THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN
A.D. 211-455
§ A.--Era of Pretenders--Probus--Vandlebury--First notice of
Saxons--Origin of name--Count of the Saxon Shore--Carausius
--Allectus--Last Romano-British coinage--Britain Mistress of
the Sea--Reforms of Diocletian--Constantius Chlorus--Re-conquest
of Britain--Diocletian provinces--Diocletian persecution--The
last "Divus"--General scramble for Empire--British army wins
for Constantine--Christianity established ... _p_. 218
§ B.--Spread of Gospel--Arianism--Britain orthodox--Last
Imperial visit--Heathen temples stripped--British
Emperors--Magnentius--Gratian--Julian--British corn-trade--First
inroad of Picts and Scots--Valentinian--Saxon raids--Campaign
of Theodosius--Re-conquest of Valentia--Wall restored and cities
fortified ... _p_. 229
§ C.--Roman evacuation of Britain begun--Maximus--Settlement
of Brittany--Radagaisus invades Italy--Twentieth Legion leaves
Britain--Britain in the 'Notitia'--Final effort of British army--The
last Constantine--Last Imperial Rescript to Britain--Sack of Rome by
Alaric--Final collapse of Roman rule in Britain ... _p_. 235
§ D.--Beginning of English Conquest--Vortigern--Jutes in
Thanet--Battle of Stamford--Massacre of Britons--Valentinian
III.--Latest Roman coin found in Britain--Progress of
Conquest--The Cymry--Survival of Romano-British titles--Arturian
Romances--Procopius--Belisarius--Roman claims revived by
Charlemagne--The British Empire ... _p_. 244
§ E.--Survivals of Romano-British civilization--Romano-British
Church--Legends of its origin--St. Paul--St. Peter--Joseph
of Arimathaea--Glastonbury--Historical notices--Claudia and
Pudens--Pomponia--Church of St. Pudentiana--Patristic references
to Britain--Tertullian--Origen--Legend of Lucius--Native
Christianity--British Bishops at Councils--Testimony of Chrysostom and
Jerome ... _p_. 249
§ F.--British missionaries--Ninias--Patrick--Beatus--British
heresiarchs--Pelagius--Fastidius--Pelagianism stamped out by
Germanus--The Alleluia Battle--Romano-British churches--Why so seldom
found--Conclusion ... _p_. 261
ROMAN BRITAIN
CHAPTER I
PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN
SECTION A.
Palaeolithic Age--Extinct fauna--River-bed men--Flint
implements--Burnt stones--Worked bones--Glacial climate.
A. 1.--All history, as Professor Freeman so well points out, centres
round the great name of Rome. For, of all the great divisions of
the human race, it is the Aryan family which has come to the front.
Assimilating, developing, and giving vastly wider scope to the highest
forms of thought and religion originated by other families, notably
the Semitic, the various Aryan nationalities form, and have formed
for ages, the vanguard of civilization. These nationalities are now
practically co-extensive with Christendom; and on them has been laid
by Divine Providence "the white man's burden"--the task of raising the
rest of mankind along with themselves to an ever higher level--social,
material, intellectual, and spiritual.
A. 2.--Aryan history is thus, for all practical purposes, the history
of mankind. And a mere glance at Aryan history shows how entirely
its great central feature is the period during which all the
leading forces of Aryanism were grouped and fused together under
the world-wide Empire of Rome. In that Empire all the streams of our
Ancient History find their end, and from that Empire all those of
Modern History take their beginning. "All roads," says the proverb,
"lead to Rome;" and this is emphatically true of the lines of
historical research; for as we tread them we are conscious at every
step of the _Romani Nominis umbra_, the all-pervading influence of
"the mighty name of Rome."
A. 3.--And above all is this true of the history of Western Europe
in general and of our own island in particular. For Britain, History
(meaning thereby the more or less trustworthy record of political and
social development) does not even begin till its destinies were drawn
within the sphere of Roman influence. It is with Julius Caesar, that
great writer (and yet greater maker) of History, that, for us, this
record commences.
A. 4.--But before dealing with "Britain's tale" as connected with
"Caesar's fate," it will be well to note briefly what earlier
information ancient documents and remains can afford us with regard
to our island and its inhabitants. With the earliest dwellers upon its
soil of whom traces remain we are, indeed, scarcely concerned. For in
the far-off days of the "River-bed" men (five thousand or five hundred
thousand years ago, according as we accept the physicist's or the
geologist's estimate of the age of our planet) Britain was not yet an
island. Neither the Channel nor the North Sea as yet cut it off from
the Continent when those primaeval savages herded beside the banks of
its streams, along with elephant and hippopotamus, bison and elk, bear
and hyaena; amid whose remains we find their roughly-chipped flint
axes and arrow-heads, the fire-marked stones which they used in
boiling their water, and the sawn or broken bases of the antlers
which for some unknown purpose[6] they were in the habit of cutting
up--perhaps, like the Lapps of to-day, to anchor their sledges withal
in the snow. For the great Glacial Epoch, which had covered half the
Northern Hemisphere with its mighty ice-sheet, was still, in their
day, lingering on, and their environment was probably that of Northern
Siberia to-day. Some archaeologists, indeed, hold that they are to
this day represented by the Esquimaux races; but this theory cannot be
considered in any way proved.
A. 5.--Whether, indeed, they were "men" at all, in any real sense
of the word, may well be questioned. For of the many attempts which
philosophers in all ages have made to define the word "man," the only
one which is truly defensible is that which differentiates him
from other animals, not by his physical or intellectual, but by his
spiritual superiority. Many other creatures are as well adapted in
bodily conformation for their environment, and the lowest savages are
intellectually at a far lower level of development than the highest
insects; but none stand in the same relation to the Unseen. "Man," as
has been well said, "is the one animal that can pray." And there is
nothing amongst the remains of these "river-bed men" to show us that
they either did pray, or could. Intelligence, such as is now found
only in human beings, they undoubtedly had. But whether they had
the capacity for Religion must be left an unsolved problem. In this
connection, however, it may be noted that Tacitus, in describing the
lowest savages of his Germania [c. 46], "with no horses, no homes, no
weapons, skin-clad, nesting on the bare ground, men and women alike,
barely kept alive by herbs and such flesh as their bone-tipped arrows
can win them," makes it his climax that they are "beneath the need of
prayer;"--adding that this spiritual condition is, "beyond all others,
that least attainable by man."
SECTION B.
Neolithic Age--"Ugrians"--Polished flints--Jadite--Gold
ornaments--Cromlechs--Forts--Bronze Age--Copper and tin--Stonehenge.
B. 1.--Whatever they were, they vanish from our ken utterly, these
Palaeolithic savages, and are followed, after what lapse of time we
know not, by the users of polished flint weapons, the tribes of the
Neolithic period. And with them we find ourselves in touch with the
existing development of our island. For an island it already was, and
with substantially the same area and shores and physical features as
we have them still. Our rivers ran in the same valleys, our hills rose
with the same contour, in those far-off days as now. And while the
place of flint in the armoury of Britain was taken first by bronze
and then by iron, these changes were made by no sudden breaks, but so
gradually that it is impossible to say when one period ended and the
next began.
B.2.--It is almost certain, however, that the Neolithic men were
not of Aryan blood. They are commonly spoken of by the name of
_Ugrians_,[7] the "ogres"[8] of our folk-lore; which has also handed
down, in the spiteful Brownie of the wood and the crafty Pixie of
the cavern, dimly-remembered traditions of their physical and mental
characteristics. Indeed it is not impossible that their blood may
still be found in the remoter corners of our land, whither they were
pushed back by the higher civilization of the Aryan invaders, before
whom they disappeared by a process in which "miscegenation" may well
have played no small part. But disappear they did, leaving behind them
no more traces than their flint arrow-heads and axes (a few of these
being of jadite, which must have come from China or thereabouts),
together with their oblong sepulchral barrows, from some of which the
earth has weathered away, so that the massive stones imbedded in it
as the last home of the deceased stand exposed as a "dolmen" or
"cromlech." But an appreciable number of the earthworks which stud our
hill-tops, and are popularly called "Roman" or "British" camps, really
belong to this older race. Such are "Cony Castle" in Dorset, and the
fortifications along the Axe in Devon.
B. 3.--During the neolithic stage of their development the Ugrians
were acquainted with but one metal, gold, and some of their stone
weapons and implements are thus ornamented. For gold, being at
once the most beautiful, the most incorruptible, the most easily
recognizable, and the most easily worked of metals, is everywhere
found as used by man long before any other. But before the Ugrian
races vanish they had learnt to use bronze, which shows them to
have discovered the properties not only of gold, but of both tin and
copper. All three metals were doubtless obtained from the streams of
the West. They had also become proficients, as their sepulchral urns
show, in the manufacture of pottery. They could weave, moreover, both
linen and woollen being known, and had passed far beyond the mere
savage.
B. 4.--The race, indeed, which could erect Avebury and Stonehenge,
as we may safely say was done by this people,[9] must have possessed
engineering skill of a very high order, and no little accuracy of
astronomical observation. For the mighty "Sarsen" stones have all been
brought from a distance,[10] and the whole vast circles are built on a
definite astronomical plan; while so careful is the orientation that,
at the summer solstice, the disc of the rising sun, as seen from the
"altar" of Stonehenge, appears to be poised exactly on the summit of
one of the chief megaliths (now known as "The Friar's Heel"). From
this it would seem that the builders were Sun-worshippers; and amongst
the earliest reports of Britain current in the Greek world we find
the fame of the "great round temple" dedicated to Apollo. But no Latin
author mentions it; so that it is doubtful whether it was ever used
by the Aryan, or at least by the Brythonic, immigrants. These brought
their own worship and their own civilization with them, and all that
was highest in Ugrian civilization and worship faded before them, such
Ugrians as remained having degenerated to a far lower level when first
we meet with them in history.
SECTION C.
Aryan immigrants--Gael and Briton--Earliest classical
nomenclature--British Isles--Albion--Ierne--Cassiterides--Phoenician
tin trade _viâ_ Cadiz.
C. 1.--How or when the first swarms of the Aryan migration reached
Britain is quite unknown.[11] But they undoubtedly belonged to the
Celtic branch of that family, and to the Gaelic (Gadhelic or Goidelic)
section of the branch, which still holds the Highlands of Scotland and
forms the bulk of the population of Ireland. By the 4th century
B.C. this section was already beginning to be pressed northwards and
westwards by the kindred Britons (or Brythons) who followed on their
heels; for Aristotle (or a disciple of his) knows our islands as "the
Britannic[12] Isles." That the Britons were in his day but new comers
may be argued from the fact that he speaks of Great Britain by the
name of _Albion_, a Gaelic designation subsequently driven northwards
along with those who used it. In its later form _Albyn_ it long
remained as loosely equivalent to North Britain, and as _Albany_ it
still survives in a like connection. Ireland Aristotle calls _Ierne_,
the later Ivernia or Hibernia; a word also found in the Argonautic
poems ascribed to the mythical Orpheus, and composed probably by
Onomacritus about 350 B.C., wherein the Argo is warned against
approaching "the Iernian islands, the home of dark and noisome
mischief." This is the passage familiar to the readers of Kingsley's
'Heroes.'[13]
C. 2.--Aristotle's work does no more than mention our islands, as
being, like Ceylon, not pelagic, but oceanic. To early classical
antiquity, it must be remembered, the Ocean was no mere sea, but a
vast and mysterious river encircling the whole land surface of the
earth. Its mighty waves, its tides, its furious currents, all made it
an object of superstitious horror. To embark upon it was the height
of presumption; and even so late as the time of Claudius we shall find
the Roman soldiers feeling that to do so, even for the passage of the
Channel, was "to leave the habitable world."
C. 3.--But while the ancients dreaded the Ocean, they knew also that
its islands alone were the source of one of the most precious and
rarest of their metals. Before iron came into general use (and the
difficulty of smelting it has everywhere made it the last metal to
do so), tin had a value all its own. It was the only known substance
capable of making, along with copper, an alloy hard enough for cutting
purposes--the "bronze" which has given its name to one entire Age of
human development. It was thus all but a necessary of life, and was
eagerly sought for as amongst the choicest objects of traffic.
