honour attainable by any Roman below
Imperial rank.[167]

D. 11.--But even without their King the stubborn clan still stood
desperately at bay. Their pertinacious resistance in every pass and
on every hill-top of their country at length fairly wore Ostorius out.
The incessant fatigues of the campaign broke down his health, and he
died [A.D. 54] on the march; to the ferocious joy of the Silurians,
who boasted that their valour had made an end of the brave enemy who
had vowed to "extinguish their very name,"[168] no less than if they
had slain him upon the field of battle.

D. 12.--Before he died, however, he had curbed them both to north and
south by the establishment of strong Roman towns at Uriconium on the
Severn (named after the neighbouring Wrekin), and Isca Silurum at
the mouth of the Usk. The British name of the latter place, Caerleon
[Castra Legionum], still reminds us that it was one of the great
legionary stations of the island, while the abundant inscriptions
unearthed upon the site, tell us that here the Second Legion had its
head-quarters till the last days of the Roman occupation.[169]

D. 13.--The unremitting pressure of these two garrisons crushed out at
last the Silurian resistance. The fighting men of the clan must
indeed have been almost wholly killed off during these four years
of murderous warfare. Thus Avitus Didius Gallus, the successor of
Ostorius, though himself too old to take the field, was able to
announce to Claudius that he had completed the subjugation of Britain.
The Silurians after one last effort, in which they signally defeated
an entire Legion, lay in the quietude of utter exhaustion; and though
Cartismandua caused some little trouble by putting away her husband
Venusius and raising a favourite to the throne, the matter was
compromised by Roman intervention; and Claudius lived to hear that the
island was, at last, peacefully submissive to his sway. Then Agrippina
showed herself once more the Cartismandua of Rome, and her son Nero
sat upon the throne of her poisoned husband [A.D. 55].

SECTION E.

Neronian misgovernment--Seneca--Prasutagus--Boadicea's revolt--Sack
of Camelodune--Suetonius in Mona--"Druidesses"--Sack of London and
Verulam--Boadicea crushed at Battle Bridge--Peace of Petronius.

E. 1.--Under Nero the unhappy Britons first realized what it was to be
Roman provincials. Though Julius Caesar and Augustus had checked the
grossest abuses of the Republican proconsula