most satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that those from whom
he, directly or indirectly, derived his information referred to the
Scilly Isles and probably also the Cornish peninsula, or (which is
less probable) to islands off the coast of Brittany, at which trading
vessels may have touched on the voyage. All the other ancient writers,
except perhaps Polybius, undoubtedly associated the Cassiterides with
Spain. In so doing they were mistaken; for no islands in Spanish
waters, except Ons, which is out of the question, have ever produced
tin. The real Cassiterides--the ‘tin islands’ which were known to
the mariners from whom the ancient writers ultimately derived their
notions--were, speaking generally, the British Isles, and particularly,
the tin-producing districts of Cornwall and perhaps also the Scilly
Islands. It is possible that Polybius[2337] may have held this view;
for he does not mention the Cassiterides, and names the British Isles
as the source of tin.
How the ancients came to entertain such vague notions about the
Cassiterides, is not difficult to conceive. Evidently, when they
first heard of them, all that they could learn was that they were
somewhere in the western ocean. Knowing that Gades was the centre of
the tin trade, they would naturally assume that they were in Spanish
waters[2338]; and even when they learned that tin came from Britain
and from Galicia, they would cling to the idea that it came also from
islands, the geographical position of which the crafty Phoenicians
had striven to keep secret. Mr. Tozer[2339] may possibly be right in
suggesting that ‘when the nations about the Mediterranean obtained more
accurate information concerning the north-western coasts of Europe,
it was natural that they should affix the name to one or other of the
groups of islands with which they found the trade to be associated’.
‘Thus,’ he continues, ‘by some writers it may have been attached to
the Oestrymnides, by others to the islands of the Galician coast, and
even the Scillies may in some cases have been intended.’ But is it not
likely that the writers in question, when they attempted to locate the
Cassiterides, were not identifying them with any group of islands the
existence of which was certainly known to them, and the whereabouts of
which they knew? M. Salomon Reinach puts the matter well, though he
fails to perceive that Strabo was not referring to islands in Spanish
waters. ‘There were two traditions,’ he says, ‘relating to the tin
islands,--one Phoenician, of which the starting-point was Southern
Spain; the other Greek, which originated at Marseilles. With that
respect for the written word which characterized them, the ancients
accepted the two traditions side by side.... Even after the expedition
of Crassus ... Pliny dared not reject the geographical legend which
connected the islands with Spain; and a century later Ptolemy persisted
in the same error.’[2340]
Mr. W. H. Stevenson explains that Müllenhoff, of whose conclusions
respecting the Cassiterides he gives a lucid summary, holds that
they ‘were marked by guess-work on the early Greek maps ... off the
north-west coast of Spain ... and that they there remained on the maps
(much like the mythical island of Brazil in fifteenth-century maps),
although they had been known since the time of Pytheas, under the
names of Britannia, Albion, Ierne, &c., without their identity being
suspected. In a precisely similar manner the Electridae, which had been
put into the maps by guess-work, were retained long after it was known
that amber came from the shores of the Baltic, and not from islands in
the North Sea.’[2341]
Thus the important point to bear in mind is that the name
_Cassiterides_, which must, as Kiepert says, have been originally
applied to the British Isles, was afterwards misapplied to imaginary
islands, and applied by Strabo, not perhaps without some foundation in
fact, to the Scilly group.
II. ICTIS AND THE BRITISH TRADE IN TIN
Let us now consider the British trade in tin.
