ike taking part in the fray,
and perishing at last in their own sacrificial fires, when the passage
over the Menai Straits was made good.

E. 9--It is noticeable that in Mona alone do we meet with
"Druidesses." Female ministers of religion, whether priestesses or
prophetesses, are always exceptional, and usually mark a survival from
some very primitive cult. The Pythoness at Delphi, and the Vestals at
Rome, obviously do so. And amongst the races of Gaul and Britain
the same fact is testified to by such female ministrations being
invariably confined to far western islands. Pytheas, as he passed Cape
Finisterre (in Spain) by night, heard a choir of women worshipping
"Mother Earth and her Daughter"[175] with shrill yells and music.
A little further he tells of the barbarous rites observed by the
_Samnitae_ or _Amnitae_[176] in an island near the mouth of the Loire,
on which no male person might ever set foot; and of another island at
the extreme point of Gaul, already known as Uxisana (Ushant), where
nine virgin sorceresses kept alight the undying fire on their sacred
hearth and gave oracular responses. These cults clearly represented a
much older worship than Druidism, though the latter may very probably
have taken them under its shadow (as in India so many aboriginal rites
are recognized and adopted by modern Brahmanism). And the priestesses
in Mona were, in like manner, not "Druidesses" at all, but
representatives of some more primitive cult, already driven from the
mainland of Britain and finding a last foothold in this remote island.

E. 10.--The stamping out of the desperate fanaticism of Mona was
barely accomplished, when tidings were brought to Suetonius of
Boadicea's revolt. By forced marches he reached London before her,
only to find himself too weak, after the loss of the Ninth Legion, to
hold it. London, though no Colony, was already the largest and most
thriving of the Roman settlements in Britain, and piteous was the
dismay of the citizens when Suetonius bade the city be evacuated.
But neither tears nor prayers could postpone his march, and such
non-combatants as from age or infirmity could not retire with his
column, were massacred by the furious Britons even as those at
Camelodune. Next came the turn of Verulam, the Roman town on the
site of Tasciovan's stronghold,[177] where like atrocities marked the
British triumph. Every other consideration was lost in the mad lust of
slaughter. No prisoners were take