Julius Caesar speaks more than once of the skill of the British in this respect. He tells us of the plaiting together of the branches of growing trees to form barriers in the woods, which his soldiers found unpleasantly effective. We read also of the wattle-work erections of various shapes in which human victims were enclosed to be burned. And, from a more peaceful side, we learn that the tables of ladies in Rome were not completely in the fashion if they had no examples of British baskets. "Basket," as you know, is one of the best examples of the survival of a British word among us, a word used also by the Romans[19], their word _bascauda_ and our "basket" representing the Welsh _basgawd_ and _basget_. There is abundance of evidence of the interest taken by the Romans in Britain and its people, and of the esteem in which Britons were held at Rome. Martial, who settled in Rome in the year A. D. 66, perhaps one year or two years before St. Paul's death, speaks of a British lady in Rome, Claudia, the newly-married wife of Pudens. Of her he says[20], in terms as he believed of the highest personal praise-- Though Claudia from the sea-green Britons came, She wears the aspect of a Roman dame. And, again, he mentions, not without pride, that he was read in Britain: 'Britain, too, is said to sing my verse.' It is a little difficult to resist the tendency to see in this Pudens and Claudia the Pudens and Claudia of the last sentence before the final blessing in the last letter of St. Paul, where their names are linked together by that of Linus, the first Bishop of Rome. We are told, however, that the severe historian ought to resist this tendency of the natural man. Again, Seneca, the brother of Gallio, whom we meet in the Acts, had a great deal of money invested in Britain. Juvenal brings a British king into his verse, and Richborough oysters. Josephus[21] tells us that Titus made use of the Britons, as a telling illustration in his final speech to the desperate Jews:--"Pray what greater obstacle is there than the wall of the Ocean, with which the Britons are encompassed? And yet they bow before the arms of the Romans."