Robert Renwick Peebles

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Nearly one hundred years elapsed between the partial conquest achieved by Julius Caesar and the formation, in the forty-third year of the Christian era, of a Roman province on British soil, while other thirty-six years had run their course before the invaders crossed the Solway. It was within the period over which these movements extended that the earliest notices of Britain, based on actual observation, were penned; and, in the dearth of fuller information, the meagre accounts of the country and its people contained in the pages of the classic authors are of special historic interest. Caesar described the district which he traversed as very populous, the people as pastoral, but using iron and brass, and the inhabitants of the interior, presumed to be indigenous, as less civilised than those on the coasts who were supposed to have migrated from Gaul. The natives, as distinguished from the incomers, are represented as clothed in skins, depending for subsistence rather in hunting than cultivation of the soil. Both classes were accustomed to stain their bodies with woad. They used chariots in war, and when attacked by disciplined troops they bravely defended their woods and rude fortresses. Other writers supply B.