【跟着英剧练发音】A Histry Of Britain - 10(在线收听

 文本:

Will probably not. Sooner or later they would have noticed that the top of the head is sliced off, scooped out, like a boiled egg of breakfast, to hold sacrificial offerings. And then they would have remembered stories of Rome told about the grisly brutality of the Druids. Perhaps they would have even taken note of the stories told by the northern savages themselves, of decapitated heads who were said to speak mournfully to those who had parted them from the rest of their body, warning of vengeance to come. And then they would have thought, "Well, perhaps not." "Perhaps we don't want to have much to do with an island of talking heads." So why did the Romans come here, to the edge of the world, and run the gauntlet of all these ominous totems? Well, it was the lure of treasure, of course, all those pearls that Tacitus was convinced lay around Britain in heaps. But even more seductive was what Roman generals craved the most, the prestige given to those who pacified the barbarian frontier. And so, in the written annals of Western history, the islands now had not only a name, Britannia, but a date. In 55 BC Julius Caesar launched his galleys across the Channel. Julius Caesar must have supposed that all he had to do was land his legions in force and the Britons, just cowed by the spectacle all of the glittering helmets and eagle standards, would simply queue up to surrender. They would understand that history always fought on the side of Rome. Trouble was, geography didn't.

译文:

 大概不会,因为他们终会注意到,雕像的头顶处被切开挖掉了。如同一颗煮蛋,专为放置祭祀品而设。而随后,他们也许会忆起罗马人口中的德鲁伊教是何等暴虐残忍,或许他们甚至会注意到,北方蛮族亲口讲述的故事。被砍下的头颅悲戚地向让他们身首异处的刽子手哀号着,警示着复仇即将到来。而后他们大概会想 "应该不算艺术品","我们可不想与遍布着会说话头颅的岛有任何瓜葛"。那么,究竟是什么驱使罗马人以身犯险,来到这满布不详图腾的世界之端的呢?当然少不了对宝藏的渴望。塔西佗所坚信的 那盈千累万的财富。但更具魅力同时罗马将军最渴望的是平定蛮夷、开疆扩土带来的无限荣耀。因此,在西方编年史中,不列颠尼亚已不仅是岛屿的名字,还标刻着一个年代。公元前55年,凯撒大帝带兵横穿英吉利海峡。凯撒大帝定是认为他只需带领大批罗马军团登陆,耀眼的铠甲与威武的鹰旗,自会让不列颠人闻风丧胆,不费吹灰之力便能让他们列队投降。罗马人自知自己占尽天时,却未料到他们毫无地利之便。

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