Иностранный язык. Мартемьянова Н.В - 23 стр.

                                       23

TEXT SEVEN
                      THE DECLINE AND DEPARTURE
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THE DECLINE AND DEPARTURE
    After four hundred years in Britain, the Legions finally departed. They had
come, as invaders but had not settled. They had come, as conquerors but had not
subdued. Only their military roads and empty forts remained as monuments to
their time in this land, to speed travelers on their journeys and to shelter the
homeless.
    Only their secrets of glassmaking and their better ways of metal craft were
passed down to be added to the skills of the North Britons. Unlike the South
there were no Roman towns nor Roman laws, no Roman government nor
Roman economy, just a land and its peoples living on their hilltops and
crannogs, in their brochs and duns as they had been when the Eagles of Rome
first made their great advance under Agricola.
    Unable to take the North by force the Romans had separated it from the
south by a mighty wall of stone. Perhaps for that reason as much as any in
history, Britain came to be divided into two Kingdoms, one of which would be
called Scotland.
Last of the legions
    It was about the year 410AD that the last of the legions left Britain. Rome
was gathering its strength for a final desperate stand. Invading hosts from
Germany had overrun the Empire and were now hammering on the city walls.
The people living in the cold craggy land of Hadrain's wall went about the
business of survival much as they had always done. What changes the Roman
years had brought showed mainly in the Kingdoms south of the crumbing
rampart and burnt-out forts of the Antonine Wall.
The Great Alliance
    The Irish, the Picts and the Saxons from the continent would unite a great
alliance of tribes against the Romans. Never before had such a plan been dared.
Its success would depend on surprise and no warning must be allowed to reach
the Romans. The Arcani, which was a kind of Roman secret service, was bribed
to report nothing. And so the garrison never suspected that the warrior
chieftains of the northern tribes were mustering their men and moving quietly
south.
    In Ireland powerful fleets of hide-covered curraghs raised their red sails and
slipped out of their haven to bear eastwards for Britain. To the unguarded coast
line of Yorkshire came other craft, their high prows cutting white furrows
through the water. They were manned perhaps by Saxons, whose main fleet was
further South, or perhaps by the Picts themselves coasting down past the eastern
end of the wall.
    No hint of the approaching danger reached the defenders. The timing was
exact. By land and by sea, the raiders struck with lightning speed. The Picts
swept down on the wall and carried it on the first rush. The ships of their allies