Ancient & modern
These days the ability to understand and explain in public prints the aims of the people perceived as public enemies is likely to get you deported. So one wonders what our government would have made of that pillar of the Roman establishment Tacitus — consul, provincial governor and historian who invented an extraordinarily sympathetic speech to put in the mouth of Calgacus, the Caledonian ‘terrorist’ who fought Agricola’s army somewhere in the mountains of Aberdeenshire in AD 83. Here is the first selection of extracts from it: ‘As often as I examine the reasons for this war and the crisis we now face, I am fully confident that the united front you present today will herald the beginning of freedom for the whole of Britain.... Nothing now lies between us and the Romans, whose arrogance you will hope in vain to escape, however decent or restrained your behaviour. Plunderers of the world, they have exhausted the land and now ransack the sea. Enemy wealth excites their greed, enemy poverty their lust for power — as is obvious, since neither East nor West has yet glutted them.... Perverting language, they call robbery, butchery and extortion “government”, and when they make a waste-land, they call it “peace”... .
‘Nature wishes every man to make his children and relatives his nearest and dearest, but these are being torn from us by conscription, to slave it in other lands. As for our wives and sisters, even if they are not raped by our enemies, they are defiled by those who masquerade as “friends” and “guests”. Our goods and fortunes are drained to pay taxes, the produce of our land to pay corn-levies, and our very bodies and hands to build roads through forests and swamps, under blows and insults....
‘So, then, seeing there is no hope of mercy, take your courage in both hands, whether you value survival or glory the most. Under a woman for leader, the Brigantes [he means the Iceni, under Boadicea] were able to burn one Roman colony and sack a camp and, if their success had not made them careless, could have shaken off the Roman yoke altogether. We, uncorrupted and unconquered, have been raised to enjoy our freedom, not regret its loss. So here and now, from the very opening exchanges, let us demonstrate to the enemy what sort of men Caledonia has kept in reserve for its defence.’ To be continued ...
Peter Jones
Previous page
