Beginnings英国起源(10)

Will probably not. Sooner or later they would have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out.

Like a boiled egg of breakfast, to hold sacrificial offerings.

And then they would have remembered stories of Rome told about the grisly brutality of the Druids.

Perhaps they would have even taken note of the stories told by the northern savages themselves.

Of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully to those who had parted them from the rest of their body

Warning of vengeance to come.

And then they would have thought, "Well, perhaps not."

"Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads." "

So why did the Romans come here

to the edge of the world, and run the gauntlet of all these ominous totems?

Well, it was the lure of treasure, of course, all those pearls that Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps.

But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most

the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier.

And so, in the written annals of Western history

the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date.

In 55 BC Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel.

Julius Caesar must have supposed that all he had to do was land his legions in force and the Britons.

Just cowed by the spectacle all of the glittering helmets and eagle standards.

Would simply queue up to surrender.

They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. Trouble was, geography didn't.