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casual missiles, over the heads of the occupants of the lower and outer trenches, 

 who in their turn were not only playing the same game, bnt ready with sheer 

 force to meet the brunt of the invading squadrons, should they, unrepulsed by 

 missUes, succeed in getting to close quarters. In the case of two equally - 

 matched barbarian armies it would strike us that the one possessed of so 

 elaborate a vantage would have been the next thing to impregnable. But 

 Roman generals and legions were accustomed to take a rapid account of what 

 could and what could not be carried by assault — " quae impenetrabilia, qusequa 

 pervia essent " — and relying on their discipline, mode of warfare, and practice 

 in scaling and in siege work, to be slow in concluding that any position was 

 wholly in the first category. And so, as Tacitus shows us, on coming near the 

 " agger " and whilst the fight was with missiles, they would put up with a 

 large proportion and a severe loss of killed and wounded, ft filling up the 

 thinned ranks with dogged endurance and with unremitted vigour of assault. 

 At last the arrowy shower would get so thick and dense that they had to form 

 the " testudo," or tortmse or sited, a great Roman resource in scaling fortified 

 places, which got its name from the bonded combination of shields, wherewith 

 soldiers tiled their heads, so as to form a scale-like covering. In Rich's " C'oiu- 

 I)anion to to the Dictionary " the testudo is described " as a compact covering, 

 like the shell of a tortoise, or the pent of a shed, which was made by raising 

 each shield over its owner's head and shoulders and fitting each shield closely 

 under the shield next to it. Over this pent every missile would slide off with- 

 out detriment to those below it, and this pent was produced by the outer ranks 

 Btooping, while those in front of them stood more and more erect." It becomes 

 intelligible what an appliance this must have been when the struggle came to 

 close quarters for enabling the assa\dting party to tear away barriers of 

 rudely piled earth and stones, to breach line after line of defence in succession, 

 and to crush those who manned each of them in hand-to hand encounter ; nay, 

 when they came at last to the innennost and most impregnable rampart of all, 

 the odds must have been strongly in favour of the Roman thus shielded as 

 well as equipped in defensive body armour, as against the Britons, who had 

 seen each line in succcession broken, who had no body armour to protect them, 

 and whose resistance depended a good deal on fitful discharges of arrows and 

 other missiles, as to which we do not find that they possessed any special skill. 

 If we may trust the Roman historian the result was commonly the same ; and 

 could it be re-enacted before us it is probable that so much as we have described 

 of incidents of Caractacus's last battle, wherever fought, would serve for a 

 true and correct representation of how it fared 1823 years ago with Wapley 

 Camp and its defenders, when (howeve much the poet Cowper might seek to 

 redress the balance of odds in the final words of Boadicea's prophecy), the 

 empire of Rome in Britain was brought one step nearer to its accomplishment, 

 and the shame and ruin of its native tribes more irrevocably consummated. It 

 is hard to see what help remained for those who manned the innermost line of 

 tt Seventy thousand Roman colonists are said to have perished in Boadicea's revolt. 



