15 Relieved from apprehension by
the legate’s absence, the Britons dwelt much among themselves on the miseries
of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion.
"All we get by patience," they said, "is that heavier demands
are exacted from us, as from men who will readily submit. A single king once
ruled us; now two are set over us; a legate to tyrannise over our lives, a
procurator to tyrannise over our property. Their quarrels and their harmony are
alike ruinous to their subjects. The centurions of the one, the slaves of the
other, combine violence with insult. Nothing is now safe from their avarice,
nothing from their lust. In war it is the strong who plunders; now, it is for
the most part by cowards and poltroons that our homes are rifled, our children
torn from us, the conscription enforced, as though it were for our country
alone that we could not die. For, after all, what a mere handful of soldiers
has crossed over, if we Britons look at our own numbers. Germany did
thus shake off the yoke, and yet its defence was a river, not the ocean. With
us, fatherland, wives, parents, are the motives to war; with them, only greed
and profligacy. They will surely fly, as did the now deified Julius, if once we
emulate the valour of our sires. Let us not be panic-stricken at the result of
one or two engagements. The miserable have more fury and greater resolution.
Now even the gods are beginning to pity us, for they are keeping away the Roman
general, and detaining his army far from us in another island. We have already
taken the hardest step; we are deliberating. And indeed, in all such designs,
to dare is less perilous than to be detected."
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