392 
- The pits may be easily coeval with the ramparts and works in 
general. But of course it is most improbable that the stores and 
relics found at the bottom of those pits are of anything like such 
antiquity. 
' Nevertheless they tell of a very rude condition of life. Iron 
seems to hold the place of a precious metal, and the pottery is 
very rude. But we find the traces of fight and death in battle 
reaching very low down in our pits, and, next above the stores of 
grain, the layer of burnt -wood and wattle which reduced to 
charcoal the grain itself, or the upper part of the layers of grain, 
as Mr. Warre has recorded. 
The relics found in the lower part of the pits indicate a 
barbarism untouched by the hand of Rome. 
Such a state of things would quite agree with the supposition 
that the pits were last used for habitation when Ostorius Scapula 
(A.D. 51) conquered this part of England, and the account given 
by Tacitus of the storming of the last retreat of Caractacus by the 
same general would probably suit in the main the assault of 
Worlebury. 
“ That chief,” (Caractacus), leaving the more open country of 
the Silures to be overrun by the enemy, had withdrawn into the 
wilder country of the Ordovices (in North Wales) where he chose 
a strong position difficult of access even without the assistance of 
artificial defences. On the more accessible parts of the high hills 
he threw up a kind of rampart of stone while below and in front 
was a river difficult to ford. Here the British chief awaited the 
attack of his enemies or perhaps amused himself with the belief 
that his stronghold was too formidable to be attempted, for he 
had with him his family consisting of a wife and daughter. 
The Britons thus posted, and excited by the example and 
exhortations of their leader, presented a-formidable appearance to 
the Roman legionaries, protected as they were by the river which 
ran before them, and the steep declivity [acclivity ?] which rose 
in their way. But the soldiers, to use the words of Tacitus, 
