Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/30

 surrounded and enclosed, they are delivered to us by the gods.

"March, then, to battle, and think of your fathers and children!"

The Caledonians received these soul-inspiring words—which have been rendered nearly word for word from the Roman historian—with tumultuous clamours of applause; their excitement was still further increased by the songs of the bards and the exhortations of the Druids.

At the sight of the Caledonians, it became difficult to keep the Romans in the entrenchments, and Agricola, seeing their impatience for battle, exhorted them to conquest.

"Defeat itself," he said, "will not be without glory; but you will not yield. The bravest of the Britons have been already overcome; those who remain are cowardly and timid, as you behold on the heights, which you will illustrate by a memorable victory. Put an end," he concluded, "to so many expeditions, and add another great day to fifty years of triumph!"

At these words the ardour of his soldiers could no longer be repressed. They quitted the camp, and their brave leader ranged them in order of battle: the auxiliaries on foot, to the number of 8,000, in the centre; 3,000 horsemen formed the wings; the legions being held in reserve.

The first line of the Caledonians descended to the plain, which trembled beneath the galloping of the horses and the rolling of the war-chariots. Agricola, seeing the superiority of the enemy in point of numbers, deployed his ranks, resolved neither to fly nor yield.

Favoured by their position, the barbarians had the advantage as long as they fought at a distance with javelins and arrows; which became useless, however, when, the Roman general having commanded the auxiliaries to engage man to man, they rushed to the encounter with their long sharp swords; another body assailed the rocks, which they carried by assault, and the Caledonians retreated behind their horsemen and chariots; whilst the Roman cavalry, falling on the confused mass, completed the rout.

The plain soon became one wide scene of carnage; 10,000 Caledonians perished; whilst their enemy lost only 360 men.

The victors passed the night in drunkenness and pillage; whilst the vanquished, men and women, wandered about the country, yielding to despair. In their rage they destroyed their habitations, to prevent their being plundered by the Romans.

Agricola rendered an account of his victory to the emperor, in terms remarkable for modesty and simplicity. The jealous Domitian received his letter with apparent joy, but secret wrath: with his usual cunning, however, he dissembled his real sentiments till time had weakened the enthusiasm of the people and the favour of the army for the man he hated. Gradually a report gained ground that the victorious general was to be recalled from the scene of his triumphs, to take the command in Syria, and Domitian demanded for him the honours of a triumph.

The victor dared not, however, present himself to the acclamations of the people, for fear of exciting the jealousy of his imperial master. He entered Rome privately, and by night, and presented himself before the tyrant, who received him coldly and in silence. He soon became confounded with the crowd of courtiers, and only escaped from the peril of his glory by appearing himself to forget it.

Domitian reigned some years after his return, and the fury with which he persecuted Salustius Lucullus, one of the successors of Agricola, sufficiently proved the violence he had done to his cruel nature in sparing the life of the latter.

Salustius had had the temerity to give his name to a new kind of lance, which he had, in all probability, invented. The monster looked upon this little harmless piece of vanity as an offence, and put him to death.

Little is known of the state of Britain from Domitian to Adrian, when many of the nations who had been subject to the yoke of Rome began to show signs of impatience, and all the cares of the new emperor were to confirm the peace of the world. He re-established the system of Augustus, abandoned the conquests of Trajan, and limited the empire in the east to the Euphrates. He visited the provinces, and arrived at last in Britain, where he corrected many abuses, and built the celebrated wall which bore his name, in order to repress the incursions of the Caledonians; it extended upwards of eighty miles, from the mouth of the Tyne to the Irish Sea.

Rome abandoned without a struggle the country included between the wall of Adrian and that of Agricola, an extent of about 100 miles; a portion of it, however, was regained under Antoninus Pius, the adopted son and successor of Adrian.

During the thirty years which succeeded, the empire experienced the extreme vicissitudes to which all despotic empires are liable, in passing from the sceptre of the wise and good Marcus Aurelius into the hands of the infamous Commodus. The glory of Rome during the reign of this execrable monster had no other asylum than in her armies, which caused her frontiers to be respected by the barbarians, and crushed the several attempts at revolt in Germany, Dacia, and Britain.

The Caledonians, who had recovered from the cruel defeat they had suffered under Agricola, made a successful irruption into the north of the island, where they surprised and cut to pieces a body of Roman troops.

The peril of the province became extreme.

Commodus, to avoid the disgrace of losing it, conferred the government of the island upon Ulpius Marcellus, a general worthy of the antique days of Rome, being a sober man, just, and of undaunted courage. He obtained a signal victory over the Caledonians, and re-established peace. He was soon afterwards recalled.

He was succeeded by Perennis, a favourite of Commodus, who by his arbitrary, tyrannical conduct so excited the hatred of his legions, that they forgot their long habits of discipline and slavish obedience to the emperor.

The soldiers delegated 1,500 of their number to lay their complaints before the imperial throne. This numerous deputation passed peaceably through Gaul and Italy, and Commodus himself set forward to meet it. He listened to their complaints, and, led by his terrors rather than the love of justice, abandoned their general to the vengeance of his rebellious troops.

Perennis was scourged to death by them with rods.

The legions in Britain, emboldened by their success, demanded and obtained from the feeble hands of their master a general of obscure origin but undoubted merit,