THOUGH early British traditions may survive in later Literature, we cannot accept them for critical purposes. The century of the birth of Christ is the earliest date of our authentic history. The words of the Romans, strangers and enemies, are unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the Northern nations; the man’s reverence for womanhood, the woman’s sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced society. Plutarch (“de Virtut Mul.”) says, “Concerning the virtues of women, I am not of the same mind with Thucydides. For he would prove that she is the best woman concerning whom there is least discourse made by people abroad, either to her praise or dispraise; judging that as the person, so the very name of a good woman ought to be retired and not to gad abroad.... And seeing that many worthy things, both public and private, have been done by women, it is not amiss to give a brief historical account of those that are public in the first place.” Among the examples he cites, there is that of the continental Celts, kindred to the British. Some of these wandered north-west, and some due south. “There arose a very grievous and irreconcilable contention among the Celts before they passed over the Alps to inhabit that tract of Italy which now they inhabit, which proceeded to a civil war. The women, placing themselves between the armies, took up the controversies, argued them so accurately, and determined them so impartially that an admirable friendly correspondence and general amity ensued, both civil and domestic. Hence the Celts made it their practice to take women into consultation about peace or war, and to use them as mediates in any controversies that arose between them and their allies. In the league, therefore, made with Hannibal, the writing runs thus—If the Celts take occasion of quarrelling with the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain shall decide the dispute; but if the Carthaginians accuse the Celts, the Celtic women shall decide the controversy.” The Romans were much struck by the similar position of women among the Britons, Belgic and Celtic alike. Elton, on the authority of Ammianus Marcellinus, says of the women, “that their approximation to the men in stature was the best evidence that the nation had advanced out of barbarism.” Cæsar tells us (“Eng.” 117) that the British women were made use of in Court, in Council, and in Camp, and that no distinction of sex was made in places of command or government. Selden, in his chapter on “Women” in the “Janus Anglorum,” reminds us, that “Boadicea so successfully commanded the British armies as to beat and conquer the Roman Viceroy, and no doubt that noble lady was a deliberative member of the Council where the resolution was taken to fight, and that she should command the forces.” Tacitus (“Vita Agric.,” c.