1. In 296, when the panegyric addressed to Constantius was written, the Picts to whom the writer referred were confined to the part of Scotland which extends northward from the firths of Forth and Clyde; but Professor Rhys and Professor Zimmer maintain that the habitat of the Pictish people was once much more extensive. ‘Irish literature,’ says Professor Rhys,[1793] ‘alludes to Picts here and there in Ireland ... in such a way as to favour the belief that they were survivals of a race holding possession at one time of the whole country.’ That the Picts once inhabited the whole of Britain is proved, in the opinion not only of the two professors but also of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, who differs from them on the question of Pictish ethnology, by the following linguistic facts.[1794] The Irish name of the Picts was _Cruthni_.[1795] Britain has, since the Middle Ages, been called in Welsh _ynys Prydein_: _Prydein_ is the Welsh equivalent of _Cruthni_; and _ynys Prydein_ means ‘the island of the Picts’. Now, as Professor Rhys remarks,[1796] _Prydein_, with its cognate forms, _Prydain_, _Prydyn_, and _Pryden_, represents an old Welsh word _Priten_; and accordingly, the Brythonic or the Gaulish name of the Picts, when it reached the ears of the Greeks, would have been written by them Πρετανοί. It must of course be borne in mind that _Cruthni_, _Prydain_, and _Priten_ did not appear in literature until long after Caesar’s time; but the etymology which connects Πρετανοί and Πρεταν(ν)ικαὶ (νῆσοι)--the name by which Ptolemy and other Greek writers call the British Isles[1797]--with _Priten_ is accepted by Celtic scholars who, on the question of the ethnology of the Picts, differ widely among themselves. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville[1798] concludes that in the time of Pytheas the masters of Britain were the Picts; while Professor Rhys holds that when, shortly before that epoch, the Brythons first landed in Britain,[1799] not the Picts but the Goidelic Celts were the dominant race. In other words, he believes that the Goidelic Celts called the island which they conquered by ‘some such a Goidelic name as Inis Chruithni, “Island of the Picts”’.[1800] M. d’Arbois identifies the Picts of the time of Pytheas with the ancestors of the Goidelic Celts: like Professor Rhys he regards the word _Pretani_ as simply the Brythonic, or Gaulish form of a Goidelic word _Qrtanoi_, of which _Cruthni_ was the later Irish equivalent;[1801] but he holds that no Brythons had set foot in Britain until after the time of Pytheas, and that the word _Pretani_ was learned by Pytheas not in Britain but in Gaul.