C. 4.--The Phoenicians, the merchant princes of the dawn of history,
succeeded, with true mercantile instinct, in securing a monopoly of
this trade, by being the first to make their way to the only spots
in the world where tin is found native, the Malay region in the East,
Northern Spain and Cornwall in the West. That tin was known amongst
the Greeks by its Sanscrit name _Kastira_[14] ([Greek: kassiteros])
shows that the Eastern source was the earliest to be tapped. But the
Western was that whence the supply flowed throughout the whole of the
classical ages; and, as the stream-tin of the Asturian mountains seems
to have been early exhausted, the name _Cassiterides_, the Tin
Lands, came to signify exclusively the western peninsula of Britain.
Herodotus, in the 5th century B.C., knew this name, but, as he frankly
confesses, nothing but the name.[15] For the whereabouts of this El
Dorado, and the way to it, was a trade secret most carefully kept by
the Phoenician merchants of Cadiz, who alone held the clue. So jealous
were they of it that long afterwards, when the alternative route
through Gaul had already drawn away much of its profitableness, we
read of a Phoenician captain purposely wrecking his ship lest a Roman
vessel in sight should follow to the port, and being indemnified by
the state for his loss.
SECTION D.
Discoveries of Pytheas--Greek tin trade _viâ_ Marseilles--Trade
routes--Ingots--Coracles--Earliest British coins--Lead-mining.
D. 1.--But contemporary with Aristotle lived the great geographer
Pytheas; whose works, unfortunately, we know only by the fragmentary
references to them in later, and frequently hostile, authors, such
as Strabo, who dwell largely on his mistakes, and charge him with
misrepresentation. In fact, however, he seems to have been both an
accurate and truthful observer, and a discoverer of the very first
order. Starting from his native city Massilia (Marseilles), he passed
through the Straits of Gibraltar and traced the coast-line of Europe
to Denmark (visiting Britain on his way), and perhaps even on into the
Baltic.[16] The shore of Norway (which he called, as the natives still
call it, Norgé) he followed till within the Arctic Circle, as his
mention of the midnight sun shows, and then struck across to Scotland;
returning, apparently by the Irish Sea, to Bordeaux and so home
overland. This truly wonderful voyage he made at the public charge,
with a view to opening new trade routes, and it seems to have
thoroughly answered its purpose. Henceforward the Phoenician monopoly
was broken, and a constant stream of traffic in the precious tin
passed between Britain and Marseilles.[17]
D. 2.--The route was kept as secret as possible; Polybius tells
us that the Massiliots, when interrogated by one of the Scipios,
professed entire ignorance of Britain; but Pytheas (as quoted by his
contemporary Timaeus, as well as by later writers) states that the
metal was brought by coasters to a tidal island, _Ictis_, whence it
was shipped for Gaul. This island was six days' sail from the tin
diggings, and can scarcely be any but Thanet. St. Michael's Mount, now
the only tidal island on the south coast, was anciently part of the
mainland; a fact testified to by the forest remains still seen around
it. Nor could it be six days' sail from the tin mines. The Isle of
Wight, again, to which the name Ictis or Vectis would seem to point,
can never have been tidal at this date. But Thanet undoubtedly was
so in mediaeval times, and may well have been so for ages, while its
nearness to the Continent would recommend it to the Gallic merchants.
Indeed Pytheas himself probably selected it on this account for his
new emporium.
D. 3.--In his day, as we have seen, the tin reached this destination
by sea; but in the time of the later traveller Posidonius[18] it came
in wagons, probably by that track along the North Downs now known as
the "Pilgrims' Way." The chalk furnished a dry and open road, much
easier than the swamps and forests of the lower ground. Further
west the route seems to have been _viâ_ Launceston, Exeter, Honiton,
Ilchester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Alton; an ancient track often
traceable, and to be seen almost in its original condition near
"Alfred's Tower," in Somerset, where it is known as "The Hardway."
And this long land transit argues a considerable degree of political
solidarity throughout the south of the island. The tale of Posidonius
is confirmed by Caesar's statement that tin reached Kent "from the
interior," _i.e._ by land. It was obtained at first from the streams
of Dartmoor and Cornwall, where abundant traces of ancient washings
are visible, and afterwards by mining, as now. And when smelted it
was made up into those peculiar ingots which still meet the eye in
Cornwall, and whose shape seems never to have varied from the
earliest times. Posidonius, who visited Cornwall, compares them to
knuckle-bones[19] [Greek: astrhagaloi]
D. 4.--The vessels which thus coasted from the Land's End to the South
Foreland are described as on the pattern of coracles, a very light
frame-work covered with hides. It seems almost incredible that
sea-going craft could have been thus constructed; yet not only is
there overwhelming testimony to the fact throughout the whole history
of Roman Britain, but such boats are still in use on the wild rollers
which beat upon the west coast of Ireland, and are found able to live
in seas which would be fatal to anything more rigidly built. For the
surf boats in use at Madras a similar principle is adopted, not a nail
entering into their construction. They can thus face breakers which
would crush an ordinary boat to pieces. This method of ship-building
was common all along the northern coast of Europe for ages.[20] Nor
were these coracles only used for coasting. As time went on, the
Britons boldly struck straight across from Cornwall to the Continent,
and both the Seine and the Loire became inlets for tin into Gaul, thus
lessening the long land journey--not less than thirty days--which was
required, as Polybius tells us, to convey it from the Straits of Dover
to the Rhone. (This journey, it may be noted, was made not in wagons,
as through Britain, but on pack-horses.)
D. 5.--Thus it reached Marseilles; and that the trade was founded
by the Massiliot Pytheas is borne testimony to by the early British
coins, which are all modelled on the classical currency of his age.
The medium in universal circulation then, current everywhere, like the
English sovereign now, was the Macedonian stater, newly introduced by
Philip, a gold coin weighing 133 grains, bearing on the one side
the laureated head of Apollo, on the other a figure of Victory in a
chariot. Of this all known Gallic and British coins (before the Roman
era) are more or less accurate copies. The earliest as yet found in
Britain do not date, according to Sir John Evans, our great authority
on this subject,[21] from before the 2nd century B.C. They are all
dished coins, rudely struck, and rapidly growing ruder as time goes
on. The head early becomes a mere congeries of dots and lines, but one
horse of the chariot team remains recognizable to quite the end of the
series.
D. 6.--These coins have been found in very large numbers, and of
various types, according to the locality in which they were struck.
They occur as far north as Edinburgh; but all seem to have been issued
by one or other of the tribes in the south and east of the island, who
learnt the idea of minting from the Gauls. Whence the gold of which
the coins are made came from is a question not yet wholly solved:
surface gold was very probably still obtainable at that date from the
streams of Wales and Cornwall. But it was long before any other metal
was used in the British mints. Not till after the invasion of Julius
Caesar do we find any coins of silver or bronze issued, though he
testifies to their existence. The use of silver shows a marked
advance in metallurgy, and is probably connected with the simultaneous
development of the lead-mining in the Mendip Hills, of which about
this time we first begin to find traces.
SECTION E.
Pytheas trustworthy--His notes on Britain--Agricultural
tribes--Barns--Manures--Dene Holes--Mead--Beer--Parched
corn--Pottery--Mill-stones--Villages--Cattle--Pastoral tribes--Savage
tribes--Cannibalism--Polyandry--Beasts of chase--Forest trees--British
clothing and arms--Sussex iron.
E. 1.--The trustworthiness of Pytheas is further confirmed by the
astronomical observations which he records. He notices, for example,
that the longest day in Britain contains "nineteen equinoctial hours."
Amongst the ancients, it must be remembered, an "hour," in common
parlance, signified merely the twelfth part, on any given day, of
the time between sunrise and sunset, and thus varied according to
the season. But the standard hour for astronomical purposes was the
twelfth part of the equinoctial day, when the sun rises 6 a.m. and
sets 6 p.m., and therefore corresponded with our own. Now the longest
day at Greenwich is actually not quite seventeen hours, but in the
north of Britain it comes near enough to the assertion of Pytheas to
bear out his tale. We are therefore justified in giving credence
to his account of what he saw in our country, the earliest that we
possess. He tells us that, in some parts at least, the inhabitants
were far from being mere savages. They were corn-growers (wheat,
barley, and millet being amongst their crops), and also cultivated
"roots," fruit trees, and other vegetables. What specially struck him
was that, "for lack of clear sunshine[22]," they threshed out their
corn, not in open threshing-floors, as in Mediterranean lands, but in
barns.
E. 2.--From other sources we know that these old British farmers were
sufficiently scientific agriculturalists to have invented _wheeled_
ploughs,[23] and to use a variety of manures; various kinds of
mast, loam, and chalk in particular. This treatment of the soil was,
according to Pliny, a British invention[24] (though the Greeks of
Megara had also tried it), and he thinks it worth his while to give
a long description of the different clays in use and the methods of
their application. That most generally employed was chalk dug out from
pits some hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but widening
towards the bottom. [_Petitur ex alto, in centenos pedes actis
plerumque puteis, ore angustatis; intus spatiante vena_.]
E. 3.--Here we have an exact picture of those mysterious excavations
some of which still survive to puzzle antiquaries under the name of
_Dene Holes_. They are found in various localities; Kent, Surrey, and
Essex being the richest. In Hangman's Wood, near Grays, in Essex,
a small copse some four acres in extent, there are no fewer than
seventy-two Dene Holes, as close together as possible, their entrance
shafts being not above twenty yards apart. These shafts run vertically
downwards, till the floor of the pit is from eighty to a hundred feet
below the surface of the ground. At the bottom the shaft widens out
into a vaulted chamber some thirty feet across, from which radiate
four, five, or even six lateral crypts, whose dimensions are usually
about thirty feet in length, by twelve in width and height. When the
shafts are closely clustered, the lateral crypts of one will extend to
within a few feet of those belonging to its neighbours, but in no
case do they communicate with them (though the recent excavations of
archaeologists have thus connected whole groups of Dene Holes). Many
theories have been elaborated to account for their existence, but
the data are conclusive against their having been either habitations,
tombs, store-rooms, or hiding-places; and, in 1898, Mr. Charles
Dawson, F.S.A., pointed out that, in Sussex, chalk and limestone
are still quarried by means of identically such pits. The chalk so
procured is found a far more efficacious dressing for the soil than
that which occurs on the surface, and moreover is more cheaply got
than by carting from even a mile's distance. At the present day, as
soon as a pit is exhausted (that is as soon as the diggers dare make
their chambers no larger for fear of a downfall), another is sunk hard
by, and the first filled up with the _débris_ from the second. In the
case of the Dene Holes, this _débris_ must have been required for some
other purpose; and to this fact alone we owe their preservation. It
is probable that the celebrated cave at Royston in Hertfordshire
was originally dug for this purpose, though afterwards used as a
hermitage.
E. 4.--Pytheas is also our authority for saying that bee-keeping was
known to the Britons of his day;[25] a drink made of wheat and honey
being one of their intoxicants. This method of preparing mead (or
metheglin) is current to this day among our peasantry. Another drink
was made from barley, and this, he tells us, they called [Greek:
koyrmi], the word still used in Erse for beer, under the form _cuirm_.
Dioscorides the physician, who records this (and who may perhaps have
tried our national beverage, as he lived shortly after the Claudian
conquest of Britain), pronounces it "head-achy, unwholesome, and
injurious to the nerves": [[Greek: kephalalges esti kai kakhochymon,
kai tou neurou blaptikon]].
E. 5.--Not all the tribes of Britain, however, were at this level of
civilization. Threshing in barns was only practised by those highest
in development, the true Britons of the south and east. The Gaelic
tribes beyond them, so far as they were agricultural at all, stored
the newly-plucked ears of corn in their underground dwellings, day by
day taking out and dressing [[Greek: katergazomenous]] what was needed
for each meal. The method here referred to is doubtless that described
as still in use at the end of the 17th century in the Hebrides.[26] "A
woman, sitting down, takes a handful of corn, holding it by the stalks
in her left hand, and then sets fire to the ears, which are presently
in a flame. She has a stick in her right hand, which she manages very
dexterously, beating off the grains at the very instant when the husk
is quite burnt.... The corn may be thus dressed, winnowed, ground, and
baked, within an hour of reaping."
