.

The conquests under Claudius carry us over new localities; and they are
related by a great historian, with more than ordinary means of
information. In Tacitus we read the accounts of Agricola. Yet the
information, with the exception of a few interesting details, is
confirmatory of what we have been told before, rather than suggestive of
any essential differences between the Britons of the interior and the
Britons of the southern coast. The war-chariot was limited to certain
districts. The rule of a woman was tolerated. The wives and mothers
looked-on upon the battles of the husbands and daughters. They may be
said, indeed, to have shared in them. Their cries, and shrieks, and
reproaches, their dishevelled hair, all helped to stimulate the
warriors, who opposed Suetonius Paulinus in the fastnesses of the Isle
of Anglesey. The Druids added fuel to the fiery energy thus excited.
There was the political organization that consolidates kingdoms. There
was the spirit of faction which disintegrates them. As were the
Brigantes, so were the Iceni; as were the Iceni, so were the Silures and
Ordovices. The same family likeness runs throughout; likeness in
essentials, difference in detail. In Caledonia the hair was flaxen; in
South Wales curled and black. The complexion too was florid, from which
Tacitus has drawn certain inferences.

The conquests under Vespasian carry us further still into Scotland, and
to the Grampians, against the _Caledonians_ under Galgacus. The extent
to which they differed from the Britons is not to be collected from the
account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder.
Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They
fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the
swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument
in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons
as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the inferior
civilization of the North Britons, or Caledonians, is to be found in a
later writer, Dio Cassius, in his history of the campaigns of Severus.
"Amongst the Britons the two greatest tribes are the Caledonians and the
Maeatae; for even the names of the others, as may be said, have merged in
these. The Maeatae dwell close to the wall which divides the island into
two parts; the Caledonians beyond them. Each of these people inhabit
mountains wild and waterless, and plains deser