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"magus" was used by Cicero to mean "a wise man among the Persians", so, yes, by the 1st century (although Claudius Ptoleamaius was librarian at Alexender in the early-to-mid 2nd century) the word existed in Latin, and also had a broader figurative sense of "magician". Can't think of a use of it to mean "king", though
The verb "vaco" means among other things "I am free from", but the two words could not, IMHO, be sandwiched together to form "vacomagi"; more probable might be the cognate adjective "vaccuus", but even there it's an odd fit.
To be honest, it's most likely that, although the name is a Latin one, and was probably a Roman one, it was a Latinised version of the sound of the tribal name. This is particularly likely given that "magus" is itself a Celtic sense unit meaning, as far as one can tell, "field", "plain" and possibly "market" (an attempt to explain it as an ending to town names like "Caesaromagus" - not convinced myself). There's an attempt to tie this into primitive Finnish, by the way, but I'm profoundly suspicious of it. So I'm not sure "Vacomagi" means much of anything, in Latin anyway.
Oh, and Theodosius drove the Picts out of Northern Britain in the late 4th Century, Jub, but the weakness of the empire after the death of Theodosius meant they were raiding again within a few years. |
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