there broke out the great rebellion under the heroic Boudicca. There never has been a quarrel in this island which has not had money as its root. It was not so much the oppressive nature of the tribute as the vexatious methods of the Roman financiers, who still as in republican days swarmed in the wake of eagles, that stirred the Iceni and their queen into revolt. Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium were taken and sacked and there was an immense slaughter of Roman civilians and Romanised Britons. But vengeance followed: no barbarians could stand against the strategy and discipline of the legions. Succeeding governors were mainly content to pacify and civilise the island. One of the extraordinarily pungent chapters of Tacitus shows us the Roman method of empire-building in Britain. “The following winter,” he says of A.D. 79, “was spent in useful statecraft. To make a people which was scattered and barbarous, and therefore prone to warfare, grow accustomed to peace and quietness by way of their pleasures, Agricola used to persuade them by private exhortations and public assistance to build temples, forums, and houses, with praise for the eager and admonitions for the laggard. Thus they could not help embarking on the rivalry for honour. Now he began to instruct the sons of chieftains in the liberal arts, to extol the natural abilities of the Britons above the studious habits of Gaul, so that those who lately rejected even the Roman language now became zealous for oratory. So even our dress came into esteem, and the toga was commonly worn. The next step was towards the attractions of our vices, lounging in colonnades, baths, and refined dinner-parties. They were too ignorant to see that what they call civilisation was really a form of slavery.” There is no doubt that the Britons took as readily as their Gallic cousins to the Roman civilisation. Many of them took Roman names and became Roman citizens. They learnt the pleasures of the bath and the amphitheatre, their mines were exploited, arts and industries were introduced, agriculture was improved. The Druids hid themselves away in the unconquered fastnesses of Wales or crossed over to the Hibernian island which the Romans never had leisure to conquer. Meanwhile the Britons were learning to worship the obsolete gods of Rome, and presently the Eastern deities who came in their train.