WOE TO THE VANQUISHED

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In the year 57AD the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus led his legions to the island of Anglesey, the sacred home of the druids. The Romans believed that the druids practiced magic, soothsaying and human sacrifice on the island. When the Roman legions reached Anglesey, they massacred men, women and children. The soldiers then proceeded across the island and destroyed the druids' sacred oak groves, their altars, temples, and killed everyone else they could find.

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It is said that the last surviving druid lifted his right hand to the heaven and cursed the Romans, invoking the spirit of the forests of the Celtic homeland in Europe to wreak vengeance on their ancestors. As the last druid lay dying, he uttered the famous words of the Gaulish Chieftain Brennus from 500 years earlier, "Woe to the vanquished". The druid however was not referring to himself, but to the future fate of the Romans. A few centuries later, "Barbarians" from Europe sacked Rome, bringing about the beginning of the end of the Roman empire.

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