When kept, it may usually have been stored, like that of Robinson
Crusoe, in baskets;[27] for basket-making was a peculiarly British
industry, and Posidonius found "British baskets" in use on the
Continent. But probably it was also hoarded--again in Crusoe
fashion--in the large jars of coarse pottery which are occasionally
found on British sites. These, and the smaller British vessels, are
sometimes elaborately ornamented with devices of no small artistic
merit. But all are hand-made, the potter's wheel being unknown in
pre-Roman days.
E. 6.--Nor does the grinding of corn, even in hand-mills, seem to have
been universal till the Roman era, the earlier British method being
to bruise the grain in a mortar.[28] Without the resources of
civilization it is not easy to deal with stones hard enough for
satisfactory millstones. We find that the Romans, when they came,
mostly selected for this use the Hertfordshire "pudding-stone," a
conglomerate of the Eocene period crammed with rolled flint pebbles,
sometimes also bringing over Niederendig lava from the Rhine valley,
and burr-stone from the Paris basin for their querns.
E. 7.--These tribes are described as living in cheap [[Greek:
euteleis]] dwellings, constructed of reeds or logs, yet spoken of as
subterranean.[29] Light has been thrown on this apparent contradiction
by the excavation in 1889 of the site of a British village at
Barrington in Cambridgeshire. Within a space of about sixty yards
each way, bounded by a fosse some six feet wide and four deep, were
a collection of roughly circular pits, distributed in no recognizable
system, from twelve to twenty feet in diameter and from two to four in
depth. They were excavated in the chalky soil, and from each a small
drainage channel ran for a yard or two down the gentle slope on which
the settlement stood. Obviously a superstructure of thatch and wattle
would convert these pits into quite passable wigwams, corresponding to
the description of Pytheas. This whole village was covered by
several feet of top-soil in which were found numerous interments
of Anglo-Saxon date. It had seemingly perished by fire, a layer of
incinerated matter lying at the bottom of each pit.
E. 8.--The domestic cattle of the Britons were a diminutive breed,
smaller than the existing Alderney, with abnormally developed
foreheads (whence their scientific name _Bos Longifrons_). Their
remains, the skulls especially, are found in every part of the land,
with no trace, in pre-Roman times, of any other breed. The gigantic
wild ox of the British forests (_Bos Primigenius_) seems never to have
been tamed by the Celtic tribes, who, very possibly, like the Romans
after them, may have brought their own cattle with them into the
island. According to Professor Rolleston the small size of the breed
is due to the large consumption of milk by the breeders. (He notes
that the cattle of Burmah and Hindostan are identically the same
stock, and that in Burmah, where comparatively little milk is used,
they are of large size. In Hindostan, on the contrary, where milk
forms the staple food of the population, the whole breed is stunted,
no calf having, for ages, been allowed its due supply of nutriment.)
The Professor also holds that these small oxen, together with the
goat, sheep, horse, dog, and swine (of the Asiatic breed), were
introduced into Britain by the Ugrian races in the Neolithic Age; and
that the pre-Roman Britons had no domestic fowls except geese.[30]
E. 9.--If these considerations are of weight they would point to an
excessive dependence on milk even amongst the agricultural tribes of
Britain. And there were others, as we know, who had not got beyond the
pastoral stage of human development. These, as Strabo declares, had no
idea of husbandry, "nor even sense enough to make cheese, though milk
they have in plenty."[31] And some of the non-Aryan hordes seem to
have been mere brutal savages, practising cannibalism and having wives
in common. Both practices are mentioned by the latest as well as the
earliest of our classical authorities. Jerome says that in Gaul
he himself saw Attacotti (the primitive inhabitants of Galloway)
devouring human flesh, and refers to their sexual relations, which
more probably imply some system of polyandry, such as still prevails
in Thibet, than mere promiscuous intercourse. Traces of this system
long remained in the rule of "Mutter-recht," which amongst several of
the more remote septs traced inheritance invariably through the mother
and not the father.
E. 10.--These savages knew neither corn nor cattle. Like the "Children
of the Mist" in the pages of Walter Scott,[32] their boast was "to own
no lord, receive no land, take no hire, give no stipend, build no hut,
enclose no pasture, sow no grain; to take the deer of the forest
for their flocks and herds," and to eke out this source of supply by
preying upon their less barbarous neighbours "who value flocks and
herds above honour and freedom." Lack of game, however, can seldom
have driven them to this; for the forests of ancient Britain seem to
have swarmed with animal life. Red deer, roebuck, wild oxen, and wild
swine were in every brake, beaver and waterfowl in every stream;
while wolf, bear, and wild-cat shared with man in taking toll of their
lives. The trees of these forests, it may be mentioned, were (as in
some portions of Epping Forest now) almost wholly oak, ash, holly,
and yew; the beech, chestnut, elm, and even the fir, being probably
introduced in later ages.
E. 11.--Of the British tribes, however, almost none, even amongst
these wild woodlanders, were the naked savages, clothed only in blue
paint, that they are commonly imagined to have been. On the contrary,
they could both weave and spin; and the tartan, with its variegated
colours, is described by Caesar's contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, as
their distinctive dress, just as one might speak of Highlanders at
the present day.[33] Pliny mentions that all the colours used were
obtained from native herbs and lichens,[34] as is still the case in
the Hebrides, where sea-weed dyes are mostly used. Woad was used for
tattooing the flesh with blue patterns, and a decoction of beechen
ashes for dyeing the hair red if necessary, whenever that colour was
fashionable.[35] The upper classes wore collars and bracelets of gold,
and necklaces of glass and amber beads.
E. 12.--This last item suggests an interesting question as to whence
came the vast quantities of amber thus used. None is now found upon
our shores, except a very occasional fragment on the East Anglian
beaches. But the British barrows bear abundant testimony to its
having been in prehistoric times the commonest of all materials for
ornamental purposes--far commoner than in any other country. Beads
are found by the myriad--a single Wiltshire grave furnished a
thousand--mostly of a discoid shape, and about an inch in diameter.
Larger plates occasionally appear, and in one case (in Sussex) a cup
formed from a solid block of exceptional size. If all this came from
the Baltic, the main existing source of our amber,[36] it argues
a considerable trade, of which we find no mention in any extant
authority. Pytheas witnesses to the amber of the Baltic, and says
nothing, so far as we know, of British amber. But, according to
Pliny,[37] his contemporary Solinus speaks of it as a British product;
and at the Christian era it was apparently a British export.[38] The
supply of amber as a jetsom is easily exhausted in any given district;
miles of Baltic coast rich in it within mediaeval times are now quite
barren; and the same thing has probably taken place in Britain. The
rapid wearing away of our amber-bearing Norfolk shore is not unlikely
to have been the cause of this change; the submarine fir-groves of the
ancient littoral, with their resinous exudations, having become silted
over far out at sea.[39] The old British amber sometimes
contained flies. Dioscorides[40] applies to it the epithet [Greek:
pterugophoron] ["fly-bearing"].
E. 13.--The chiefs were armed with large brightly-painted shields,[41]
plumed (and sometimes crested) helmets, and cuirasses of leather,
bronze, or chain-mail. The national weapons of offence were darts,
pikes (sometimes with prongs--the origin of Britannia's trident), and
broadswords; bows and arrows being more rarely used. Both Diodorus
Siculus [v. 30] and Strabo [iv. 197] describe this equipment, and
specimens of all the articles have, at one place or another, been
found in British interments.[42] The arms are often richly worked and
ornamented, sometimes inlaid with enamel, sometimes decorated with
studs of red coral from the Mediterranean.[43] The shields, being of
wood, have perished, but their circular bosses of iron still remain.
The chariots, which formed so special a feature of British militarism,
were also of wood, painted, like the shields, and occasionally
ironclad.[44] The iron may have been from the Sussex fields. We know
that in Caesar's day rings of this metal were one of the forms of
British currency, so that before his time the Britons must have
attained to the smelting of this most intractable of metals.
SECTION F.
Celtic types--"Roy" and "Dhu"--Gael--Silurians--Loegrians--Basque
peoples--Shifting of clans--Constitutional disturbances--Monarchy
--Oligarchy--Demagogues--First inscribed coins.
F. 1.--Our earliest records point to the existence among the Celtic
tribes in Britain of the two physical types still to be found amongst
them; the tall, fair, red-haired, blue-eyed Gael, whom his clansmen
denominate "Roy" (the Red), and the dark complexion, hair and eyes,
usually associated with shorter stature, which go with the designation
"Dhu" (the Black). Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu are familiar illustrations
of this nomenclature. In classical times these types were much less
intermingled than now, and were characteristic of separate races. The
former prevailed almost exclusively amongst the true Britons of the
south and east, and the Gaelic septs of the north, while the latter
was found throughout the west, in Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. The
Silurians, of Glamorgan, are specially noted as examples of this
"black" physique, and a connection has been imagined between them and
the Basques of Iberia, an idea originating with Strabo.
F. 2.--That a good deal of non-Aryan blood was, and is, to be found
in both regions is fairly certain; but any closer correlation must
be held at any rate not proven. For though Strabo asserts that the
Silurians differ not only in looks but in language from the Britons,
while in both resembling the Iberians, it is probable that he derives
his information from Pytheas four centuries earlier. At that date
non-Aryan speech may very possibly still have lingered on in the West,
but there is no trace whatever to be found of anything of the sort in
the nomenclature of the district during or since the Roman occupation.
All is unmitigated Celtic. We may, however, possibly find a
confirmation of Strabo's view in the word _Logris_ applied to Southern
Britain by the Celtic bards of the Arturian cycle. The word is said
to be akin to _Liger_ (Loire), and tradition traced the origin of the
Loegrians to the southern banks of that river, which were undoubtedly
held by Iberian (Basque) peoples at least to the date when Pytheas
visited those parts. The name, indeed, seems to be connected with
that of the Ligurians, a kindred non-Aryan community, surviving, in
historical times, only amongst the Maritime Alps.
F. 3.--It is probable that the status of each clan was continually
shifting; and what little we know of their names and locations,
their rise and their fall, presents an even more kaleidoscopic
phantasmagoria than the mediaeval history of the Scotch Highlands,
or the principalities of Wales, or the ever-changing septs of ancient
Ireland. Tribes absorbed or destroyed by conquering tribes, tribes
confederating with others under a fresh name, this or that chief
becoming a new eponymous hero,--such is the ceaseless spectacle of
unrest of which the history of ancient Britain gives us glimpses.
F. 4.--By the time that these glimpses become anything like
continuous, things were further complicated by two additional elements
of disturbance. One of these was the continuous influx of new settlers
from Gaul, which was going on throughout the 1st century B.C. Caesar
tells us that the tribes of Kent, Sussex, and Essex were all of the
Belgic stock, and we shall see that the higher politics of his day
were much influenced by the fact that one and the same tribal chief
claimed territorial rights in Gaul and Britain at once; just like so
many of our mediaeval barons. The other was the coincidence that
just at this period the British tribes began to be affected by the
turbulent stage of constitutional development connected, in Greece and
Rome, with the abolition of royalty.
F. 5.--The primitive Aryan community (so far, at least, as the
western branch of the race is concerned) everywhere presents to us the
threefold element of King, Lords, and Commons. The King is supreme,
he reigns by right of birth (though not according to strict
primogeniture), and he not only reigns but governs. Theoretically he
is absolute, but practically can do little without taking counsel with
his Lords, the aristocracy of the tribe, originally an aristocracy
of birth, but constantly tending to become one of wealth. The Commons
gather to ratify the decrees of their betters, with a theoretical
right to dissent (though not to discuss), a right which they seldom or
never at once care and dare to exercise.
F. 6.--In course of time we see that everywhere the supremacy of the
Kings became more and more distasteful to the Aristocracy, and was
everywhere set aside, sometimes by a process of quiet depletion of the
Royal prerogative, sometimes by a revolution; the change being, in
the former case, often informal, with the name, and sometimes even
the succession, of the eviscerated office still lingering on.
The executive then passed to the Lords, and the state became an
oligarchical Republic, such as we see in Rome after the expulsion of
the Tarquins. Next came the rise of the Lower Orders, who insisted
with ever-increasing urgency on claiming a share in the direction of
politics, and in every case with ultimate success. Almost invariably
the leaders who headed this uprising of the masses grasped for
themselves in the end the supreme power, and as irresponsible
"Dictators," "Tyrants," or "Emperors" took the place of the old
constitutional Kings.
