Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
reported, and the only prospect of booty was in slaves, from whom there
could be expected neither "skill in letters nor in music." In sober
truth, all Caesar had won from the people of Kent and Hertfordshire had
been blows and buffets, for there were _men_ in Britain even then. The
prowess of the British charioteers became a standing joke in Rome
against the soldiers of Caesar. Horace and Tibullus both speak of the
Briton as unconquered. The steel bow the strong Roman hand had for a
moment bent, quickly relapsed to its old shape the moment Caesar,
mounting his tall galley, turned his eyes towards Gaul.
[Illustration: PART OF OLD LONDON WALL, NEAR FALCON SQUARE (_see page
21_).]
The Mandubert who sought Caesar's help is by some thought to be the son
of the semi-fabulous King Lud (King _Brown_), the mythical founder of
London, and, according to Milton, who, as we have said, follows the old
historians, a descendant of Brute of Troy. The successor of the warlike
Cassivellaunus had his capital at St. Alban's; his son Cunobelin
(Shakespeare's Cymbeline)--a name which seems to glow with perpetual
sunshine as we write it--had a palace at Colchester; and the son of
Cunobelin was the famed Caradoc, or Caractacus, that hero of the
Silures, who struggled bravely for nine long years against the generals
of Rome.
Celtic etymologists differ, as etymologists usually do, about the
derivation of the name of London. Lon, or Long, meant, they say, either
a lake, a wood, a populous place, a plain, or a ship-town. This last
conjecture is, however, now the most generally received, as it at once
gives the modern pronunciation, to which Llyn-don would never have
assimilated. The first British town was indeed a simple Celtic hill
fortress, formed first on Tower Hill, and afterwards continued to
Cornhill and Ludgate. It was moated on the south by the river, which it
controlled; by fens on the north; and on the east by the marshy low
ground of Wapping. It was a high, dry, and fortified point of
communication between the river and the inland country of Essex and
Hertfordshire, a safe sixty miles from the sea, and central as a depot
and meeting-place for the tribes of Kent and Middlesex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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