| [00:22.41] | Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae" - worth the conquest, |
| [00:27.30] | the best compliment that could occur to a Roman. |
| [00:33.12] | He'd never visited these shores, |
| [00:34.72] | but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold. |
| [00:42.61] | Silver was abundant there, too. |
| [00:44.51] | Apparently so were pearls, |
| [00:46.40] | although Tacitus had heard they were grey, |
| [00:48.92] | like the overcast rain-heavy skies, |
| [00:51.78] | and the natives only bothered to collect them |
| [00:54.31] | when they were cast up on the shore. |
| [00:59.57] | As far as the Roman historians were concerned, |
| [01:01.72] | Britannia might well be off the edge of the world, |
| [01:04.89] | but it was off the edge of their world, |
| [01:06.69] | not in some howling, barbarian wilderness. |
| [01:09.90] | If the same writers had been able to travel in time |
| [01:13.11] | as well as space to the northernmost of our islands, |
| [01:16.83] | to the Orcades - our modern Orkney, |
| [01:19.51] | they would have seen something much more astonishing than heaps of pearls |
| [01:23.67] | The unmistakable signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome. |
YouTube Results (More on YouTube)