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“were clamorous for the attack, crying out that their valour 
would overcome all opposition, and the inferior officers breathing 
the same sentiments gave additional courage to the troops. 
Ostorius, after reconnoitring the ground to see which parts were 
impenetrable, and which accessible, led on the eager soldiers and 
with much difficulty crossed the river. When they came to the 
rampart, while the enemy threw their javelins at a distance our 
soldiers suffered most, and many were slain. . 
* But when ours closed their ranks and placed their shields over 
them, they soon tore down the rough irregular piles of stones and 
attacking the enemy on level ground obliged them to fly to the 
hills. Thither also both the light and heavy armed soldiers 
followed, the former attacking them with their spears, the latter 
in a dense body, till the Britons, who had neither armour nor 
helmets to protect their persons, were thrown into disorder, and 
if they made any resistance to the auxiliaries they were cut in 
pieces by the swords and spears of the legionaries, and when they 
turned upon the latter, the auxiliaries destroyed them with their 
sabres and javelins.”* Now our lamented friend, Mr. Warre, 
referred the last occupation of the pits as dwellings to this time, 
but his theory was that the onslaught whose evidence remains in 
the gashed bones of the warriors was made by Ceawlin, the 
Saxon, in the year 577, that is, that five centuries and a quarter 
had passed between the time when the stores of grain and other 
possessions of the pre-Roman Britons had been deposited in the 
pits and the day that added to the contents of the same pits the 
skeletons and the iron weapons by which they were slain. I 
never could see good reason for this opinion at the time, nor can 
I now. : : 
If it were so, is it likely that in a pit about six feet deep a 
skeleton with three cuts through the skull should be found within 
about six inches of the bottom, and that in the one pit lined with 
* “The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon, p. 24. 