F. 7.--Such was the cycle of events both in Rome and in the Greek
commonwealths; though in the latter it ran its course within a few
generations, whilst amongst the law-abiding Romans it was a matter of
centuries. And the pages of Caesar bear abundant testimony to the fact
that in his day the Gallic tribes were all in the state of turmoil
which mostly attended the "_Regifugium_" period of development. Some
were still under their old Kings; some, like the Nervii, had developed
a Senatorial government; in some the Commons had set up "Tyrants" of
their own. It was this general unrest which contributed in no small
degree to the Roman conquest of Gaul. And the same state of things
seems to have been begun in Britain also. The earliest inscribed
British coins bear, some of them the names of Kings and Princes,
others those of peoples, others again designations which seem to point
to Tyrants. To the first class belong those of Commius, Tincommius,
Tasciovan, Cunobelin, etc.; to the second those of the Iceni and the
Cassi; to the last the northern mintage of Volisius, a potentate
of the Parisii, who calls himself Domnoverus, which, according to
Professor Rhys,[45] literally signifies "Demagogue."
SECTION G.
Clans at Julian invasion--Permanent natural
boundaries--Population--Celtic settlements--"Duns"--Maiden Castle.
G. 1.--The earliest of these inscribed coins, however, take us
no further back than the Julian invasion; and it is to Caesar's
Commentaries that we are indebted for the first recorded names of any
British tribes. It is no part of his design to give any regular list
of the clans or their territories; he merely makes incidental mention
of such as he had to do with. Thus we learn of the four nameless
clans who occupied Kent (a region which has kept its territorial
name unchanged from the days of Pytheas), and also of the Atrebates,
Cateuchlani, Trinobantes, Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci,
and Cassi.
G. 2.--To the localities held by these tribes Caesar bears no direct
evidence; but from his narrative, as well as from local remains and
later references, we know that the Trinobantes possessed Essex, and
the Cenimagni (i.e. "the Great Iceni" as they were still called,[46]
though their power was on the wane), East Anglia; while the
Cateuchlani, already beginning to be known as the Cassivellauni (or
Cattivellauni), presumably from their heroic chieftain Caswallon (or
Cadwallon),[47] corresponded roughly to the later South Mercians,
between the Thames and the Nene. The Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci,
and Cassi were less considerable, and must evidently have been
situated on the marches between their larger neighbours. The name of
the Cassi may still, perhaps, cling to their old home, in the _Cashio_
Hundred and _Cassiobury_, near Watford; while conjecture finds traces
of the Ancalites in _Henley_, and of the Bibroci in _Bray_, on either
side of the Thames.
G. 3.--The Atrebates, who play a not unimportant part (as will be
seen in the next chapter) in Caesar's connection with Britain, were
apparently in possession of the whole southern bank of the Thames,
from its source right down to London--the river then, as in
Anglo-Saxon times, being a tribal boundary throughout its entire
length. This would make the Bibroci a sub-tribe of the Atrebatian
Name, and also the Segontiaci, if Henry of Huntingdon (writing in the
12th century with access to various sources of information now lost)
is right in identifying Silchester, the Roman _Calleva_, with their
local stronghold Caer Segent.
G. 4.--But the whole attempt to locate accurately any but the chiefest
tribes found by the Romans in Britain is too conjectural to be
worth the infinite labour that has been expended upon the subject by
antiquaries. All we can say with certainty is that forest and fen
must have cut up the land into a limited number of fairly recognizable
districts, each so far naturally separated from the rest as to have
been probably a separate or quasi-separate political entity also.
Thus, not only was the Thames a line of demarcation, only passable
at a few points, from its estuary nearly to the Severn Sea, but the
southern regions cut off by it were parted by Nature into five main
districts. Sussex was hemmed in by the great forest of Anderida, and
that of Selwood continued the line from Southampton to Bristol.
Kent was isolated by the Romney marshes and the wild country about
Tunbridge, while the western peninsula was a peninsula indeed when
the sea ran up to beyond Glastonbury. In this region, then, the later
Wessex, we find five main tribes; the men of Kent, the Regni south of
the Weald, the Atrebates along the Thames, the Belgae on the Wiltshire
Avon, and the Damnonii of Devon and Cornwall, with (perhaps) a
sub-tribe of their Name, the Durotriges, in Dorsetshire.
G. 5.--Like the south, the eastern, western, and northern districts of
England were cut off from the centre by natural barriers. The Fens of
Cambridgeshire and the marshes of the Lea valley, together with the
dense forest along the "East Anglian" range, enclosed the east in
a ring fence; within which yet another belt of woodland divided the
Trinobantes of Essex from the Iceni of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Severn
and the Dee isolated what is now Wales, a region falling naturally
into two sub-divisions; South Wales being held by the Silurians and
their Demetian subjects, North Wales by the Ordovices. The lands
north of the Humber, again, were barred off from the south by barriers
stretching from sea to sea; the Humber itself on the one hand, the
Mersey estuary on the other, thrusting up marshes to the very foot of
the wild Pennine moorlands between. And the whole of this vast region
seems to have been under the Brigantes, who held the great plain of
York, and exercised more or less of a hegemony over the Parisians
of the East Riding, the Segontii of Lancashire, and the Otadini,
Damnonii, and Selgovae between the Tyne and the Forth. Finally,
the Midlands, parcelled up by the forests of Sherwood, Needwood,
Charnwood, and Arden, into quarters, found space for the Dobuni in the
Severn valley (to the west of the Cateuchlani), for the Coritani east
of the Trent, and for their westward neighbours the Cornavii.[48]
G. 6.--All these tribes are given in Ptolemy's geography, but only a
few, such as the Iceni, the Silurians, and the Brigantes, meet us
in actual history; whilst, of them all, the Damnonian name alone
reappears after the fall of the Roman dominion. Thus the accepted
allotment of tribal territory is largely conjectural. North of the
Forth all is conjecture pure and simple, so far as the location of
the various Caledonian sub-clans is concerned. We only know that there
were about a dozen of them; the Cornavii, Carini, Carnonacae,
Cerones, Decantae, Epidii, Horestae, Lugi, Novantae, Smertae, Taexali,
Vacomagi, and Vernicomes. Some of these may be alternative names.
G. 7.--The practical importance of the above-mentioned natural
divisions of the island is testified to by the abiding character of
the corresponding political divisions. The resemblance which at once
strikes the eye between the map of Roman and Saxon Britain is no mere
coincidence. Physical considerations brought about the boundaries
between the Roman "provinces" and the Anglo-Saxon principalities
alike. Thus a glance will show that Britannia Prima, Britannia
Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis correspond to
the later Wessex, Wales, Northumbria, and Mercia (with its dependency
East Anglia).[49] And even the sub-divisions remained approximately
the same. In Anglo-Saxon times, for example, the Midlands were still
divided into the same four tribal territories; the North Mercians
holding that of the British Cornavii, the South Mercians that of the
Dobuni, the Middle Angles that of the Coritani, and the South Angles
that of the Cateuchlani. So also the Icenian kingdom, with its old
boundaries, became that of the East Angles, and the Trinobantian that
of the East Saxons.
G. 8.--What the entire population of Britain may have numbered at the
Roman Conquest is, again, purely a matter of guess-work. But it may
well have been not very different in amount from what it was at the
Norman Conquest, when the entries in Domesday roughly show that the
whole of England (south of the Humber) was inhabited about as thickly
as the Lake District at the present day, and contained some two
million souls. The primary hills, and the secondary plateaux, where
now we find the richest corn lands of the whole country, were in
pre-Roman times covered with virgin forest. But in the river valleys
above the level of the floods were to be found stretches of good open
plough land, and the chalk downs supplied excellent grazing. Where
both were combined, as in the valleys of the Avon and Wily near
Salisbury, and that of the Frome near Dorchester, we have the ideal
site for a Celtic settlement. In such places we accordingly find the
most conspicuous traces of the prehistoric Briton; the round barrows
which mark the burial-places of his chiefs, and the vast earthworks
with which he crowned the most defensible _dun_, or height, in his
territory.
G. 9.--These fortified British _duns_ are to be seen all over England.
Sometimes they have become Roman or mediaeval towns, as at Old Sarum;
sometimes they are still centres of population, as at London, Lincoln,
and Exeter; and sometimes, as at Bath and Dorchester, they remain
still as left by their original constructors. For they were designed
to be usually untenanted; not places to dwell in, but camps of refuge,
whither the neighbouring farmers and their cattle might flee when in
danger from a hostile raid. The lack of water in many of them shows
that they could never have been permanently occupied either in war or
peace.[50] Perhaps the best remaining example is Maiden[51] Castle,
which dominates Dorchester, being at once the largest and the most
untouched by later ages. Here three huge concentric ramparts, nearly
three miles in circuit, gird in a space of about fifty acres on a
gentle swell of the chalk ridge above the modern town by the river. A
single tortuous entrance, defended by an outwork, gives access to the
levelled interior. All, save the oaken palisades which once topped
each round of the barrier, remains as it was when first constructed,
looking down, now as then, on the spot where the population for whose
benefit it was made dwelt in time of peace. For English Dorchester is
the British town whose name the Romans, when they raised the square
ramparts which still encircle it, transliterated into Durnovaria.
Durnovaria in turn became, on Anglo-Saxon lips, Dornwara-ceaster,
Dorn-ceaster, and finally Dorchester.
G. 10.--We have already, on physical grounds, assigned these
Durotriges to the Damnonian Name. There were certainly fewer natural
obstacles between them and the men of Devon to the west than between
them and the Belgae to the northward. Caesar, however, distinctly
states that the Belgic power extended to the coast line, so the
Britons of the Frome valley may have been conquered by them. Or the
Durotriges may be a Belgic tribe after all. For, as we have pointed
out, our evidence is of the scantiest, and there is every reason
to suppose that the era of the Roman invasion was one of incessant
political confusion in the land.
SECTION H.
Religious state of Britain--Illustrated by
Hindooism--Totemists--Polytheists--Druids--Bards--Seers--Druidic
Deities--Mistletoe--Sacred herbs--"Ovum Anguinum"--Suppression of
Druidism--Druidism and Christianity.
H. 1.--The religious state of the country seems to have been in no
less confusion than its political condition. The surviving "Ugrian"
inhabitants appear to have sunk into mere totemists and fetish
worshippers, like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic
tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism, with a Pantheon
filled by every possible device, by the adoration of every kind of
natural phenomenon, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds
and clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees, by the
creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses of war, commerce,
healing, and all the congeries of mutually tolerant devotions which
we see in the Brahmanism of to-day. And, as in Brahmanism, all these
devotions were under the shadow of a sacerdotal and prophetic caste,
wielding vast influence, and teaching, esoterically at least, a far
more spiritual religion.
H. 2.--These were the Druids, whose practices and tenets fortunately
excited such attention at Rome that we know more about them by far
than we could collect concerning either Jews or Christians from
classical authors. And though most of our authorities refer to
Druidism as practised in Gaul, yet we have the authority of Caesar for
Britain being the special home and sanctuary of the faith, to which
the Gallic Druids referred as the standard for their practices.[52] We
may safely, therefore, take the pictures given us by him and others,
as supplying a representation of what took place in our land ere the
Romans entered it.
H. 3.--The earliest testimony is that of Julius Caesar himself, in his
well-known sketch of contemporary Druidism ('De Bello Gallico,' vi.
14-20). He tells us that the Druids were the ministers of religion,
the sacrificial priesthood of the nation, the authorized expounders of
the Divine will. All education and jurisprudence was in their hands,
and their sentences of excommunication were universally enforced. The
Gallic Druids were under the dominion of a Primate, who presided at
the annual Chapter of the Order, and was chosen by it; a disputed
election occasionally ending in an appeal to arms. As a rule, however,
Druids were supposed not to shed blood, they were free from all
obligation to military service, and from all taxation of every kind.
These privileges enabled them to recruit their ranks--for they were
not an hereditary caste--from the pick of the national youth, in spite
of the severe discipline of the Druidical novitiate. So great was the
mass of sacred literature required to be committed to memory that a
training of twenty years was sometimes needed. All had to be learnt
orally, for the matter was too sacred to be written down, though
the Druids were well acquainted with writing, and used the Greek
alphabet,[53] if not the Greek language,[54] for secular purposes.