I. Diodorus Siculus[2342] states, on the authority of Timaeus, who
derived his information on this matter from Pytheas,[2343] that tin was
conveyed by the people of Belerium (the Land’s End) in wagons at low
tide from the British mainland to an island called Ictis; purchased
there by merchants from the natives; carried to Gaul; and transported
on pack-horses to the mouth of the Rhône,[2344] the overland journey
lasting thirty days. In another chapter[2345] he says, following
Posidonius, that tin was carried from Britain to Gaul, and then
conveyed on horseback to Massilia and to Narbo. Pliny[2346] states,
quoting Timaeus as his authority, that there was an island called
Mictis, six days’ sail from Britain, which produced tin, and to which
the Britons sailed in coracles. Strabo tells us that Corbilo in the
estuary of the Loire[2347] ‘was formerly an emporium’; and, as we learn
from Polybius, who couples it with Narbo and Massilia, that in the time
of Scipio Aemilianus it was one of the principal towns of Gaul,[2348]
it is probable that it was at one period the Gallic port to which
British tin, destined for the Mediterranean markets, was conveyed.[2349]
II. Now the first thing to do is to identify Ictis or Mictis; for it
is admitted that they were the same.[2350] According to Elton[2351]
and Professor Rhys,[2352] Ictis was the Isle of Thanet. ‘The important
point’, says Elton, ‘remains that the tin ... was stored at some
place, which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from
the mineral district; and it seems reasonable to identify it with
the Isle of Thanet, at which the marts were established from which
the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul.’ But there is no
evidence that ‘the marts were established’ in the Isle of Thanet, or
that ‘the merchants made the shortest passage to Gaul’; nor is there
one word in Pliny (whose statement shall be considered presently) to
justify Elton in stating as a ‘fact’ that the tin was ‘stored at some
place which was supposed to have lain at six days’ voyage from the
mineral district’.[2353] The view that Ictis was the Isle of Thanet
is absolutely untenable. ‘If,’ says Professor Ridgeway,[2354] ‘it was
Thanet, it follows that the tin was brought all the way from Devon,
which was impossible, as the great forest of Anderida stretched right
from Hampshire into Kent.’ Formerly the professor held that ‘the only
difficulty in identifying Ictis with the Isle of Wight is the statement
of Diodorus ... that the tin was conveyed across to the island at low
water’; for ‘geologists maintain that Wight could not have been joined
to the mainland in historic times’. Geologists, however, as we shall
presently see, have changed their minds; and accordingly Professor
Ridgeway has changed his. I shall therefore only take account of those
parts of his argument which are not obsolete. ‘Mr. Elton,’ he observes,
‘seems to forget that if the Britons brought the tin a six days’ voyage
from Cornwall to Thanet, there would be no need to bring it overland
by waggons across the estuary at low water.... Diodorus and Timaeus
are substantially agreed that there was an island where the tin came
to market, and that its name was Ictis or Mictis.... The tin could
not be carried overland on account of the forests, and they certainly
would not convey it all round the south and south-east coasts to the
Straits, and then round the coast of Gaul to Corbilo, if it was at all
possible to get across at a nearer point. The passage from the Isle of
Wight to the Channel Islands, and thence to Armorica and Corbilo, would
best attain this object.’ Professor Ridgeway then invokes numismatic
evidence. He states that Gallic coins of a peculiar type have been
found in the southern and western parts of England, in the Channel
Islands, and in the territories of the Turones, Pictones, Redones,
Namnetes, all the tribes of the Armorican peninsula, and the Volcae
Tectosages. ‘Follow the peoples enumerated above on the map,’ he says,
‘and we shall find them all lying in the basins of the Garonne and
Loire.... This evidence, then, points unmistakably to a route direct
from Armorica to the southern coast of Britain, or, in other words,
supports strongly the doctrine that the Isle of Wight was the island
called Ictis.’[2355]
Professor Ridgeway’s arguments, as directed against the theory of Elton
and Professor Rhys, are conclusive. Ictis was certainly not Thanet.
But the argument which he adduces from numismatic evidence in favour
of its identification with the Isle of Wight rests upon the assumption
that the coins in question could not have found their way to the
Channel Islands except in the course of the tin trade. The Dumnonii,
in whose country the tin was produced, had no coinage of their own,
and apparently made little use of money:[2356] the coins to which
Professor Ridgeway alludes were far later than the time of Pytheas;
and the professor himself affirms that in the time of Posidonius, whom
he wrongly regards as Diodorus’s authority for the description of
Ictis, the route from Ictis to Corbilo had been abandoned. Nor is it
easy to understand why the traders who conveyed tin from Cornwall to
Marseilles should have needlessly added between 300 and 400 miles to
the length and a corresponding amount to the expense of the journey.
