In 446, the Britons made a final plea for help from Rome. Those parts of Romanized Britain that still were able to act collectively dispatched an urgent message to Aetius, the Roman general in Gaul: “To Aetius, three times consul, the groans of the Britons; the barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two forms of death, we are either massacred or drowned.”
