of the Empire had established a strong colony at
Colchester in the southeast of Britain. (See map facing p. 14.)
There they built a temple and set up the statue of the Emperor
Claudius, which the soldiers worshiped, both as a protecting god and
as the representative of the Roman Empire.

The army had also conquered other places. One of these was a little
native settlement on a bend in the Thames where the river broadened
slightly. It consisted of a few miserable huts and a row of
intrenched cattle pens. It was called in the British tongue Llyn-din
or the Fort-on-the-pool. This name, which was pronounced with
difficulty by Roman lips, eventually became known wherever ships sail,
trade reaches, or history is read,--London.

22. Expedition against the Druids.

But in order to complete the conquest of the country, the Roman
generals resolved to crush the power of the Druids (S3), since these
priests exhorted the Britons to refuse to surrender. The island of
Anglesey, off the northwest coast of Wales, was the stronghold to
which the Druids had retreated. (See map facing p. 14.) As the Roman
soldiers approached to attack them, they beheld the priests and women
standing on the shore, with uplifted hands, uttering "dreadful prayers
and imprecations."

For a moment the Roman troops hesitated; then they rushed upon the
Druids, cut them to pieces, and cast their bodies into their own
sacred fires. From this blow Druidism as an organized faith never
recovered, though traces of its religious rites still survive in the
use of the mistletoe at Christman and in May-day festivals.

23. Revolt of Boadicea (61).

Still the power of the Latin legions was only partly established, for
while the Roman general was absent with his troops at Anglesey, a
formidable revolt had broken out in the east. A British chief, in
order to secure half of his property to his family at his death, left
it to be equally divided between his daughters and the Emperor. The
governor of the district, under the pretext that Boadicea, the widow
of the dead chief, had concealed part of the property, seized the
whole of it.

Boadicea protested. To punish her presumption, the Romans stripped
and scourged her, and inflicted still more brutal and infamous
treatment on her daughters. Maddened by these outrages, Boadicea
appealed to her countrymen for vengeance. The enraged Britons fell
upon London, and other places held by the Romans, burned them to th