Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Renatus]

I agree with Nathan. Tacitus describes Paulinus selecting a position "in a narrow defile" (artis faucibus). Faucibus appears to be the ablative of fauces, a feminine noun used in the plural in prose, although poets apparently used it in the singular but only in the ablative (fauce). It means 'throat', 'pharynx' or 'gullet' or, when applied to a place, 'pass', 'defile', 'ravine', 'chasm', 'inlet' or 'outlet' or, in naval terms, 'strait' or 'sound'. It evidently means something passed through or along and seems always to carry connotations of narrowness. Tacitus emphasizes this by the use of the adjective artus, -a, -um, meaning, in this context, 'narrow' or 'confined', although it can also mean 'short'. This is confirmed by his later comment about the army “keeping the narrowness of the place as protection” (angustias loci pro munimento retinens).