Caesar's own view is that this refusal to allow the inditing of their
sacred books was due to two causes: first, the fear lest the secrets
of the Order should thus leak out, and, secondly, the dread lest
reading should weaken memory, "as, in fact, it generally does." Even
so, amongst the Brahmans there are, to this day, many who can not only
repeat from end to end the gigantic mass of Vedic literature, but who
know by heart also with absolute accuracy the huge and complicated
works of the Sanscrit grammarians.
H. 4.--Caesar further tells us that the Druids taught the doctrine of
transmigration of souls, and that their course of education included
astronomy, geography, physics, and theology. The attributes of their
chief God corresponded, in his view, with those of the Roman Mercury.
Of the minor divinities, one, like Apollo, was the patron of healing;
a second, like Minerva, presided over craft-work; a third, like
Jupiter, was King of Heaven, and a fourth, like Mars, was the
War-god.[55] Their calendar was constructed on the principle that each
night belongs to the day before it (not to that after it, as was
the theory amongst the Mediterranean nations), and they reckoned
all periods of time by nights, not days, as we still do in the word
"fortnight." For this practice they gave the mystical reason that the
Celtic races were the Children of Darkness. At periods of national
or private distress, human sacrifices were in vogue amongst them,
sometimes on a vast scale. "They have images [_simulacra_] of huge
size, whose limbs when enclosed [_contexta_] with wattles, they fill
with living men. The wattles are fired and the men perish amid the
hedge of flame [_circumventi flamma exanimantur homines_]." It
is usually supposed that these _simulacra_ were hollow idols of
basket-work. But such would require to be constructed on an incredible
scale for their limbs to be filled with men; and it is much more
probable that they were spaces traced out upon the ground (like the
Giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas in Dorset), and hedged in with the
wattles to be fired.
H. 5.--From the historian Diodorus Siculus, whose life overlapped
Caesar's, we learn that Druid was a native British name. "There are
certain philosophers and theologians held in great honour whom they
call Druids."[56] Whether this designation is actually of Celtic
derivation is, however, uncertain. Pliny thought it was from the Greek
affected by the Druids and connected with their oak-tree worship.
Professor Rhys mentions that the earliest use of the word in
extant Welsh literature is in the Book of Taliesin, under the form
_Derwyddon_,[57] and that in Irish is to be found the cognate form
_Drui_. But these are as likely to be derived from the Greek [Greek:
_drouides_] as this from them. Diodorus adds that they have mighty
influence, and preside at all sacred rites, "as possessing special
knowledge of the Gods, yea, and being of one speech [[Greek:
homophônôn]] with them." This points to some archaic or foreign
language, possibly Greek, being used in the Druidical ritual. Their
influence, he goes on to say, always makes for peace: "Oft-times, when
hosts be arrayed, and either side charging the one against the other,
yea, when swords are out and spears couched for the onset, will these
men rush between and stay the warriors, charming them to rest [[Greek:
katepasantes]] like so many wild beasts."
H. 6.--With the Druids Diodorus associates two other religiously
influential classes amongst the Britons, the Bards [[Greek: bardos]]
and the Seers [[Greek: manteis]]. The former present the familiar
features of the cosmopolitan minstrel. They sing to harps [[Greek:
organôn tais lurais homoiôn]], both fame and disfame. The latter seem
to have corresponded with the witch-doctors of the Kaffir tribes,
deriving auguries from the dying struggles of their victims
(frequently human), just as the Basuto medicine-men tortured oxen to
death to prognosticate the issue of the war between Great Britain
and the Boers in South Africa. Strabo, in the next generation, also
mentions together these three classes, Bards, Seers [[Greek: Ouateis]
= Vates] and Druids. The latter study natural science and ethics
[[Greek: pros tê phusiologia kai tên êthikên philosophian askousin]].
They teach the immortality of the soul, and believe the Universe to be
eternal, "yet, at the last, fire and water shall prevail."
H. 7.--Pomponius Mela, who wrote shortly before the Claudian conquest
of Britain, says that the Druids profess to know the shape and size of
the world, the movements of the stars, and the will of the Gods. They
teach many secrets in caves and woods, but only to the nobles of
the land. Of this esoteric instruction one doctrine alone has been
permitted to leak out to the common people--that of the immortality of
the soul--and this only because that doctrine was calculated to make
them the braver in battle. In accordance with it, food and the like
was buried with the dead, for the use of the soul. Even a man's debts
were supposed to pass with him to the shades.
H. 8.--Our picture of the Druids is completed by Pliny,[58] writing
shortly after the Claudian conquest. Approaching the subject as a
naturalist he does not mention their psychological tenets, but
gives various highly interesting pieces of information as to their
superstitions with regard to natural objects, especially plants. "The
Druids," he says, "(so they call their Magi) hold nothing so sacred
as the mistletoe and that tree whereon it groweth, if only this be an
oak. Oak-groves, indeed, they choose for their own sake, neither do
they celebrate any sacred rite without oak-leaves, so that they appear
to be called Druids from the Greek word for this tree. Whatsoever
mistletoe, then, groweth on such a tree they hold it for a heaven-sent
sign, and count that tree as chosen by their God himself. Yet but
very rarely is it so found, and, when found, is sought with no small
observance; above all on the sixth day of the moon (which to this
folk is the beginning of months and years alike),[59] and after the
thirtieth year of its age, because it is by then in full vigour of
strength, nor has its half-tide yet come. Hailing it, in their own
tongue, as 'Heal-all,' they make ready beneath the tree, with all due
rites, feast and sacrifice. Then are brought up two bulls of spotless
white, whose horns have never ere this known the yoke. The priest, in
white vestments, climbeth the tree, and with a golden sickle reapeth
the sacred bough, which is caught as it falls in a white robe
[_sagum_]. Then, and not till then, slay they the victims, praying
that their God will prosper this his gift to those on whom he hath
bestowed the same."
H. 9.--A drink made from mistletoe, or possibly the mere insertion of
the branch into drinking water, was held by the Druids, Pliny adds,
as an antidote to every kind of poison. Other herbs had like remedial
properties in their eyes. The fumes of burning "_selago_"[60] were
thus held good for affections of the eyesight, only, however, when
the plant was plucked with due ceremonies. The gatherer must be all
in white, with bare and washen feet, and must hallow himself, ere
starting on his quest, with a devotional partaking of bread and wine
[_sacro facto ... pane vinoque_]. He must by no means cut the sacred
stem with a knife, but pluck it, and that not with bare fingers, but
through the folds of his tunic, his right hand being protruded for
this purpose beneath his left, "in thievish wise" [_velut a furante_].
Another herb, "_samolum_," which grew in marshy places, was of avail
in all diseases both of man and beast. It had to be gathered with the
left hand, and fasting, nor might the gatherer on any account look
back till he reached some runlet [_canali_] in which he crushed his
prize and drank.
H. 10.--Pliny's picture has the interest of having been drawn almost
at the final disappearance of Druidism from the Roman world. For some
reason it was supposed to be, like Christianity, peculiarly opposed
to the genius of Roman civilization, and never came to be numbered
amongst the _religiones licitae_ of the Empire. Augustus forbade the
practice of it to Roman citizens,[61] Tiberius wholly suppressed it in
Gaul,[62] and, in conquering Britain, Claudius crushed it with a
hand of iron. Few pictures in the early history of Britain are more
familiar than the final extirpation of the last of the Druids, when
their sacred island of Mona (Anglesey) was stormed by the Roman
legionaries, and priests and priestesses perished _en masse_ in
the flames of their own altars.[63] Their desperate resistance was
doubtless due to the fact that Rome was the declared and mortal
enemy of their faith. So baneful, indeed, did Druidism come to be
considered, that to hold even with the least of its superstitions
was treated at Rome as a capital offence. Pliny tells us of a Roman
knight, of Gallic birth, who was put to death by Claudius for no other
reason than that of being in possession of a certain stone called
by the Druids a "snake's egg," and supposed to bring good luck in
law-suits.[64]
H. 11.--This stone Pliny himself had seen, and describes it (in his
chapter on the use of eggs) as being like a medium-sized apple, having
a cartilaginous shell covered with small processes like the discs
on the arms of an octopus. This can scarcely have been, as most
commentators suppose, the shell of an echinus (with which Pliny was
well acquainted), even if fossil. His description rather seems to
point to some fossil covered with _ostrea sigillina_, such as are
common in British green-sands. He adds an account of the Druidical
view of its production, how it is the solidified poison of a number of
serpents who put their heads together to eject it, and how, even when
set in gold, it will float, and that against a stream. This "egg," it
will be seen, was from Gaul. The British variant of the superstition
was that the snakes thus formed a ring of poison matter, larger or
smaller according to the number engaged, which solidified into a gem
known as _Glain naidr_, "Adder's glass."[65] The small rings of green
or blue glass, too thick for wear, which are not uncommonly found in
British burial-places, are supposed to represent this gem. So also,
possibly, are the much larger rings of roughly-baked clay which occur
throughout the Roman period. For superstitions die hard, and Gough
assures us that even in 1789 such "adder-beads" or "snake-stones" were
considered "lucky" in Wales and Cornwall, and were still ascribed to
the same source as by the Druids of old.
H. 12.--After its suppression by Claudius, Druidism still lingered
on in Britain beyond the Roman pale, and amid the outlaws of the
Armorican forests in Gaul, but in a much lower form. The least worthy
representatives of the Brahmanic caste in India are those found in
the least civilized regions, whose tendency is to become little better
than sorcerers.[66] And in like manner it is as sorcerers that the
later Druids of Scotland and Ireland meet us in their legendary
encounters with St. Patrick and St. Columba. They are called "The
School of Simon the Druid" (_i.e._ Simon Magus), and a 9th-century
commentary designates Jannes and Jambres as "Druids." But the word did
not wholly lose its higher associations. It is applied to the Wise Men
in an early Welsh hymn on the Epiphany; and in another, ascribed to
Columba himself, the saint goes so far as to say, "Christ, the Son of
God, is my _Druid_."[67]
CHAPTER II
THE JULIAN INVASION, B.C. 55, 54
SECTION A.
Caesar and Britain--Breakdown of Roman Republican
institutions--Corruption abroad and at home--Rise of Caesar--Conquest
of Gaul.
A. 1.--If the connection of Britain with Rome is the pivot on which
the whole history of our island turns, it is no less true that the
first connection of Rome with Britain is the pivot whereon all Roman
history depends. For its commencement marks the furthest point reached
in his career of conquest by the man without whom Roman history must
needs have come to a shameful and disastrous end--Julius Caesar.
A. 2.--The old Roman constitution and the old Roman character had
alike proved wholly unequal to meet the strain thrown upon them by the
acquisition of the world-wide empire which they had gained for their
city. Under the stress of the long feud between its Patrician and
Plebeian elements that constitution had developed into an instrument
for the regulation of public affairs, admirably adapted for a
City-state, where each magistrate performs his office under his
neighbour's eye and over his own constituents; constantly amenable
both to public opinion and to the checks provided by law. But it
never contemplated Pro-consuls bearing sway over the unenfranchised
populations of distant Provinces, whence news filtered through to Rome
but slowly, and where such legal checks as a man had to reckon with
were in the hands of a Court far more ready to sympathize with the
oppression of non-voters than to resent it.
A. 3.--And these officials had deteriorated from the old Roman
rectitude, as the Spartan harmosts deteriorated under conditions
exactly similar in the days of the Lacedaemonian supremacy over
Hellas. And, in both cases, the whole national character was dragged
down by the degradation of what we may call the Colonial executive.
Like the Spartan, the Roman of "the brave days of old" was often
stern, and even brutal, towards his enemies. But he was a devoted
patriot, he was true to his plighted faith, and above all he was free
from all taint of pecuniary corruption. The earlier history of both
nations is full of legends illustrating these points, which, whether
individually true or not, bear abundant testimony to the national
ideal. But with irresponsible power, Roman and Spartan alike, while
remaining as brutally indifferent as ever to the sufferings of others,
lost all that was best in his own ethical equipment. Instead of
patriotism we find unblushing self-interest as the motive of every
action; in place of good faith, the most shameless dishonesty; and,
for the old contempt of ill-gotten gains, a corruption so fathomless
and all-pervading as fairly to stagger us. The tale of the doings of
Verres in a district so near Rome as Sicily shows us a depth of mire
and degeneration to which no constitution could sink and live.
