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 For ninety years after his raid no Roman armies came to the island. But Roman traders came and Romanized Celts from France, who laughed at the ‘savage’ ways of the British Celts. Men began to talk, in the wooden or wattle huts of British kings (hitherto believed by the Britons to be the most magnificent buildings imaginable), of the name and fame of the great Empire, of streets paved with marble, and of houses roofed with gilded bronze; of the invincible Roman legions clad in steel and moving like steel machines; of the great paved roads driven like arrows over hill and dale, through the length and breadth of Western Europe, of the temples and baths, of the luxurious waterways of the South. Rome attracted and terrified many peoples, even before she conquered them. The Roman Emperor seemed to men who had never seen him to be a very god upon earth.

But the Roman conquest began in earnest in the year 43, and within half a century was fairly complete. At first it was cruel; Roman soldiers were quite pitiless; for those who resisted they had only the sword or slavery. The north and west of Britain resisted long and hard and often. Once under the great Queen, Boadicea, whose statue now stands on Westminster Bridge in London, the Britons cut to pieces a whole Roman legion. Then came cruel vengeance and reconquest; but after reconquest came such peace and good government as Britain had never seen before. The Romans introduced into all their provinces a system of law so fair and so strong, that almost all the best laws of modern Europe have been founded on it. Everywhere the weak were protected against the strong; castles were built on the coast with powerful garrisons in them; fleets patrolled the Channel and the North