Professor Ridgeway has himself made use of this very argument to prove
that Ictis was not the Isle of Thanet: can he not see that it tells
with equal force against his own theory, that Ictis was the Isle of
Wight?[2357]
Mr. Alfred Tylor[2358] insists that ‘St. Michael’s Mount’, which was
formerly identified with Ictis, ‘is a steep rock, and does not form a
harbour at all.’ What if it is a steep rock? Does not Thucydides[2359]
tell us that the Phoenicians ‘fortified headlands on the sea-coast [of
Sicily], and settled in the small islands adjacent, for the sake of
trading with the Sicels’?[2360] Nobody who knows St. Michael’s Mount
will contend that there would have been the slightest difficulty in
conveying tin on to the small plain on its landward side,[2361] or in
loading with tin vessels moored beneath it. Diodorus Siculus does not
mention any harbour in connexion with Ictis; but, as a writer who knew
every inch of the Cornish coast long ago pointed out, St. Michael’s
Mount afforded perfect shelter for shipping.[2362] ‘It still,’ says
Sir Charles Lyell,[2363] ‘affords a good port, daily frequented by
vessels, _where cargoes of tin are sometimes taken on board, after
having been transported, as in the olden time, at low tide across
the isthmus_.[2364] Colliers of 500 tons’ burden can now enter the
harbour, which is on the landward or sheltered side of the Mount.’
But the Isle of Wight has recently found a new champion,--the eminent
geologist, Mr. Clement Reid.[2365] He affirms that at the time when
tin was shipped at Ictis, ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an
isolated rock rising out of a swampy wood.’ By an interesting process
of reasoning, based upon evidence which he collected while revising
‘the geological map of the northern part of the Isle of Wight’, and
afterwards while mapping ‘the whole of the adjacent parts of the
mainland’, he arrives at the conclusion that about 100 B.C. a limestone
causeway, over which wagons could pass at low tide, extended from
the western side of the river Yar to the coast of Hampshire opposite
Pennington Marshes. He explains that the tin was transported by this
causeway to the Isle of Wight instead of being shipped in one of the
Hampshire harbours because the latter ‘are all more or less exposed
to the prevalent south-west wind, and are sheltered by no high land’,
and, moreover, ‘the harbours outside the Solent were probably always
rendered dangerous by bars of sand and shingle.’ Finally, he contends
that the identification of Ictis with the Isle of Wight shows that
‘the ancient writers can be literally depended on, and that their
descriptions are thoroughly in keeping with each other’. Pliny was
right in saying that Mictis ‘is distant inwards from Britain six days’
voyage’, for ‘six days’ coasting from the mouth of the Exe would amply
suffice to bring boats to the Isle of Wight’; and since ‘a coasting
trade of this sort would go direct to the Isle of Wight side of the
Solent’, Pliny’s account, which is based on Timaeus, naturally makes
‘no mention of the causeway alluded to by Diodorus, writing at a later
date’. (Mr. Reid presumably means, not that Diodorus wrote later than
Pliny, but that Posidonius, whom he assumes to have been Diodorus’s
authority, wrote later than Timaeus.) Caesar is right in saying that
tin was found in the interior, ‘for he refers to the British part
of the trade-route,’ that is to say, the (assumed) overland journey
from Cornwall to the Hampshire coast. Diodorus is right because the
limestone causeway answers to his description.
I submit that whoever is right, Mr. Clement Reid is wrong, because
the only equipment which he brings to the discussion is the special
knowledge of the geologist. Doubtless he has proved the former
existence of a causeway between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; but
it does not follow that the Isle of Wight was Ictis unless it can be
proved that ‘St. Michael’s Mount must have been an isolated rock rising
out of a swampy wood’.
