there is no ancient authority for this; Ammianus merely reports simultaneous barbarian pressure on various fronts. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scottish antiquaries persistently placed the Attacotti in Dumbartonshire, prompting Edward Gibbon to muse on the possibility of a ‘race of cannibals’ in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. This entirely spurious tradition was based upon ‘Richard of Cirencester’, a mediaeval forgery perpetrated by Charles Bertram in 1757. Scottish clan and family lineages drawn from the Attacotti are equally inauthentic.

Irish Origin Theory

The word Attacotti and its variants Atecotti, A(t)ticotti, Ategutti in Latin texts most probably respresent Roman attempts at rendering the Old Irish aithechthúatha, not a specific tribal name, but a collective description for lower-status population groups throughout Ireland, usually translated into English as ‘rent-paying tribes’, ‘vassal communities’ or ‘tributary peoples.’ The appearance of hostile ‘Attacotti’ in Roman sources in the 360s corresponds chronologically with various tribal and dynastic migrations from southern Ireland and subsequent Irish settlement in Western Britain in the fourth century, in some instances possibly with Roman sanction. Later Irish and Welsh traditions concerning these population movements preserved the names of certain tributary Irish groups, which seem to have been displaced by the expansion of the Eóganachta, the group of septs which came to dominate Munster in the later fourth century.

Pre-Celtic Origin Theory

Some older scholarship has speculated that Attacotti were an aboriginal, pre-Indo-European substratum of the population of northern Britain. This thesis has generated much conjecture concerning this ‘race’, for the most part at the level of pseudo-history.

Nevertheless, numerous monument-stones discovered in Caithness and elsewhere in northern Scotland feature Ogham inscriptions that do not match any known Indo-European language. Scholars have speculated that these inscriptions predate even the Pictish occupation of the region.

Bibliography

Philip Rance, ‘Attacotti, Déisi and Magnus Maximus: the Case for Irish Federates in Late Roman Britain’, Britannia 32 (2001) 243-270; Ralf Scharf, ‘Aufrüstung und Truppenbenennung unter Stilicho: Das Beispiel der Atecotti-Truppen’, Tyche 10 (1995) 161-178.