A Child's History of England.4

Still, the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose, on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred, and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by their own fires. But, even while he was in Britain, with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a British queen, the widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by the Romans who were settled in England, she was scourged, by order of Catus a Roman officer; and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence, and her husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the Britons rose, with all their might and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul; they laid [lay waste - destroy/damage] the Roman possessions waste; they forced the Romans out of London, then a poor little town, but a trading place; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, and desperately attacked his, on the field where it was strongly posted [guard]. Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea, in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the last; but they were vanquished with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison.

六级/考研单词: yield, sword, sacred, cage, widow, shame, insult, slave, revenge, injure, rage, oppress, slaughter, poison

Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon [fall on - attack] his troops, and retook the Island of Anglesey. Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years afterwards, and retook it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, especially that part of it which is now called Scotland; but, its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They fought the bloodiest battles with him; they killed their very [用于强调] wives and children, to prevent his making prisoners of them; they fell, fighting, in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian [] came, thirty years afterwards, and still they resisted him. Severus came, nearly a hundred years afterwards, and they worried [annoy/bother] his great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands, in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, for a time; but not by force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace, after this, for seventy years.

六级/考研单词: devote, heap, pile, grave, rejoice, swamp, successor, conquer, yield, privilege

Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierce, sea-faring [fare: get on, 过日子] people [在海上讨生活的人] from the countries to the North of the Rhine [莱茵河是德国最长的河流], the great river of Germany on the banks of which the best grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to come, in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were repulsed by Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the sea. But, after this time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long succession of Roman Emperors and chiefs; during all which length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over and over again. At last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave manner; for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people.

六级/考研单词: fierce, pirate, indigenous, renew, interval, emperor, abandon, conquer, magistrate

turn sb away: 1. refuse to let sb enter a place or join an organization; 2. refuse to give sb sympathy, help, or support

撒克逊人，日耳曼人的一支，最早居于波罗的海沿岸和石勒苏益格地区，后内迁至德国境内的下萨克森州一带，称为萨克森人。公元5世纪初，一部分萨克森人北上渡海，在高卢海岸和不列颠海岸登陆入侵，最终大部分定居在英格兰。史学界把在英格兰定居的萨克森人，称为撒克逊人，与英格兰的盎格鲁人合称为盎格鲁-撒克逊人，为现在英国人的主体。

皮克特人指数世纪前，先于苏格兰人居住于福斯河以北的皮克塔维亚，也就是加勒多尼亚（现今的苏格兰）的先住民。

Hadrian [哈德良], also spelled Adrian, Latin in full Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, original name (until 117 ce) Publius Aelius Hadrianus, (born January 24, 76 ce, died July 10, 138, Baiae [Baia], near Naples [Italy]), Roman emperor (117-138 ce), the emperor Trajan’s [图拉真] cousin and successor, who was a cultivated admirer of Greek civilization and who unified and consolidated Rome’s vast empire.

ce (Common Era) = ad (Anno Domini); 东汉: 25年-220年

Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first invasion of the Island, when the Romans departed from it for ever. In the course of that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of the Britons. They had made great military roads; they had built forts; they had taught them how to dress, and arm themselves, much better than they had ever known how to do before; they had refined the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots; Hadrian had strengthened it; Severus, finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone.

六级/考研单词: invade, depart, militant, refine