Laudator Temporis Acti

Tacitus, Annals 14.30 (expedition of C. Suetonius Paullinus against the Island of Mona = Angelsey, tr. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb):

On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women, in black attire like the Furies, with hair dishevelled, waving brands. All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful imprecations, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their limbs were paralysed, they stood motionless, and exposed to wounds. Then urged by their general's appeals and mutual encouragements not to quail before a troop of frenzied women, they bore the standards onwards, smote down all resistance, and wrapped the foe in the flames of his own brands. A force was next set over the conquered, and their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed. They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails.

Stabat pro litore diversa acies, densa armis virisque, intercursantibus feminis; in modum Furiarum veste ferali, crinibus disiectis faces praeferebant; Druidaeque circum, preces diras sublatis ad caelum manibus fundentes, novitate adspectus perculere militem ut quasi haerentibus membris immobile corpus vulneribus praeberent. dein cohortationibus ducis et se ipsi stimulantes ne muliebre et fanaticum agmen pavescerent, inferunt signa sternuntque obvios et igni suo involvunt. praesidium posthac impositum victis excisique luci saevis superstitionibus sacri: nam cruore captivo adolere aras et hominum fibris consulere deos fas habebant.

Tacitus (Annals 14.29.1) gave a date of 61 A.D., but Ronald Syme, Tacitus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958; rpt. 1997), argued for a date of 60 A.D. (I, 20, n.8; II, 765-766). Syme suggested that Tacitus' source may have been memoirs of Suetonius Paullinus himself (I, 297; II, 765, with n. 5) — another possible source could be reminiscences of Tacitus' father-in-law Julius Agricola, who served under Suetonius Paullinus in Britain (Tacitus, Agricola 5). At any rate, this is an interesting episode in the annals of arboricide. In a way, it anticipates later Christian destruction of pagan groves.

In the following lines from Poly Olbion, Song 8, Michael Drayton (1563-1631) sympathizes with the Druids on the Island of Mona:

Then Romes great Tyrant next, the lasts adopted heire,
That brave Suetonius sent, the British coasts to cleere;
The utter spoil of Mon who strongly did pursue
(Unto whose gloomy strengths, th'revolted Britans flew)
There entring, hee heheld what strooke him pale with dread:
The frantick British Froes, their hair dishevelled,
With fire-brands ran about, like to their furious eyes;
And from the hollow woods the fearless Druides;
Who with their direfull threats, and execrable vowes,
Inforc'd the troubled heaven to knit her angry browes.

Labels: arboricide