29. Preeminent by character and birth among the many chieftains was one named Calgacus. To the gathered host demanding battle he is reported to have spoken in the following strain:
30. "As often as I survey the causes of this war and our present straits, my heart beats high that this very day and this unity of ours will be the beginning of liberty for all Britain. For you are all here, united, as yet untouched by slavery: there is no other land behind us, and the very sea even is no longer free from alarms, now that the fleet of Rome threatens us. Battle therefore and arms, the strongman's pride, are also the coward's best safety. Former battles, which were fought with varying success against Rome, left behind them hopes of help in us, because we, the noblest souls in all Britain, the dwellers in its inner shrine, had never seen any shores of slavery and had preserved our very eyes from the desecration and the contamination of tyranny: here at the world's end, on its last inch of liberty, we have lived unmolested to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity. Now the uttermost parts of Britain lie exposed, and the unknown is ever magnified. But there are no other tribes to come, nothing but sea and cliffs and these more deadly Romans, whose arrogance you cannot escape by obedience and self-restraint. Robbers of the world, now that earth fails their all-devastating hands, they probe even the sea: if their enemy have wealth, they have greed; if he be poor, they are ambitious; East nor West has glutted them; alone of mankind they covet with the same passion want as much as wealth. To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.
31. Children and kin are by the law of nature each man's dearest possessions; they are swept away from us by conscription to be slaves in other lands: our wives and sisters, even when they escape a soldier's lust, are debauched by self-styled friends and guests: our goods and chattels go for tribute; our lands and harvests in requisitions of grain; life and limb themselves are worn out in making roads through marsh and forest to the accompaniment of gibes and blows. Slaves born to slavery are sold once for all and are fed by their masters free of cost; but Britain pays a daily price for her own enslavement, and feeds the slavers and as in the slave-gang the new-comer is a mockery even to his fellow slaves, so in this world-wide, age-old slave-gang, we, the new hands, worth least, are marked out to be made away with: we have no lands or mines or harbours for the working of which we might be set aside. Further, courage and high spirit in their subjects displease our masters: our very distance and seclusion, in proportion as they save us, make us more suspected: therefore, abandon all hope of pardon, and even at this late hour take courage, whether safety or glory be most prized. A woman could lead the Brigantes to burn a colony, to storm a camp; and had not their success lapsed into inactivity they might have thrown off the yoke; but we shall fight as men unscathed and untamed, men who have (been trained) for freedom, not for regrets: let us show them at the very first encounter what manner of men Caledonia has kept in reserve for her cause.
32. Or do you imagine that the Romans have as much courage in war as wantonness in peace? It is our dissensions and feuds that bring them fame: their enemy’s mistake becomes their army's glory. That army, recruited from races widely separate, is held together only by success, and will melt away with defeat: unless you suppose that Gauls and Germans, and even-to their shame be it spoken-many of the tribes of Britain, who lend their blood to an alien tyranny, of which they have been enemies for more years than slaves, are attached to Rome by loyalty and liking. Fear and panic are sorry bonds of love: take these away, and they who have ceased to fear will begin to hate. Every spur to victory makes for our victory: there are no wives to inspire the Romans, no parents to reproach the runaway: most of them have no home or an alien home. Few in numbers, uneasy in their unfamiliarity, all that they see around them, the very sky and sea and forests, strange to their eyes-the gods have delivered them into our hands as though they were caged prisoners. The empty terrors of the eye, the gleam of gold and silver, have neither help in them nor hurt. In the enemy’s own battleline we shall find hands to help us: the Britons will recognise that our cause is theirs: the Gauls will remember their former freedom: the rest of the Germans will desert them, as the Usipi deserted recently; and beyond these there is nothing to fear: empty forts, settlements of veterans, and feeble and quarrelling towns, made up of ill-affected subjects and unjust rulers. Here you have a general and an army; on the other side lies tribute, labour in the mines, and all the other pangs of slavery. You have it in your power to perpetuate your sufferings for ever or to avenge them today upon this field: therefore, before you go into action, think upon your ancestors and upon your descendants.
33. They received his speech excitedly, after the manner of barbarians, with shouting and singing and wild cries: then followed the marshalling of hosts and the glitter of arms, as the bravest dashed to the front.