A. 4.--Nor could the Roman constitution survive it. From the Provinces
the taint spread with fatal rapidity to the City itself. The thirst
for lucre became the leading force in the State; for its sake the
Classes more and more trampled down the Masses; and entrance to the
Classes was a matter no longer of birth, but of money alone. And all
history testifies that the State which becomes a plutocracy is doomed
indeed. Of all possible forms of government--autocracy, oligarchy,
democracy--that is the lowest, that most surely bears within itself
the seeds of its own inevitable ruin.
A. 5.--So it was with the Roman Republic. As soon as this stage was
reached it began to "stew in its own juice" with appalling rapidity.
Reformers, like the Gracchi, were crushed; and the commonwealth went
to pieces under the shocks and counter-shocks of demagogues like
Clodius, conspirators like Catiline, and military adventurers such
as Marius and Sulla--for whose statue the Senate could find no more
constitutional title than "The Lucky General" [_Sullae Imperatori
Felici_] Well-meaning individuals, such as Cicero and Pompey, were
still to be found, and even came to the front, but they all alike
proved unequal to the crisis; which, in fact, threw up one man, and
one only, of force to become a real maker of history--Caius Julius
Caesar, the first Roman invader of Britain.
A. 6.--Caesar was at the time of this invasion (55 B.C.) some
forty-five years old; but he had not long become a real power in the
political arena. Sprung from the bluest blood of Rome--the Julian
House tracing their origin to the mythical Iulus, son of Aeneas, and
thus claiming descent from the Goddess Venus--we might have expected
to find him enrolled amongst the aristocratic conservatives, the
champions of the _régime_ of Sulla. But though a mere boy at the date
of the strife between the partisans of Sulla and Marius (B.C. 88-78),
Caesar was already clear-sighted enough to perceive that in the
"Classes" of that day there was no help for the tempest-tossed
commonwealth. Accordingly he threw in his lot with the revolutionary
Marian movement, broke off a wealthy matrimonial engagement arranged
for him by his parents to become the son-in-law of Cinna, and in the
very thick of the Sullan proscriptions, braved the Dictator by openly
glorying in his connection with the defeated reformers. How he escaped
with his life, even at the intercession, if it was indeed made, of the
Vestals, is a mystery; for Sulla (who had little regard for religious,
or any other, scruples) was deliberately extirpating every soul whom
he thought dangerous to the plutocracy, and is said to have pronounced
"that boy" as "more to be dreaded than many a Marius." He did,
however, escape; but till the vanquished party recovered in some
degree from this ruthless massacre of their leaders, he could take no
prominent part in politics. The minor offices of Quaestor, Aedile,
and Praetor he filled with credit, and meanwhile seemed to be giving
himself up to shine in Society, which was not, in Rome, then at its
best; and his reputation for intrigue, his skill at the gaming-table,
and his fashionable swagger were the envy of all the young bloods of
the day.
A. 7.--The Catiline conspiracy (B.C. 63), and the irregular executions
that followed its suppression, at length gave him his opportunity.
While the Senate was hailing Cicero as "the Father of his country" for
the stern promptitude which enabled him, as Consul, to say "_Vixere_"
["They _have_ lived"] in answer to the question as to the doom of the
conspirators, Caesar had electrified the assembly by his denunciation
of the view that, in whatsoever extremity, the blood of Roman citizens
might be shed by a Roman Consul, secretly and without legal warrant.
Henceforward he took his place as the special leader on whom popular
feeling at Rome more and more pinned its hopes. As Pontifex Maximus he
gained (B.C. 63) a shadowy but far from unreal religious influence;
as Pro-praetor he solidified the Roman dominion in Spain (where he
had already been Quaestor); and on his return (B.C. 60) reconciled
Crassus, the head of the moneyed interest, with Pompey, the darling
of the Army, and by their united influence was raised next year to the
Consulship.
A. 8.--A Roman Consul invariably, after the expiration of his year of
office, was sent as Pro-consul to take charge of one of the Provinces,
practically having a good deal of personal say as to which should be
assigned to him. Caesar thus chose for his proconsular government the
district of Gaul then under Roman dominion, _i.e._ the valley of the
Po, and that of the Rhone. In making this choice Caesar was actuated
by the fact that in Gaul he was more likely than anywhere else to come
in for active service. Unquiet neighbours on the frontier, Germans and
Helvetians, were threatening invasion, and would have to be repelled.
And this would give the Pro-consul the chance of doing what Caesar
specially desired, of raising and training an army which he might make
as devoted to himself as were Pompey's veterans to their brilliant
chieftain--the hero "as beautiful as he was brave, as good as he was
beautiful." Without such a force Caesar foresaw that all his efforts
to redress the abuses of the State would be in vain. As Consul he had
carried certain small instalments of reform; but they had made him
more hated than ever by the classes at whose corruption they were
aimed, and might any day be overthrown. And neither Pompey nor Crassus
were in any way to be depended upon for his plans in this direction.
A. 9.--Events proved kinder to him than he could have hoped. His
ill-wishers at Rome actually aided his preparations for war; for
Caesar had not yet gained any special military reputation, while
the barbarians whom he was to meet had a very high one, and might
reasonably be expected to destroy him. And the Helvetian peril proved
of such magnitude that he had every excuse for making a much larger
levy than there was any previous prospect of his securing. On the
surpassing genius with which he manipulated the weapon thus put into
his hand there is no need to dwell. Suffice it to say that in spite
of overwhelming superiority in numbers, courage yet more signal, a
stronger individual physique, and arms as effective, his foes one
after another vanished before him. Helvetians, Germans, Belgians,
were not merely conquered, but literally annihilated, as often as they
ventured to meet him, and in less than three years the whole of Gaul
was at his feet.
SECTION B.
Sea-fight with Veneti and Britons--Pretexts for invading
Britain--British dominion of Divitiacus--Gallic tribes in
Britain--Atrebates--Commius.
B. 1.--One of the last tribes to be subdued (in B.C. 56) was that
which, as the chief seafaring race of Gaul, had the most intimate
relations with Britain, the Veneti, or men of Vannes, who dwelt in
what is now Brittany.[68] These enterprising mariners had developed a
form of vessel fitted to cope with the stormy Chops of the Channel on
lines exactly opposite to those of the British "curraghs."[69] Instead
of being so light as to rise to every lift of the waves, and with
frames so flexible as to bend rather than break under their every
stress, the Venetian ships were of the most massive construction,
built wholly of the stoutest oak planking, and with timbers upwards of
a foot in thickness. All were bolted together with iron pins "as thick
as a man's thumb." Forecastle and poop were alike lofty, with a lower
waist for the use of sweeps if needful. But this was only exceptional,
sails being the usual motive power. And these were constructed chiefly
with a view to strength. Instead of canvas, they were formed of
untanned hides. And instead of hempen cables the Veneti were so far
ahead of their time as to use iron chains with their anchors; an
invention which perished with them, not to come in again till the 19th
century. Their broad beam and shallow keel enabled these ships to
lie more conveniently in the tidal inlets on either side of the
Channel.[70]
B. 2.--Thus equipped, the Veneti had tapped the tin trade at its
source, and established emporia at Falmouth, Plymouth, and Exmouth;
on the sites of which ancient ingots, Gallic coins of gold, and
other relics of their period have lately been discovered. Thence they
conveyed their freight to the Seine, the Loire, and even the Garonne.
The great Damnonian clan, which held the whole of Devon and Cornwall,
were in close alliance with them, and sent auxiliaries to aid in their
final struggle against Caesar. Indeed they may possibly have drawn
allies from a yet wider area, if, as Mr. Elton conjectures, the
prehistoric boats which have at various times been found in the silt
at Glasgow may be connected with their influence.[71]
B. 3.--Caesar describes his struggle with the Veneti and their British
allies as one of the most arduous in his Gallic campaigns. The Roman
war galleys depended largely upon ramming in their sea-fights, but the
Venetian ships were so solidly built as to defy this method of attack.
At the same time their lofty prows and sterns enabled them to deliver
a plunging fire of missiles on the Roman decks, and even to command
the wooden turrets which Caesar had added to his bulwarks. They
invariably fought under sail, and manoeuvred so skilfully that
boarding was impossible. In the end, after several unsuccessful
skirmishes, Caesar armed his marines with long billhooks, instructing
them to strike at the halyards of the Gallic vessels as they swept
past. (These must have been fastened outboard.) The device succeeded.
One after another, in a great battle off Quiberon, of which the Roman
land force were spectators, the huge leathern mainsails dropped on
to the decks, doubtless "covering the ship as with a pall," as in the
like misfortune to the Elizabethan _Revenge_ in her heroic defence
against the Spanish fleet, and hopelessly crippling the vessel,
whether for sailing or rowing. The Romans were at last able to board,
and the whole Venetian fleet fell into their hands. The strongholds
on the coast were now stormed, and the entire population either
slaughtered or sold into slavery, as an object lesson to the rest of
the confederacy of the fate in store for those who dared to stand out
against the Genius of Rome.
B. 4.--Caesar had now got a very pretty excuse for extending his
operations to Britain, and, as his object was to pose at Rome as "a
Maker of Empire," he eagerly grasped at the chance. Something of a
handle, moreover, was afforded him by yet another connection between
the two sides of the Channel. Many people were still alive who
remembered the days when Divitiacus, King of the Suessiones (at
Soissons), had been the great potentate of Northern Gaul. In Caesar's
time this glory was of the past, and the Suessiones had sunk to
a minor position amongst the Gallic clans. But within the last
half-century the sway of their monarch had been acknowledged not only
over great part of Gaul, but in Britain also. Caesar's words, indeed,
would almost seem to point to the island as a whole having been in
some sense under him: _Etiam Britanniae imperium obtinuit_.[72]
B. 5.--And traces of his rule still existed in the occupation of
British districts by colonists from two tribes, which, as his nearest
neighbours, must certainly have formed part of any North Gallic
confederacy under him--the Atrebates and the Parisii. The former had
their continental seat in Picardy; the latter, as their name tells us,
on the Seine. Their insular settlements were along the southern bank
of the Thames and the northern bank of the Humber respectively. How
far the two sets of Parisians held together politically does not
appear; but the Atrebates, whether in Britain or Gaul, acknowledged
the claim of a single magnate, named Commius, to be their paramount
Chieftain.[73] In this capacity he had led his followers against
Caesar in the great Belgic confederacy of B.C. 58, and on its
collapse, instead of holding out to the last like the Nervii, had
made a timely submission. If convenient, this submission might be
represented as including that of his British dominions; especially
as we gather that a contingent from over-sea may have actually fought
under his banner against the Roman eagles. Nay, it is possible that
the old claims of the ruler of Soissons over Britain may have been
revived, now that that ruler was Julius Caesar. It is even conceivable
that his complaint of British assistance having been given to the
enemy "in all our Gallic wars" may point to his having heard some form
of the legend, whose echoes we meet with in Welsh Triads, that the
Gauls who sacked Rome three centuries earlier numbered Britons amongst
their ranks.
SECTION C.
Defeat of Germans--Bridge over Rhine--Caesar's army--Dread
of ocean--Fleet at Boulogne--Commius sent to Britain--Channel
crossed--Attempt on Dover--Landing at Deal--Legionary
sentiment--British army dispersed.
C. 1.--For making use of these pretexts, however, Caesar had to wait
a while. It was needful to bring home to both supporters and opponents
his brilliant success by showing himself in Rome, during the idle
season when his men were in winter quarters. And when he got back to
his Province with the spring of A.D. 55, his first attention had to be
given to the Rhine frontier, whence a formidable German invasion
was threatening. With his usual skill and war-craft--which, on
this occasion, in the eyes of his Roman ill-wishers, seemed
indistinguishable from treachery--he annihilated the Teutonic
horde which had dared to cross the river; and then, by a miracle of
engineering skill, bridged the broad and rapid stream, and made such a
demonstration in Germany itself as to check the national trek westward
for half a millennium.