Can this be proved? I have searched all the relevant geological
and geographical literature, and have failed to find any evidence
in support of Mr. Reid’s assertion. The testimony of geologists,
except Mr. Reid, is all the other way. Sir Charles Lyell,[2366] Mr.
Pengelley,[2367] and Mr. Ussher[2368] of the Geological Survey all
hold that since the time when tin was shipped at Ictis, St. Michael’s
Mount has undergone no sensible change. But Mr. Reid has recently been
revising the old geological survey of Cornwall; and he tells me that
he reached his conclusion by calculating the rate at which the sea
washed away alluvium which once connected St. Michael’s Mount with the
mainland. Moreover, although he does not actually rely upon the hoary
fable, demolished by Max Müller, of ‘the Hoar Rock in the Wood’, he
laid stress in conversation with me upon the prevalence in Cornwall of
a tradition which supported his conclusion,--a tradition which, Max
Müller’s readers know, is simply worthless.[2369]
Now I would ask geologists whether it is not dangerous to strive after
chronological precision in geological inquiries by reasoning which
assumes that nature worked during a long period of remote time at a
uniform rate of speed. The calculations by which Sir Archibald Geikie
laboured years ago to estimate the time which the Thames occupied in
excavating its valley,[2370] the calculations which geologists have
made as to the time required for the deposition of the layers of
stalagmite in caves,[2371] have been proved to be futile. This much
at all events is certain: if Mr. Reid’s calculation is accurate, it
stultifies the testimony of the ancient authors to whom he appeals.
For I would ask Mr. Reid how he proposes to reconcile his own
statement, ‘that the ancient writers can be literally depended on,’
with the assumption, which he admits that he is compelled to make in
order to show ‘the perfect consistency of the accounts’, that ‘Mictis
and Ictis were the same island as Vectis’. Is he not aware that in
Pliny’s _Natural History_[2372] [M]ictis and Vectis are distinguished?
If he had studied Müllenhoff’s great work, he would not have attempted
to reconcile Pliny’s account of the six days’ voyage to [M]ictis with
Diodorus’s account, which ‘mentions only the causeway to Ictis’, by
assuming that the writer whom Diodorus followed lived two centuries
later than Timaeus. For Diodorus’s account was not, as Mr. Reid
fancies, based upon Posidonius; he also, like Pliny, derived his
information immediately from Timaeus, ultimately from Pytheas. Not less
hopeless is Mr. Reid’s attempt to explain Pliny’s account of the voyage
to [M]ictis. How could the Isle of Wight be described as ‘distant
inwards from Britain six days’ voyage’? Because, says Mr. Reid, ‘the
Isle of Wight and more easterly parts of the south of England were
politically part of Gaul perhaps even at that early date [300 B.C.];
the tin-producing “Britain” was apparently outside the dominion of
the Belgae, and must have been Devon and Cornwall.’ This argument
rests upon a doubtful ‘perhaps’, an obscure ‘apparently’, a desperate
‘must have been’, and the baseless assumption that the Belgae had
established dominion in Britain in the time of Pytheas: it leaves the
word ‘inwards’ unexplained; and it is pulverized by the mere fact that
in the very chapter from which Mr. Reid is quoting and everywhere else
Pliny uses the word Britain not in the sense of ‘Devon and Cornwall’,
but simply in the sense of Britain. To any man who is not obliged to
distort the plain meaning of words it is clear that, from Pliny’s point
of view, Ictis was six days’ sail from Britain, and that by ‘inwards’
he meant, speaking from the standpoint of an Italian, ‘northward.’ Thus
London might be intelligibly described as fifty-two miles ‘inwards’
from Brighton; but to say that Brighton is a day’s sail ‘inwards’ from
Portsmouth would be gibberish. As Müllenhoff has pointed out, Pliny
confounded the distance of Ictis from Britain with that of Thule.[2373]
Enough of Mr. Reid’s attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. Like
Professor Ridgeway, he does not explain why men of business preferred
to pay the cost of the long voyage from the Isle of Wight to the mouth
of the Loire, when they need only have paid for the shorter voyage
from Cornwall, or why they chose to saddle themselves with the cost of
the overland transport from Cornwall to Hampshire. Nor does he explain
why this imaginary and expensive overland transport was substituted
for the imaginary coasting voyage. Nor again does he explain how
wagons, loaded with tin (for Diodorus does not speak of pack-horses
except in connexion with the journey across Gaul), were able to travel
two hundred miles along unmetalled trackways. The rate at which they
crawled, the numerous breaks down, the curses of the drivers, and
the wear and tear of the cattle I leave to Mr. Reid’s imagination.
