rious instances of valor: next, our experience; we have defeated and
subdued these very men that are now arrayed against us: last, our good
name; it is not worthy opponents but our slaves with whom we are coming in
conflict, persons who enjoyed freedom and self-government only so far as
we allowed it. Yet even should the outcome prove contrary to our
hope,--and I will not shrink from mentioning even this contingency,--it is
better for us to fall fighting bravely than to be captured and impaled, to
see our own entrails cut out, to be spitted on red hot skewers, to perish
dissolved in boiling water, when we have fallen into the power of
creatures that are very beasts, savage, lawless, godless. Let us therefore
either beat them or die on the spot. Britain shall be a noble memorial to
us, even though all subsequent Romans should be driven from it; for in any
case our bodies shall forever possess the land."

[Sidenote:--12--] At the conclusion of exhortations of this sort and
others like them he raised the signal for battle. Thereupon they
approached each other, the barbarians making a great outcry intermingled
with menacing incantations, but the Romans silently and in order until
they came within a javelin's throw of the enemy. Then, while the foe were
advancing against them at a walk, the Romans started at a given word and
charged them at full speed, and when the clash came easily broke through
the opposing ranks; but, as they were surrounded by the great numbers,
they had to be fighting everywhere at once. Their struggle took many
forms. In the first place, light-armed troops might be in conflict with
light-armed, heavy-armed be arrayed against heavy-armed, cavalry join
issue with cavalry; and against the chariots of the barbarians the Roman
archers would be contending. Again, the barbarians would assail the Romans
with a rush of their chariots, knocking them helter-skelter, but, since
they fought without breastplates, would be themselves repulsed by the
arrows. Horseman would upset foot-soldier, and foot-soldier strike down
horseman; some, forming in close order, would go to meet the chariots, and
others would be scattered by them; some would come to close quarters with
the archers and rout them, whereas others were content to dodge their
shafts at a distance: and all these things went on not at one spot, but in
the three divisions at once. They contended for a long time, both parties
being animated by the same zeal and da