"The Britons apply the term 'strongholds' to densely wooded spots fortified with a rampart and trench, to which they retire in order to escape the attacks of invaders."
Caesar, Gallic War
The largest and most famous of all British hillforts, the triple ramparts of Maiden Castle near Durnovaria (Dorchester) were erected in the first century BC and breached in AD 43 by Legio II Augusta under the command of the future emperor Vespasian. It was one of more than twenty such settlements that Suetonius says was captured in the subjugation of southwest Britain.
The savagery of the assault is evidenced by a skeleton in the Dorset County Museum with a Roman ballista or bolt still embedded in its spine.
