Trinobantes, even under a female leader, had force enough to burn a
colony, to storm camps, and, if success had not damped their vigor, would
have been able entirely to throw off the yoke; and shall not we,
untouched, unsubdued, and struggling not for the acquisition but the
security of liberty, show at the very first onset what men Caledonia has
reserved for her defence?

32. "Can you imagine that the Romans are as brave in war as they are
licentious in peace? Acquiring renown from our discords and dissensions,
they convert the faults of their enemies to the glory of their own army;
an army compounded of the most different nations, which success alone has
kept together, and which misfortune will as certainly dissipate. Unless,
indeed, you can suppose that Gauls, and Germans, and (I blush to say it)
even Britons, who, though they expend their blood to establish a foreign
dominion, have been longer its foes than its subjects, will be retained by
loyalty and affection! Terror and dread alone are the weak bonds of
attachment; which once broken, they who cease to fear will begin to hate.
Every incitement to victory is on our side. The Romans have no wives to
animate them; no parents to upbraid their flight. Most of them have either
no home, or a distant one. Few in number, ignorant of the country, looking
around in silent horror at woods, seas, and a heaven itself unknown to
them, they are delivered by the gods, as it were imprisoned and bound,
into our hands. Be not terrified with an idle show, and the glitter of
silver and gold, which can neither protect nor wound. In the very ranks of
the enemy we shall find our own bands. The Britons will acknowledge their
own cause. The Gauls will recollect their former liberty. The rest of the
Germans will desert them, as the Usipii have lately done. Nor is there
anything formidable behind them: ungarrisoned forts; colonies of old men;
municipal towns distempered and distracted between unjust masters and ill-
obeying subjects. Here is a general; here an army. There, tributes, mines,