These days the ability to understand and explain in public prints the aims of the people perceived as public enemies is likely to get you deported. So one wonders what our government would have made of that pillar of the Roman establishment Tacitus — consul, provincial governor and historian — who invented an extraordinarily sympathetic speech to put in the mouth of Calgacus, the Caledonian ‘terrorist’ who fought Agricola’s army somewhere in the mountains of Aberdeenshire in ad 83. Here is the first selection of extracts from it:
‘As often as I examine the reasons for this war and the crisis we now face, I am fully confident that the united front you present today will herald the beginning of freedom for the whole of Britain…. Nothing now lies between us and the Romans, whose arrogance you will hope in vain to escape, however decent or restrained your behaviour.
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