C. 2.--By this time, as this wonderful feat shows, the Army of Gaul
had become one of those perfect instruments into which only truly
great commanders can weld their forces. Like the Army of the
Peninsula, in the words of Wellington, "it could go anywhere and do
anything." The men who, when first enlisted, had trembled before
the Gauls, and absolutely shed tears at the prospect of encountering
Germans, now, under the magic of Caesar's genius, had learnt to dread
nothing. Often surprised, always outnumbered, sometimes contending
against tenfold odds, the legionaries never faltered. Each individual
soldier seems to have learnt to do instinctively the right thing in
every emergency, and every man worshipped his general. For every man
could see that it was Caesar and Caesar alone to whom every victory
was due. The very training of the engineers, the very devices, such as
that of the Rhine bridge, by which such mighty results were achieved,
were all due to him. Never before had any Roman leader, not even
Pompey "the Great," awakened such devotion amongst his followers.
C. 3.--Caesar therefore experienced no such difficulty as we shall
find besetting the Roman commanders of the next century, in persuading
his men to follow him "beyond the world,"[74] and to dare the venture,
hitherto unheard of in the annals of Rome, of crossing the ocean
itself. We must remember that this crossing was looked upon by the
Romans as something very different from the transits hither and
thither upon the Mediterranean Sea with which they were familiar. The
Ocean to them was an object of mysterious horror. Untold possibilities
of destruction might lurk in its tides and billows. Whence those tides
came and how far those billows rolled was known to no man. To dare
its passage might well be to court Heaven knew what of supernatural
vengeance.
C. 4.--But Caesar's men were ready to brave all things while he led
them. So, after having despatched his German business, he determined
to employ the short remainder of the summer in a _reconnaissance
en force_ across the Channel, with a view to subsequent invasion
of Britain. He had already made inquiries of all whom he could find
connected with the Britanno-Gallic trade as to the size and military
resources of the island. But they proved unwilling witnesses, and
he could not even get out of them what they must perfectly well have
known, the position of the best harbours on the southern shores.
C. 5.--His first act, therefore, was to send out a galley under
Volusenus "to pry along the coast," and meanwhile to order the fleet
which he had built against the Veneti to rendezvous at Boulogne.
Besides these war-galleys (_naves longae_) he got together eighty
transports, enough for two legions, besides eighteen more for the
cavalry.[75] These last were detained by a contrary wind at "a further
harbour," eight miles distant--probably Ambleteuse at the mouth of the
Canche.[76]
C. 6.--All these preparations, though they seem to have been carried
out with extreme celerity, lasted long enough to alarm the Britons.
Several clans sent over envoys, to promise submission if only Caesar
would refrain from invading the country. This, however, did not
suit Caesar's purpose. Such diplomatic advantages would be far less
impressive in the eyes of the Roman "gallery" to which he was playing
than his actual presence in Britain. So he merely told the envoys that
it would be all the better for them if he found them in so excellent
and submissive a frame of mind on his arrival at their shores, and
sent them back, along with Commius, who was to bring in his own clan,
the Atrebates, and as many more as he could influence. And the Britons
on their part, though ready to make a nominal submission to "the
mighty name of Rome," were resolved not to tolerate an actual invasion
without a fight for it. In every clan the war party came to the front,
all negotiations were abruptly broken off, Commius was thrown into
chains, and a hastily-summoned levy lined the coast about Dover, where
the enemy were expected to make their first attempt to land.
C. 7.--Dover, in fact, was the port that Caesar made for. It was, at
this date, the obvious harbour for such a fleet as his. All along
the coast of Kent the sea has, for many centuries, been constantly
retreating. Partly by the silting-up of river-mouths, partly by
the great drift of shingle from west to east which is so striking a
feature of our whole southern shore, fresh land has everywhere been
forming. Places like Rye and Winchelsea, which were well-known havens
of the Cinque Ports even to late mediaeval times, are now far inland.
And though Dover is still our great south-eastern harbour, this is
due entirely to the artificial extensions which have replaced the
naturally enclosed tidal area for which Caesar made. There is abundant
evidence that in his day the site of the present town was the bed
of an estuary winding for a mile or more inland between steep chalk
cliffs,[77] not yet denuded into slopes, whence the beach on either
side was absolutely commanded.
C. 8.--Caesar saw at a glance that a landing here was impossible to
such a force as he had with him. He had sailed from Boulogne "in the
third watch"--with the earliest dawn, that is to say--and by 10
a.m. his leading vessels, with himself on board, were close under
Shakespeare's Cliff. There he saw the British army in position
waiting for him, crowning the heights above the estuary, and ready
to overwhelm his landing-parties with a plunging fire of missiles. He
anchored for a space till the rest of his fleet came up, and meanwhile
called a council of war of his leading officers to deliberate on the
best way of proceeding in the difficulty. It was decided to make for
the open shore to the northwards (perhaps for Richborough,[78] the
next secure roadstead of those days), and at three in the afternoon
the trumpet sounded, the anchors were weighed, and the fleet coasted
onwards with the flowing tide.[79]
C. 9.--The British army also struck camp, and kept pace by land with
the invaders' progress. First came the cavalry and chariot-men, the
mounted infantry of the day; then followed the main body, who in the
British as in every army, ancient or modern, fought on foot. We can
picture the scene, the bright harvest afternoon--(according to
the calculations of Napoleon, in his 'Life of Caesar,' it was St.
Bartholomew's Day)--the calm sea, the long Roman galleys with their
rows of sweeps, the heavier and broader transports with their great
mainsails rounding out to the gentle breeze, and on cliff and beach
the British ranks in their waving tartans--each clan, probably,
distinguished by its own pattern--the bright armour of the chieftains,
the thick array of weapons, and in front the mounted contingent
hurrying onwards to give the foe a warm greeting ere he could set foot
on shore.
C. 10.--Thus did invaders and defenders move on, for some seven miles,
passing, as Dio Cassius notes, beneath the lofty cliffs of the South
Foreland,[80] till these died down into the flat shore and open beach
of Deal. By this time it must have been nearly five o'clock, and if
Caesar was to land at all that day it must be done at once. Anchor was
again cast; but so flat was the shore that the transports, which drew
at least four feet of water, could not come within some distance
of it. Between the legionaries and the land stretched yards of
sea, shoulder-deep to begin with, and concealing who could say what
treacherous holes and quicksands beneath its surface. And their wading
had to be done under heavy fire; for the British cavalry and chariots
had already come up, and occupied every yard of the beach, greeting
with a shower of missiles every motion of the Romans to disembark.
This was more than even Caesar's soldiers were quite prepared to face.
The men, small shame to them, hesitated, and did not spring overboard
with the desired alacrity. Caesar's galleys, however, were of lighter
draught, and with them he made a demonstration on the right flank (the
_latus apertum_ of ancient warfare, the shield being on every man's
_left_ arm) of the British; who, under a severe fire of slings,
arrows, and catapults, drew back, though only a little, to take up a
new formation, and their fire, in turn, was for the moment silenced.
And that moment was seized for a gallant feat of arms which shows how
every rank of Caesar's army was animated by Caesar's spirit.
C. 11.--The ensign of every Roman legion was the Roman Eagle, perched
upon the head of the standard-pole, and regarded with all, and
more than all, the feeling which our own regiments have for their
regimental colours. As with them, the staff which bore the Eagle
of the Legion also bore inscriptions commemorating the honours and
victories the legion had won, and to lose it to the foe was an even
greater disgrace than with us. For a Roman legion was a much larger
unit than a modern regiment, and corresponded rather to a Division;
indeed, in the completeness of its separate organization, it might
almost be called an Army Corps. Six thousand was its normal force in
infantry, and it had its own squadrons of cavalry attached, its
own engineer corps, its own baggage train, and its own artillery of
catapults and balistae.[81] There was thus even more legionary feeling
in the Roman army than there is regimental feeling in our own.
C. 12.--At this time, however, this feeling, so potent in its effects
subsequently, was a new development. Caesar himself would seem to have
been the first to see how great an incentive such divisional sentiment
might prove, and to have done all he could to encourage it. He had
singled out one particular legion, the Tenth, as his own special
favourite, and made its soldiers feel themselves the objects of his
special regard. And this it was which now saved the day for him. The
colour-sergeant of that legion, seeing the momentary opening given by
the flanking movement of the galleys, after a solemn prayer that this
might be well for his legion, plunged into the sea, ensign in hand.
"Over with you, comrades," he cried, "if you would not see your Eagle
taken by the enemy." With a universal shout of "Never, never" the
legion followed; the example spread from ship to ship, and the whole
Roman army was splashing and struggling towards the shore of Britain.
C. 13.--At the same time this was no easy task. As every bather
knows, it is not an absolutely straightforward matter for even an
unencumbered man to effect a landing upon a shingle beach, if ever so
little swell is on. And the Roman soldier had to keep his footing, and
use his arms moreover for fighting, with some half-hundredweight
of accoutrements about him. To form rank was, of course, out of
the question. The men forced their way onward, singly and in little
groups, often having to stand back to back in rallying-squares, as
soon as they came within hand-stroke of the enemy.[82] And this was
before they reached dry land. For the British cavalry and chariots
dashed into the water to meet them, making full use of the advantage
which horsemen have under such circumstances, able to ply the full
swing of their arms unembarrassed by the waves, not lifted off their
feet or rolled over by the swell, and delivering their blows from
above on foes already in difficulties. And on their side, they copied
the flanking movement of the Romans, and wheeled round a detachment
to fire upon the _latus apertum_ of such invaders as succeeded in
reaching shallower water.
C. 14.--Thus the fight, in Caesar's words, was an exceedingly sharp
one. It was not decided till he sent in the boats of his galleys, and
any other light craft he had, to mingle with the combatants. These
could doubtless get right alongside the British chariots; and now the
advantage of position came to be the other way. A troop of irregular
horsemen up to their girths in water is no match for a boat's crew of
disciplined infantry. Moreover the tide was flowing,[83] and driving
the Britons back moment by moment. For a while they yet resisted
bravely, but discipline had the last word. Yard by yard the Romans won
their way, till at length they set foot ashore, formed up on the beach
in that open order[84] which made the unique strength of the Legions,
and delivered their irresistible charge. The Britons did not wait for
the shock. Their infantry was, probably, already in retreat, covered
by the cavalry and chariots, who now in their turn gave rein to their
ponies and retired at a gallop.
C. 15.--Caesar saw them go, and bitterly felt that his luck had failed
him. Had he but cavalry, this retreat might have been turned into
a rout. But his eighteen transports had failed to arrive, and his
drenched and exhausted infantry were in no case for effective pursuit
of a foe so superior in mobility. Moreover the sun must have been now
fast sinking, and all speed had to be made to get the camp fortified
before nightfall. But the Roman soldier was an adept at entrenching
himself. A rampart was hastily thrown up, the galleys beached at the
top of the tide and run up high and dry beyond the reach of the surf,
the transports swung to their anchors where the ebb would not leave
them grounded, the quarters of the various cohorts assigned them, the
sentries and patrols duly set; and under the summer moon, these first
of the Roman invaders lay down for their first night on British soil.
SECTION D.
Wreck of fleet--Fresh British levy--Fight in corn-field--British
chariots--Attack on camp--Romans driven into sea.
D. 1.--Meanwhile the defeated Britons had made off, probably to their
camp above Dover, where their leaders' first act, on rallying, was to
send their prisoner, Commius, under a flag of truce to Caesar, with
a promise of unconditional submission. That his landing had been
opposed, was, they declared, no fault of theirs; it was all the
witlessness of their ignorant followers, who had insisted on fighting.
Would he overlook it? Yes; Caesar was ready to show this clemency;
but, after conduct so very like treachery, considering their embassy
to him in Gaul, he must insist on hostages, and plenty of them. A few
were accordingly sent in, and the rest promised in a few days,
being the quota due from more distant clans. The British forces were
disbanded; indeed, as it was harvest time, they could scarcely have
been kept embodied anyhow; and a great gathering of chieftains was
held at which it was resolved that all alike should acknowledge the
suzerainty of Rome.
D. 2.--This assembly seems to have been held on the morrow of the
battle or the day after, so that it can only have been attended by the
local Kentish chiefs, unless we are to suppose (as may well have been
the case), that the Army of Dover comprised levies and captains from
other parts of Britain. But whatever it was, before the resolution
could be carried into effect an unlooked-for accident changed the
whole situation.
