The Establishment of Roman Power in Britain
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE BRITONS. At the time of Caesar's invasion the British tribes differed widely among themselves in physical aspect, customs, language, religion and some little in political organization.1 The Gaelic tribes of Cornwall and Devon, part of Wales, northern Scotland, and Ireland were distinguished by red hair and a more ferocious appearance from the yellow-haired Brythons who had dispossessed them of most of England and southern Scotland.2 Having been the first to break off from the Celtic stock on the continent, the Gaels or Goidels preserved in their island home the wild barbarism common to the old Celts and the Germans.3 On the continent the Celts had made progress towards civilization, leaving far behind them in some respects their Teutonic neighbors.4 But among the Gaels the old patriarchal
...kings continued to hold sway.5 Their religious or magic rites, paralleled in savage horrors only by the Teutonic sacrifices to Woden and Thor, flourished down to the time of Pliny the Elder.6 These people appear to have had little or no knowledge of agriculture, no coinage and scarcely any skill in manufacture.7 The civilization of the Brythonic tribes vatied according to the time of their departure from thecontinent. The oldest arrivals, the Brigantes of northern England, the Catuelauni whose princes had established their rule over most of central England, the Iceni of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Trinovantes of Essex were up to Caesar's invasion probably little more advanced than the Gaels.1 The Belgic tribes south of the Thames, the Atrebates, Belgae, etc., who had not long before Caesar's time crossed from the mainland,2 and the Cantii of Kent who were the least uncivilized of all the Britons through their slight intercourse with Gallic merchants,3 resembled closely th...
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