[00:00.660]Will probably not. Sooner or later they would have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out.
[00:07.567]Like a boiled egg of breakfast, to hold sacrificial offerings.
[00:12.034]And then they would have remembered stories of Rome told about the grisly brutality of the Druids.
[00:19.148]Perhaps they would have even taken note of the stories told by the northern savages themselves.
[00:25.164]Of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully to those who had parted them from the rest of their body
[00:32.904]Warning of vengeance to come.
[00:35.748]And then they would have thought, "Well, perhaps not."
[00:39.317]"Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads." "
[00:53.521]So why did the Romans come here
[00:55.700]to the edge of the world, and run the gauntlet of all these ominous totems?
[01:02.354]Well, it was the lure of treasure, of course, all those pearls that Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps.
[01:09.338]But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most
[01:14.038]the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier.
[01:20.504]And so, in the written annals of Western history
[01:23.437]the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date.
[01:28.858]In 55 BC Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel.
[01:39.499]Julius Caesar must have supposed that all he had to do was land his legions in force and the Britons.
[01:47.473]Just cowed by the spectacle all of the glittering helmets and eagle standards.
[01:51.903]Would simply queue up to surrender.
[01:55.007]They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. Trouble was, geography didn't.