Picti
- a people of Britain, the Picts or ancient Caledonians (so named from their practice of tattooing themselves), Amm.20, 1, 1; Claud. III. Cons. Hon. 54; id. Laud. Stil. 2, 254.
PICTI The names of the Picti and Scoti appear only in late writers, by whom they are spoken of as two allied people. The Picts seem to have been identical with the ancient Caledonians ( Caldonum aliorumque Pictorum, silvae et paludes,E umen. Pan. 6.7), and dwelt N. of the Firth of Forth (Beda, H. Eccl. 1.1). Ammianus Marcellinus represents the Picti as divided, in the time of the emperor Constans, into two tribes, the Dicalidonae and Vecturiones, and as committing fearful ravages in conjunction with the Attacotti and Scotti (27.8.4.) Their ethnological relations have been already discussed [BRITANNICAE INSULAE Vol. 1. p. 438]. The name of Picti, or painted, is commonly supposed to be derived from their custom of painting their bodies, and would thus be only a translation of the British word Brith, signifying anything painted, and which, according to Camden (Gen. Descr. p. xxxvi.), is the root of the name Briton. Such an etymology favours the notion that the Picts were an indigenous race ; but on this point nothing positive can be affirmed. (Comp. Ammian. 20.1, 26.4; Beda, H. Eccl. 3.4, 5.21.)
[T.H.D]The Picts; a people inhabiting the northern part of Britain, who appear to have been either a tribe of the Caledonians, or the same people as the Caledonians, though under another name. They are said to have been called Picti (“painted men”) by the Romans, from their practice of painting their bodies; but scholars now regard the word as the same with the other native terms Pictones, Pictavi, found in Gaul (cf. the French Poitou, Poictiers), and as therefore Keltic. The name, however, though not Latin, apparently coincides with the Latin in meaning, being cognate with cicht, “an engraver.” Picts are first mentioned in A.D. 296 by Eumenius; and after this time their name frequently occurs in the Roman writers, and often in connection with that of the Scoti. See Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1886); Rhys, Celtic Britain (London, 1884); and the article Caledonia.