time to seize what he had gathered, and so, in order that Boadicea
and his daughters should enjoy in peace a portion of his stores,
he has left half to Nero. The man was a fool as well as a traitor.
The peasant who throws a child out of the door to the wolves knows
that it does but whet their appetite for blood, and so it will be
in this case. I hear Prasutagus died a week since, though the news
has come but slowly, and already a horde of Roman officials have
arrived in Norfolk, and are proceeding to make inventories of the
king's possessions, and to bear themselves as insolently as if they
were masters of all. Trouble must come, and that soon. Boadicea is
of different stuff to her husband; she will not bear the insolence
of the Romans. It would have been well for the Iceni had Prasutagus
died twenty years ago and she had ruled our country."

"The gods have clearly willed, mother, that we should rise as one
people against the Romans. It may be that it was for this that they
did not defend their shrines from the impious hands of the invaders.
Nought else stirred the Britons to lay aside their jealousies and
act as one people. Now from end to end of the island all are burning
for vengeance. Just at this moment, comes the death of the Romans'
friend Prasutagus, and the passing of the rule of the Iceni into
the hands of Boadicea. With the Romans in her capital the occasion
will assuredly not long be wanting, and then there will be such a
rising as the Romans have never yet seen; and then, their purpose
effected, the gods may well fight on our side. I would that there
had been five more years in which to prepare for the struggle, but
if it must come it must. This Catus Decianus is just the man to
bring it on. Haughty, arrogant, and greedy, he knows nothing of
us, and has never faced the Britons in arms. Had Suetonius been
here he would not have acted thus with regard to the affairs of