| [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. |
