Indeed, the famous speech of Caractacus, when taken captive to Rome, shows a nobility of character, nay, we may add, an amount of civilization that would not have been anticipated. “If I had made,” said the noble Briton, “that prudent use of prosperity which my rank and fortune enabled me to do, I might have come hither as your friend rather than as your prisoner; nor would you have disdained the alliance of a king descended from illustrious ancestors, and ruling over many nations. My present condition, degrading as it is to me, reflects glory on you. I once had horses, men, arms, and money; what wonder is it if I was reluctant to part with them! Your object is to obtain universal empire, and we must all be slaves! If I had submitted to you without a blow, neither my own fortune nor your glory would have been conspicuous, and all remembrances of me would have vanished when I had received my punishment; but spare me my life, and I shall be a lasting monument of your clemency.” [Sidenote: The course of commerce with Rome.] When the course of events is considered, it is not surprising that the ancient Britons should have made less opposition to Claudius than they had done ninety-seven years before to Julius Cæsar. They had learned in the interval the advantages to be derived by intercourse with a much more wealthy and more polished people than themselves. They saw that not only the enlightenment of the mind accompanies civilization in its progress, but that, as civilization increases, it creates wants which require to be supplied, and luxuries which crave to be satisfied. The routes taken by merchants and travellers continued for many centuries much as they had been in the earliest times. Claudius, however, when he left Rome for the seat of war in Britain, set sail from the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, went by sea to Massalia (Marseilles), and afterwards journeying, partly by land and partly by the rivers till he reached the coast of Gaul on the English Channel,[446] crossed over to Britain, and there joined “the forces which awaited him near the Thames.” “There were then four ports,” remarks Strabo,[447] “at which voyagers generally crossed from the mainland to the island, at the mouths respectively of the river Rhône, the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne; but the travellers who crossed from the country about the Rhine did not set sail from the mouth of that river, preferring to pass through the Morini and to embark at its port of Boulogne.” [Sidenote: Inland water traffic.]