D. 3.--On the fourth day after the Roman landing, the south-westerly
wind which had carried Caesar across shifted a few points to the
southward. The eighteen cavalry transports were thus enabled to leave
Ambleteuse harbour, and were seen approaching before a gentle breeze.
The wind, however, continued to back against the sun, and, as usual,
to freshen in doing so. Thus, before they could make the land, it was
blowing hard from the eastward, and there was nothing for them but to
bear up. Some succeeded in getting back to the shelter of the Gallic
shore, others scudded before the gale and got carried far to the
west, probably rounding-to under the lee of Beachy Head, where they
anchored. For this, however, there was far too much sea running.
Wave after wave dashed over the bows, they were in imminent danger of
swamping, and, when the tide turned at nightfall, they got under weigh
and shaped the best course they could to the southern shore of the
Channel.
D. 4.--And this same tide that thus carried away his reinforcements
all but wrecked Caesar's whole fleet at Deal. His mariners had
strangely forgotten that with the full moon the spring tides would
come on; a phenomenon which had been long ago remarked by Pytheas,[85]
and with which they themselves must have been perfectly familiar on
the Gallic coast. And this tide was not only a spring, but was driven
by a gale blowing straight on shore. Thus the sleeping soldiers were
aroused by the spray dashing over them, and awoke to find the breakers
pounding into their galleys on the beach; while, of the transports,
some dragged their anchors and were driven on shore to become total
wrecks, some cut their cables, and beat, as best they might, out to
sea, and all, when the tide and wind alike went down, were found next
morning in wretched plight. Not an anchor or cable, says Caesar, was
left amongst them, so that it was impossible for them to keep their
station off the shore by the camp.
D. 5.--The army, not unnaturally, was in dismay. They were merely on
a reconnaissance, without any supply of provisions, without even their
usual baggage; perhaps without tents, certainly without any means of
repairing the damage to the fleet. Get back to Gaul for the winter
they must under pain of starvation, and where were the ships to take
them?
D. 6.--The Britons, on the other hand, felt that their foes were
now delivered into their hands. Instead of the submission they were
arranging, the Council of the Chiefs resolved to make the most of the
opportunity, and teach the world by a great example that Britain was
not a safe place to invade. Nor need this cost many British lives.
They had only to refuse the Romans food; what little could be got by
foraging would soon be exhausted; then would come the winter, and the
starving invaders would fall an easy prey. The annihilation of the
entire expedition would damp Roman ambitions against Britain for many
a long day. A solemn oath bound one and all to this plan, and every
chief secretly began to levy his clansmen afresh.
D. 7.--Naturally, hostages ceased to be sent in; but it did not need
this symptom to show Caesar in how tight a place he now was. His only
chance was to strain every nerve to get his ships refitted; and by
breaking up those most damaged, and ordering what materials were
available from the Continent, he did in a week or two succeed in
rendering some sixty out of his eighty vessels just seaworthy.
D. 8.--And while this work was in progress, another event showed how
imperative was his need and how precarious his situation. He had, in
fact, been guilty of a serious military blunder in going with a mere
flying column into Britain as he had gone into Germany. The Channel
was not the Rhine, and ships were exposed to risks from which his
bridge had been entirely exempt. Nothing but a crushing defeat would
cut him off from retiring by that; but the Ocean was not to be so
bridled.
D. 9.--It was, as we have said, the season of harvest, and the corn
was not yet cut, though the men of Kent were busily at work in the
fields. With regard to the crops nearest the camp, the legionaries
spared them the trouble of reaping, by commandeering the corn
themselves, the area of their operations having, of course, to be
continually extended. Harvesters numbered by the thousand make quick
work; and in a day or two the whole district was cleared, either by
Roman or Briton. Caesar's scouts could only bring him word of one
unreaped field, bordered by thick woodland, a mile or two from the
camp, and hidden from it by a low swell of the ground. Mr. Vine, in
his able monograph 'Caesar in Kent,' thinks that the spot may still be
identified, on the way between Deal and Dover, where, by this time, a
considerable British force was once more gathered. So entirely was
the whole country on the patriot side, that no suspicion of all this
reached the Romans, and still less did they dream that the unreaped
corn-field was an elaborate trap, and that the woodlands beside it
were filled, or ready for filling, by masses of the enemy. The Seventh
legion, which was that day on duty, sent out a strong fatigue party
to seize the prize; who, on reaching the field, grounded shields and
spears, took off, probably, their helmets and tunics, and set to work
at cutting down the corn, presumably with their swords.
D. 10.--Not long afterwards the camp guard reported to Caesar that
a strange cloud of dust was rising beyond the ridge over which the
legion had disappeared. Seeing at once that something was amiss, he
hastily bade the two cohorts (about a thousand men) of the guard to
set off with him instantly, while the other legion, the Tenth, was to
relieve them, and follow with all the rest of their force as speedily
as possible. Pushing on with all celerity, he soon could tell by the
shouts of his soldiers and the yells of the enemy that his men were
hard pressed; and, on crowning the ridge, saw the remnant of the
legion huddled together in a half-armed mass, with the British
chariots sweeping round them, each chariot-crew[86] as it came up
springing down to deliver a destructive volley of missiles, then on
board and away to replenish their magazine and charge in once more.
D. 11.--Even at this moment Caesar found time to note and admire the
supreme skill which the enemy showed in this, to him, novel mode of
fighting. Their driving was like that of the best field artillery of
our day; no ground could stop them; up and down slopes, between and
over obstacles, they kept their horses absolutely in hand; and, out of
sheer bravado, would now and again exhibit such feats of trick-driving
as to run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, while at full speed.
Such skill, as he truly observed, could not have been acquired without
constant drill, both of men and horses; and his military genius
grasped at once the immense advantages given by these tactics,
combining "the mobility of cavalry with the stability of infantry."
D. 12.--We may notice that Caesar says not a word of the scythe-blades
with which popular imagination pictures the wheels of the British
chariots to have been armed. Such devices were in use amongst the
Persians, and figure at Cunaxa and Arbela. But there the chariots were
themselves projectiles, as it were, to break the hostile ranks; and
even for this purpose the scythes proved quite ineffective, while they
must have made the whole equipment exceedingly unhandy. In the 'De Re
Militari' (an illustrated treatise of the 5th century A.D. annexed to
the 'Notitia') scythed chariots are shown. But the scythes always
have chains attached, to pull them up out of the way in ordinary
manoeuvres. The Britons of this date, whose chariots were only to
bring their crews up to the foe and carry them off again, had, we may
be sure, no such cumbrous and awkward arrangement.[87]
D. 13.--On this scene of wild onset Caesar arrived in the nick of time
[_tempore opportunissimo_]. The Seventh, surprised and demoralized,
were on the point of breaking, when his appearance on the ridge caused
the assailants to draw back. The Tenth came up and formed; their
comrades, possibly regaining some of their arms, rallied behind them,
and the Britons did not venture to press their advantage home. But
neither did Caesar feel in any case to retaliate the attack [_alienum
esse tempus arbitratus_], and led his troops back with all convenient
speed. The Britons, we may well believe, represented the affair as a
glorious victory for the patriot arms.[88] They employed several days
of bad weather which followed in spreading the tidings, and calling
on all lovers of freedom or of spoil to join in one great effort for
crushing the presumptuous invader.
D. 14.--The news spread like wild-fire, and the Romans found
themselves threatened in their very camp (whence they had taken care
not to stir since their check) by a mighty host both of horse and
footmen. Caesar was compelled to fight, the legions were drawn up with
their backs to the rampart, that the hostile cavalry might not take
them in rear, and, after a long hand-to-hand struggle, the Roman
charge once more proved irresistible. The Britons turned their backs
and fled; this time cut up, in their retreat, by a small body of
thirty Gallic horsemen whom Commius had brought over as his escort,
and who had shared his captivity and release. So weak a force could,
of course, inflict no serious loss upon the enemy, but, before
returning to the camp, they made a destructive raid through the
neighbouring farms and villages, "wasting all with fire and sword far
and wide."
D. 15.--That same day came fresh envoys to treat for peace. They were
now required to furnish twice as many hostages as before; but Caesar
could not wait to receive them. They must be sent after him to the
Continent. His position had become utterly untenable; the equinoctial
gales might any day begin; and he was only too glad to find wind and
weather serve that very night for his re-embarkation. Under cover
of the darkness he huddled his troops on board; and next morning the
triumphant Britons beheld the invaders' fleet far on their flight
across the Narrow Seas.
SECTION E.
Caesar worsted--New fleet built--Caesar at Rome--Cicero--Expedition
of 54 B.C.--Unopposed Landing--Pro-Roman Britons--Trinobantes
--Mandubratius--British army surprised--"Old England's Hole."
E. 1.--Caesar too had, on his side, gained what he wanted, though at a
risk quite disproportionate to the advantage. So much prestige had
he lost that on his disembarkation his force was set upon by the very
Gauls whom he had so signally beaten two years before. Their attack
was crushed with little difficulty and great slaughter; but that
it should have been made at all shows that he was supposed to be
returning as a beaten man. However, he now knew enough about Britain
and the Britons to estimate what force would be needful for a real
invasion, and energetically set to work to prepare it. To make such
an invasion, and to succeed in it, had now become absolutely necessary
for his whole future. At any cost the events of the year 55 must be
"wiped off the slate;" the more so as, out of all the British clans,
two only sent in their promised hostages. Caesar's dispatches home, we
may be sure, were admirably written, and so represented matters as to
gain him a _supplicatio_, or solemn thanksgiving, of twenty days from
the Senate. But the unpleasant truth was sure to leak out unless it
was overlaid by something better. It did indeed so far leak out
that Lucan[89] was able to write: _Territa quaesitis ostendit terga
Britannis_.
["He sought the Britons; then, in panic dread,
Turned his brave back, and from his victory fled."]
E. 2.--Before setting off, therefore, for his usual winter visit to
Rome, he set all his legionaries to work in their winter quarters, at
building ships ready to carry out his plans next spring. He himself
furnished the drawings, after a design of his own, like our own
Alfred a thousand years later.[90] They were to be of somewhat lower
free-board than was customary, and of broader beam, for Caesar had
noted that the choppy waves of the Channel had not the long run of
Mediterranean or Atlantic rollers. All, moreover, were to be provided
with sweeps; for he did not intend again to be at the mercy of the
wind. And with such zeal and skill did the soldiers carry out his
instructions, by aid of the material which he ordered from the
dockyards of Spain, that before the winter was over they had
constructed no fewer than six hundred of these new vessels, besides
eighty fresh war-galleys.
E. 3.--Caesar meanwhile was also at his winter's work amid the turmoil
of Roman politics. His "westward ho!" movement was causing all the
stir he hoped for. We can see in Cicero's correspondence with Atticus,
with Trebatius, and with his own brother Quintus (who was attached
in some capacity to Caesar's second expedition), how full Rome was of
gossip and surmise as to the outcome of this daring adventure. "Take
care," he says to Trebatius, "you who are always preaching caution;
mind you don't get caught by the British chariot-men."[91] "You will
find, I hear, absolutely nothing in Britain--no gold, no silver. I
advise you to capture a chariot and drive straight home. Anyhow get
yourself into Caesar's good books."[92]
E. 4.--To be in Caesar's good books was, in fact, Cicero's own great
ambition at this time. Despite his constitutional zeal, he felt "the
Dynasts," as he called the Triumvirate, the only really strong force
in politics, and was ready to go to considerable lengths in courting
their favour--Caesar's in particular. He not only withdrew all
opposition to the additional five years of command in Gaul which the
subservient Senate had unconstitutionally decreed to the "dynast,"
but induced his brother Quintus to volunteer for service in the coming
invasion of Britain. Through Quintus he invited Caesar's criticisms
on his own very poor verses, and wrote a letter, obviously meant to be
shown, expressing boundless gratification at a favourable notice: "If
_he_ thinks well of my poetry, I shall know it is no mere one-horse
concern, but a real four-in-hand." "Caesar tells me he never read
better Greek. But why does he write [Greek: rhathumôtera] ['rather
careless'] against one passage? He really does. Do find out why."