British woman, Buduica, [Footnote: Known commonly as Boadicea.] of the
royal family and possessed of greater judgment than often belongs to
women. It was she who gathered the army to the number of nearly twelve
myriads and ascended a tribunal of marshy soil made after the Roman
fashion. In person she was very tall, with a most sturdy figure and a
piercing glance; her voice was harsh; a great mass of yellow hair fell
below her waist and a large golden necklace clasped her throat; wound
about her was a tunic of every conceivable color and over it a thick
chlamys had been fastened with a brooch. This was her constant attire. She
now grasped a spear to aid her in terrifying all beholders and spoke as
follows:--

[Sidenote:--3--] "You have had actual experience of the difference between
freedom and slavery. Hence, though some of you previously through
ignorance of which was better may have been deceived by the alluring
announcements of the Romans, yet now that you have tried both you have
learned how great a mistake you made by preferring a self-imposed
despotism to your ancestral mode of life. You have come to recognize how
far superior is the poverty of independence to wealth in servitude. What
treatment have we met with that is not most outrageous, that is not most
grievous, ever since these men insinuated themselves into Britain? Have we
not been deprived of our most numerous and our greatest possessions
entire, while for what remains we must pay taxes? Besides pasturing and
tilling all the various regions for them do we not contribute a yearly sum
for our very bodies? How much better it would have been to be sold to
masters once and for all than to ransom ourselves annually and possess
empty names of freedom! How much better to have been slain and perish
rather than go about with subservient heads! Yet what have I said? Even
dying is not free from expense among them, and you know what fees we
deposit on behalf of the dead. Throughout the rest of mankind death frees