D. 9.—­At this time the chief power in this tribe was in the hands of a woman, Cartismandua, the heiress to the throne, with whose name and that of her Prince Consort scandal was already busy.  The disturbances amongst the clan which Ostorius had lately suppressed were probably connected with her intrigues.  Anyhow she posed as the favourite and friend of the Romans; and now showed her loyalty by arresting the national hero and handing him over to the enemy.  With his family and fellow-captives he was [A.D. 52] deported to Rome, and publicly exhibited by the Emperor in his chains, as the last of the Britons, while the Praetorian Guards stood to their arms as he passed.

D. 10.—­According to Roman precedent the scene should have closed with a massacre of the prisoners.  But while the executioners awaited the order to strike, Caradoc stepped forward with a spirited appeal, the substance of which there is every reason to believe is truthfully recorded by Tacitus.  Disdaining to make the usual pitiful petitions for mercy, he boldly justified his struggle for his land and crown, and reminded Claudius that he had now an exceptional opportunity for winning renown.  “Kill me, as all expect, and this affair will soon be forgotten; spare me, and men will talk of your clemency from age to age.”  Claudius was touched; and even the fierce Agrippina, who, to the scandal of old Roman sentiment, was seated beside him at the saluting-point “as if she had been herself a General,” and who must have reminded Caradoc of Cartismandua, was moved to mercy.  Caradoc was spared, and assigned a residence in Italy; and the Senate, believing the war at an end with his capture, voted to Ostorius “triumphal insignia"[166]—­the highest honour attainable by any Roman below Imperial rank.[167]

D. 11.—­But even without their King the stubborn clan still stood desperately at bay.  Their pertinacious resistance in every pass and on every hill-top of their country at length fairly wore Ostorius out.  The incessant fatigues of the campaign broke down his health, and he died [A.D. 54] on the march; to the ferocious joy of the Silurians, who boasted that their valour had made an end of the brave enemy who had vowed to “extinguish their very name,"[168] no less than if they had slain him upon the field of battle.

D. 12.—­Before he died, however, he had curbed them both to north and south by the establishment of strong Roman towns at Uriconium on the Severn (named after the neighbouring Wrekin), and Isca Silurum at the mouth of the Usk.  The British name of the latter place, Caerleon [Castra Legionum], still reminds us that it was one of the great legionary stations of the island, while the abundant inscriptions unearthed upon the site, tell us that here the Second Legion had its head-quarters till the last days of the Roman occupation.[169]