This description can be taken to mean that Elafius was one of a number of local warlords rather than leader of all post-Roman Britain and might provide a small insight into the political situation in the area at the time.
By means of comparison, a Briton Germanus is recorded as having met seventeen years earlier, in 429, is described by Constantius as being of tribunician rank.
If Elafius was a leader he may have played a role in the subsequent exile of the Pelagian preachers although this banishment is described as being decided through common consent rather than a warlord's orders or even a Roman legal process.
Edward Arthur Thompson[6] emphasised how poorly informed Constantius seems to have been about Germanus’s British visit compared to his activities in Gaul and Italy.
(Especially if a critical doubting author is fully unable to recognize humility and true intention of the heart because of their bursting pride) Meanwhile, Professor Ian S. Wood[7] has interpreted Constantius' account of Germanus's two British expeditions as in large part 'allegorical' rather than factual.
Then there is the fact that on both visits, as Germanus sets out, there are ‘demons’, active against him (in the first they provoke bad weather: in the second we are told they are unable to do this, but instead spread news of his approach).
A recent study by Professor Anthony Barrett [10] has concluded that the complex problems surrounding the dating of the life of Saint Germanus can be most credibly solved on the basis that he made only one visit.
It would particularly throw into doubt the figure of Elafius, who is something of a mysterious anomaly, in any case, given that he represents the only named Briton in the whole of Germanus's account (besides the martyr-saint Alban).