* The Britons who fought under Boadicea were anything but "crafty
foxes." "Bold lions" is a much more appropriate appellation; they
would also have been victorious if they had half the military
advantages of the Romans.


7. The Romans, therefore, having slain many of the rebels, and
reserved others for slaves, that the land might not be entirely
reduced to desolation, left the island, destitute as it was of
wine and oil, and returned to Italy, leaving behind them taskmasters,
to scourge the shoulders of the natives, to reduce their necks to
the yoke, and their soil to the vassalage of a Roman province;
to chastise the crafty race, not with warlike weapons, but with
rods, and if necessary to gird upon their sides the naked sword,
so that it was no longer thought to be Britain, but a Roman island;
and all their money, whether of copper, gold, or silver, was
stamped with Caesar's image.

8. Meanwhile these islands, stiff with cold and frost, and in a
distant region of the world, remote from the visible sun, received
the beams of light, that is, the holy precepts of Christ, the true
Sun, showing to the whole world his splendour, not only from the
temporal firmament, but from the height of heaven, which surpasses
every thing temporal, at the latter part, as we know, of the reign
of Tiberius Caesar, by whom his religion was propagated without
impediment, and death threatened to those who interfered with its
professors.

9. These rays of light were received with lukewarm minds by the