[Sidenote:--11--] After making an address of this sort to the group in
question, he came up to the third division and said also to them: "You
have heard what sort of acts these wretches have committed against us, nay
more, you have even seen some of them. Therefore choose either yourselves
to suffer the same treatment as previous victims and furthermore to be
driven entirely out of Britain, or else through victory to avenge those
that perished and also to give to the rest of mankind an example of mild
clemency toward the obedient, of necessary severity toward the rebellious.
I entertain the highest hopes of victory for our side, counting on the
following factors: first, the assistance of the gods; they usually
cooperate with the party that has been wronged: second, our inherited
bravery; we are Romans and have shown ourselves superior to all mankind in
various instances of valor: next, our experience; we have defeated and
subdued these very men that are now arrayed against us: last, our good
name; it is not worthy opponents but our slaves with whom we are coming in
conflict, persons who enjoyed freedom and self-government only so far as
we allowed it. Yet even should the outcome prove contrary to our
hope,--and I will not shrink from mentioning even this contingency,--it is
better for us to fall fighting bravely than to be captured and impaled, to
see our own entrails cut out, to be spitted on red hot skewers, to perish
dissolved in boiling water, when we have fallen into the power of
creatures that are very beasts, savage, lawless, godless. Let us therefore
either beat them or die on the spot. Britain shall be a noble memorial to
us, even though all subsequent Romans should be driven from it; for in any
case our bodies shall forever possess the land."

[Sidenote:--12--] At the conclusion of exhortations of this sort and
others like them he raised the signal for battle. Thereupon they
approached each other, the barbarians making a great outcry intermingled
with menacing incantations, but the Romans silently and in order until