The eminent archaeologist, Mr. C. H. Read, who accepts Mr. Reid’s
conclusions, assures us that a voyage from St. Michael’s Mount to the
mouth of the Loire is not to be thought of, for it would have involved
a ‘long and dangerous sea passage’.[2374] Is he serious? This long sea
passage was far shorter than the passage from the Isle of Wight: why
it was more dangerous than a passage which involved navigation in the
neighbourhood of the Channel Islands as well as of Ushant no seaman
will be able to understand. The passage which seems so terrible to Mr.
Read was made by Pytheas.[2375] The passage from Italy to Sardinia was
longer: several times longer was the passage from Britain to Iceland,
which was made long before the invention of the compass;[2376] as long
or longer the passage from Scandinavia to Britain, which was made,
according to Mr. Read himself,[2377] in the Bronze Age. That the Veneti
should have been quite willing to sail from the Isle of Wight to the
Loire, but so afraid of sailing in their stout ships from Cornwall that
they deliberately added more than a hundred miles to the length of
their voyage, is a mystery which Mr. Read must be left to explain.
But Mr. Reid, in the conversation which passed between us, urged
reasons in favour of his theory which are omitted in his paper and to
which I shall endeavour to do justice. Archaeological evidence, he
remarked, shows that the people of Cornwall were far more uncivilized
than those of Hampshire: even supposing that St. Michael’s Mount
was an island, it had no real harbour; and it would have been very
dangerous for mariners to attempt to get there especially in a fog or
a south-westerly gale. I reply that it would also have been dangerous
in such weather to attempt to fetch the coast of the Isle of Wight, as
the ship would have incurred the risk of running a-tilt against the
limestone causeway; that in a fog the skipper would have anchored; and
that, notwithstanding the lack of a proper harbour, the ship would have
lain snugly in sheltered water under the lee of St. Michael’s Mount.
The comparative barbarism of the people of Cornwall is irrelevant: as
they wanted to sell their tin, there was no danger that they would
molest their customers. Besides, Mr. Reid seems to forget that the
people who produced the tin delivered it to the traders at Ictis. The
traders transacted business directly with them; and, assuming that
Ictis was the Isle of Wight, they were as barbarous when they had
crossed the limestone causeway as they had been when they left the tin
mines. Mr. Reid’s argument compels him once more to throw overboard
the ancient authority, who, as he insists, ‘can be literally depended
on’; for Diodorus distinctly states that the tin-mining inhabitants
of Belerium were friendly to strangers, and _from their intercourse
with foreign merchants_ had become comparatively civilized.[2378] This
passage proves that, according to Diodorus, Ictis was in the territory
of Belerium, and by itself demolishes Mr. Reid’s theory. For how could
the inhabitants have become civilized by their commercial dealings if
the merchants never came near Belerium, and the only inhabitants who
came in contact with them were wagoners or boatmen?
It is clear then that the case for the Isle of Wight rests upon the
geological evidence, such as it is, that at the time when Ictis was a
trading station, St. Michael’s Mount was ‘an isolated rock rising out
of a swampy wood’. Common sense and the historical evidence are all on
the other side. If St. Michael’s Mount had not been available, there
would have been nothing to prevent the traders from shipping the tin
at Falmouth or in Plymouth Sound; and acceptance of Mr. Reid’s theory
involves, besides other insuperable difficulties, the assumption that
the tin-merchants were ignorant of the first principles of business.
