Since the time of Herodotus in the fifth century BC, many historians have described places and cultures on the edges of the known world as involving the fantastic, unbelievable, or, at the very least, highly exaggerated elements. Most of us have heard of Herodotus’ flying snakes, gold-digging ants, or the cannibals of the Androphagi (“man eaters”) or Issedones – all from the edges of the known world. For most of its history within the Roman Empire, Britain, too, was at the edge of the world, and the lands beyond either Hadrian’s or the Antonine Wall, were just outside of it. They, too, are subject to the fantastic and the imaginary. Dio Cassius does fall into some of this, although he is not as guilty as others; Procopius’s sixth-century description of…
