Celts to Vikings 3a; Calgacus

One of the most famous parts of the Agricola is the speech that Tacitus put in the mouth of the British chieftain Calgacus before the Battle of Mons Graupius. Obviously Tacitus had no idea what, if anything, Calgacus said to his men, so the speech is entirely his own invention. But Tacitus, Roman senator and governor, had a barbarian leader make an attack on the Roman Empire that has long been famous among all critics of the empire, and among many who struggled for freedom in other times and places:

When I consider why we are fighting and how we have reached this crisis, I have a strong sense that this day of your splendid assembly will be the dawn of freedom for the whole of Britannia. You have mustered to a man, and to a man you are free. There are no lands behind us, and even the sea is menaced by the Roman fleet. The clash of battle -- the hero's glory -- has become the coward's safest refuge. Earlier battles against the Romans were won or lost, but never without hope; we were always there in reserve. We, the choice flower of Britannia, have been treasured in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, even our eyes are free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the last men of the earth and the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness of our rumored land. But now the boundary of Britannia is exposed. Beyond us lies no other nation, only waves and rocks and Romans, more deadly still than they, whose arrogance no submission or moderation can elude. Brigands of the world, after exhausting the land by their wholesale plunder they now ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their greed, his poverty their lust for power. Neither East nor West has been enough to glut their maw. Only they, of all on earth, long for the poor with as keen a desire as they do for the rich. Robbery, butchery, rapine, these liars call "empire": they create desolation and call it peace.