III. We now come to the question, When did the overland trade in tin
between Corbilo and Massilia begin, and how long did it last? That it
existed before the time of Pytheas--that is to say, at least as early
as the fourth century before Christ--is certain;[2379] for, as we
have seen, Pliny and Diodorus Siculus derived their information about
Ictis ultimately from him.[2380] Müllenhoff,[2381] indeed, contends
for a still earlier date. Only on this hypothesis, he argues, can we
explain the remarkable fact that the great Celtic immigration at the
beginning of the fourth century B.C. not only did no harm to Massilia
but actually increased its prosperity, the profits of the trade being
appreciated by the Celts themselves. Still, there is no evidence that
it existed (except in the form of intertribal barter) before the
foundation of Massilia, or even that it had begun long before Pytheas
visited Britain.
Professor Ridgeway insists that it is ‘obvious that when the Belgic
tribes ... made permanent settlements on the south-east coast of
Britain, the course of trade would pass regularly from Kent into
Northern France, and that the old route by Armorica, Corbilo, and the
Loire would fall into disuse’.[2382] If anything is ‘obvious’, it is
that the course of trade would continue to follow the most convenient
route, and that merchants would not saddle themselves with the expense
of conveying tin, destined for Mediterranean markets, all the way
from Cornwall to Kent. Besides, how was it to be conveyed thither?
Certainly not by land; for Professor Ridgeway tells us himself that
the barrier interposed by the great forest of Anderida would have
rendered this impossible.[2383] Certainly not by sea; for, unless the
merchants had taken leave of their senses, why should they have paid
for the voyage from Cornwall to Kent, then for the voyage from Kent to
Boulogne, and then for the long overland journey to Marseilles, when,
by taking the route which led from St. Michael’s Mount to the mouth
of the Loire, both the voyage and the land journey would have been
considerably shortened? If Caesar does not expressly mention Corbilo,
neither does he expressly mention any other commercial port; and he
does imply that the Veneti had the lion’s share of the carrying trade
with Britain.[2384] Possibly Corbilo had lost its importance by the
time of Caesar; but the estuary of the Loire still formed one of the
two most important harbours in the west of Gaul, and Strabo mentions
it as one of the four principal Gallic ports from which ships bound
for Britain set sail.[2385] The argument based upon the fact that the
overland journey lasted thirty days implies that the merchants would
have deliberately preferred a longer to a shorter route; and as the
distance from the mouth of the Loire to Massilia was about four hundred
and eighty miles _in a straight line_, it does not seem incredible that
the journey should have lasted thirty days. But what puzzles me most
in Professor Ridgeway’s argument is that, while it is partly based
upon the testimony of Diodorus, it sets that testimony at defiance.
The professor holds that the authority whom Diodorus followed was
Posidonius. If so, Posidonius stated that in his time British tin was
shipped for the Continent at Ictis. Now Professor Ridgeway identifies
Ictis with the Isle of Wight. I have shown that Ictis was St. Michael’s
Mount. But, according to Professor Ridgeway, British tin was shipped,
in the time of Posidonius, neither at the Isle of Wight, nor at St.
Michael’s Mount, but in Kent.[2386] The train of thought which led to
this conclusion is one which my poor brain is powerless to follow.[2387]
Professor Haverfield[2388] affirms that the Roman annexation of Gallia
Narbonensis ‘secured that trade route by which Diodorus Siculus tells
us that British tin reached the Mediterranean, that is the route from
Narbo by the “pass of Carcassonne” and Toulouse to Bordeaux’; but I
cannot find any evidence that this was the route to which Diodorus
referred.
