[Anger, scorn, and shock were aroused] amongst the national critics by Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain…. They put up such a show of indignation and moralistic horror as has scarcely been rivalled in Britain since the country lost its senses over the wickedness of Lord Byron…. The Romans in Britain begins with a haunting picture of the ancient Britons living in freedom and terror in the darkness of pre-Roman conquest, freemen frightened out of their wits at the sight of any unfamiliar face. The Romans come, and impose by implacable force and military superiority some sort of order upon them. In the course of the wild action there is a calm, self-controlled speech by Julius Caesar …, the stabbing of a man strung upside down, so that his blood gushes forth to the ground, and an attempted homosexual rape of a naked Druid by a Roman soldier.

It...