The withdrawal of the Roman troops for home affairs hastened a new crisis, in which the Britons, made limp by protection and an alien government, were unable to hold their own against invading tribes. No longer was the British wife the brave help-meet, the counsellor, the inspirer of the British man. Roman customs had completed what the Roman arms and the Roman laws had begun, and the spirit of British Womanhood had no reserve force in itself to spare. Then came an infusion of new blood into the land, fortunately not of Latin Race, but of a good northern stock, that reverenced woman still. Speaking of that stock in earlier times, Tacitus (“Germ.” c. viii.) says, “The women are the most revered witnesses of each man’s conduct, and his most liberal applauders. To their mothers and their wives they bring their wounds for relief, who do not dread to count or search out the gashes. The women also administer food and encouragement to those who are fighting.” “They even suppose somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex, and, therefore, neither despise their counsels nor disregard their responses. We have beheld, in the reign of Vespasian, Veleda, long reverenced by many as a deity. Aurima, moreover, and several others, were formerly held in similar veneration, but not with a similar flattery, nor as though they had been goddesses (c. xviii). Almost alone among barbarians they are content with one wife.... The wife does not bring a dower to the husband, but the husband to the wife.... Lest the woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble deeds, and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the ceremony which inaugurates marriage (in which she is handed a spear) that she is her husband’s partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and to dare with him alike in peace and in war....” “She must live and die with the feeling that she is receiving what she must hand down to her children, neither tarnished, nor depreciated, what future daughters-in-law may receive, and may so pass on to her grandchildren” (c. xix). “Thus with their virtue protected, they live uncorrupted by the allurements of public shows or the stimulant of feastings. Clandestine correspondence is equally unknown to men and women. The young men marry late, and their vigour is unimpaired. Nor are the maidens hurried into marriage. Well-matched and vigorous they wed, and the offspring reproduce the strength of their parents” (Church’s Translation).