Professor Rhys[2389] has constructed a theory about the course of the
tin trade during the maritime supremacy of the Veneti which is even
more remarkable than that of Professor Ridgeway. He tells us that ‘at
one time they probably landed British tin at the mouth of [the Loire]
... and they fetched some of it at any rate from the south-east
of Britain’. In other words, the tin was conveyed at heavy cost by
the Britons three hundred miles from Cornwall to the south-east of
Britain, in order that the Veneti might add at least two hundred miles
to the voyage which they would have undertaken if they had fetched it
direct from Cornwall; and this was done although, as Professor Rhys
himself assures us, there was ‘communication between the Dumnonii [of
Cornwall] and the nearest part of Gaul during the Venetic period’. The
professor adds that ‘whatever direct trade in tin there may have been
between the tin districts of Britain and the Loire, it must have been
utterly unknown to Caesar’. I reply that if, as Professor Rhys holds,
there was trade in tin by way of South-Eastern Britain between the tin
districts of Britain and the Loire, this trade also must, on Professor
Rhys’s theory, have been unknown to Caesar, for he mentions neither
the one nor the other; but that the voyage which Crassus made to the
tin-producing districts of Cornwall, and about which Caesar is equally
silent, shows that Caesar was not ignorant, but merely reticent.
But Professor Ridgeway would assign a different reason for Caesar’s
silence. Remarking that ‘when Strabo, writing as a contemporary,
is describing the exports from Britain, he omits the mention of
tin, whilst from the extract from Posidonius, quoted alike by him
and Diodorus, it is plain that when the Stoic explorer visited
North-Western Europe, the British tin trade was still of importance’,
the professor suggests that in the time of Caesar Britain ceased to
export tin.[2390] But did not Strabo write long after Caesar died?
Professor Haverfield, on the other hand, has given reasons for the view
that ‘the early Cornish tin trade, which Posidonius and Caesar knew,
died out about the beginning of our era’; and he suggests that it may
have done so because the Romans had just discovered ‘the real site of
the Cassiterides in N.W. Spain’.[2391] ‘Very little,’ he remarks, ‘has
been found west of Exeter which can be connected with the first two
centuries of the Roman Empire.... Plainly the Romans of the conquest
period did not care to advance beyond Exeter.... Yet if the tin trade
had then been flourishing they would hardly have stopped. We must put
the halt at Exeter beside the silence of the writers after Caesar, and
suppose that for some reason the tin trade had ceased in Cornwall.
Perhaps as iron took the place of bronze in many lands tin was no
longer in such demand; perhaps the Spanish ore was cheaper than the
Cornish; perhaps the accessible Cornish tin streams seemed exhausted.
Whatever the reason, the Cornish tin trade vanished before A.D. 50. It
reappears two centuries later.’[2392]
Now the evidence that Professor Haverfield offers of its having
_reappeared_ is simply the discovery of one inscribed ingot of Cornish
tin, which belonged to the fourth century; and if no inscribed ingots
of an earlier date have been found, their absence hardly proves that
the Romans had not worked the mines before. This Professor Haverfield
admits; but, he insists, ‘it does prove that we have no right to say
that mining was going on.’[2393] Possibly: but if so, _the absence of
inscribed ingots of tin in Spain_[2394] _equally proves that we have no
right to say that mining was going on there_. Yet, if it was suspended
in Cornwall, it must have been contemporaneously active in Spain. It is
true that no Roman antiquities of earlier date than the third century
have been found in Cornwall, except some Samian ware and coins of
Trajan and Vespasian;[2395] and it may be true that, as the professor
says, these discoveries ‘prove no Roman influence or occupation’:[2396]
but, on the other hand, Cornwall has very few Roman antiquities even
of the third and fourth centuries,[2397] and no Roman or Romanized
towns or villas.[2398] Is it not then possible that, as Professor
Gowland suggests, the mines were worked throughout the whole period of
the Roman occupation of Britain, but not under Roman control?[2399]
He points out that ‘the stamps had been impressed [upon the solitary
ingot] when the metal was cold, and hence not necessarily at the mine,
but very probably by a Roman trader or officer at the coast’.[2400]
