HKB
general conventions of their several communities engaged them in a league ratified by solemn sacrifices. And thus they mutually retired for the winter, with minds on both sides abundantly irritated.
During the same summer, a cohort of Usipians levied in Germany and thence transported to Britain, adventured upon a feat very desperate and memorable. When they had slain the Centurion and soldiers placed amongst them for training them in discipline, and to serve them for patterns and directors, they embarked in three pinnaces, forcing the pilots to conduct them; and since one of these forsook them and fled away, they suspected and therefore killed the other two. As the attempt was not yet divulged, their launching into the deep was beheld as a wonder. Anon they were tossed hither and thither at the mercy of the waves: and, as they often engaged for spoil with several of the Britons, obliging them to defend their property thus invaded, in which conflicts they frequently proved victorious, and were sometimes defeated, they were at last reduced to want so pressing, as to feed upon one another, first upon the weakest, then upon whomsoever the lot fell. In this manner were they carried round about Britain, and having lost their vessels through ignorance how to manage them, they were accounted robbers and pirates, and fell into the hands first of the Suevians, afterwards of the Frisians. Nay, as they were bought and sold for slaves, some of them, through change of masters, were brought over to our side of the Rhine, and grew famous from the discovery of an adventure so extraordinary.
A.D. 84. In the beginning of the summer, Agricola suffered a sore blow in his family, by losing his son born about a year before. A misfortune which he neither bore with an ostentation of firmness and unconcern, like many other men of magnanimity, nor with lamentations and tears worthy only of women. Besides that for this affliction, war proved one of his remedies. When therefore he had sent forward the navy, which by committing devastations in several places, would not fail to spread a mighty and perplexing terror, he put himself at the head of his army lightly equipped, and to it had added some of the bravest Britons, such as had been well proved through a long course of peace. Thus he arrived at the Grampian Hills, upon which the enemy were already encamped. For, the Britons, nothing daunted by the issue of the former battle, and boldly waiting either to take vengeance or to suffer bondage, taught withal at last, that a general union was the best way to repel common danger, had by embassies and confederacies drawn together the forces of all their communities. Even then were to be seen thirty thousand men in arms, and their youth from every quarter were still continuing to flock in, as were also such of their elderly men as were yet vigorous and hale, they who were signal in war, and now carried with them their several ensigns of honour formerly gained in the field. And now Galgacus, he who amongst their several leaders surpassed all in valour and descent, is said to have spoke in this strain to the multitude all very pressing for battle,