Professor Haverfield indeed states that the ingot was found not more
than a mile and a half from ‘an old working’, which has yielded Roman
coins:[2401] but Professor Gowland supports his own view by the
argument that ‘at the Roman lead mines in Britain the inscriptions
were always cast on the ingots of lead when they were made, and at
the copper mines were stamped on the cakes of copper while they were
red hot’. ‘The real site of the Cassiterides’ was not, as Professor
Haverfield thinks, ‘in N.W. Spain,’ but in the British Isles. ‘The
silence of the writers after Caesar’ in regard to the British trade in
tin, on which he lays stress, really resolves itself into the silence
of Strabo; for although the professor is quite right in saying that
‘later authors [namely, Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny] merely include it
in quotations from earlier literature’, those who are familiar with
their writings will admit that there was no reason why any of them,
except Strabo, should have expressly added to those quotations the
information that the British tin trade continued in their own time. We
should certainly have expected that Strabo would have included tin in
his list of British exports if it had been exported in his time; and
I will not attempt to explain away his silence: but can it outweigh
the extreme improbability that for two centuries the civilized world
should have been entirely cut off from one of the two sources from
which its supply of tin had previously been derived? And when Professor
Haverfield suggests that ‘as iron took the place of bronze in many
lands, tin was no longer in such demand’, does he not momentarily
forget that not only in the lands round the Mediterranean but also in
those of Northern and Western Europe iron had taken the place of bronze
for many purposes several centuries before the Christian era, and that,
on the other hand, those implements and ornaments which were still made
wholly or in part of bronze were probably in greater demand than before?
IV. We have now to deal with the Phoenicians. Sir George Cornewall
Lewis[2402] and various other writers have endeavoured to prove that
the Phoenicians (including the Carthaginians) never traded directly
with Britain for tin; and in 1896 Dr. Arthur Evans remarked that ‘the
days are gone past when it could be seriously maintained that the
Phoenician merchant landed on the coast of Cornwall’.[2403]
Now Dr. Evans’s distinguished father, who holds that the Cassiterides
‘are rightly identified with Britain’, observes that ‘the traces of
Phoenician influence in this country are ... at present imperceptible.
But,’ he continues, ‘it may well be that their system of commerce or
barter was such as intentionally left the barbarian tribes with whom
they traded in much the same stage of civilization as that in which
they found them, always assuming that they dealt directly with Britain
and not through the intervention of Gaulish merchants.’[2404]
Some merchants certainly landed, if not on the coast of Cornwall at all
events on that of Ictis: is there any reason in the nature of things
why Phoenician merchants should not have done so? To the old-fashioned
view there are only two objections worth considering, namely, first,
that ‘the tin trade was carried on overland through Gaul’,[2405] and,
secondly, that the tin which was shipped to Gades may have come not
from Britain but from the mines of North-Western Spain. But, as we
have seen, there is no evidence that the overland trade had begun
before 600 B.C.,--the approximate date of the foundation of Massilia;
nor is there any evidence that the Phoenicians took part in it. From
Gades to Cornwall the voyage, as George Smith observes, was shorter
than the voyages ‘from Tyre to Malta, Carthage, or Sicily, which they
were performing continuously’.[2406] If Desjardins[2407] is right in
affirming that ‘the name _Corbilo_ unquestionably looks Phoenician’,
and that a Phoenician inscription has been found near Guérande, it
may be inferred that the carrying trade between Britain and Corbilo
was at one time either wholly or partly in Phoenician or Carthaginian
hands. That tin was obtained in ancient times from the mines of
North-Western Spain must be admitted: not only is the fact attested by
the statements of Strabo and Pliny,[2408] but it has been proved by
the researches of Mr. W. C. Borlase.[2409] But there is some evidence
that tin also came from Cornwall to Gades. Festus Avienus[2410] tells
us, ultimately, it may be assumed, on the authority of the Carthaginian
traveller, Himilco, that both the Carthaginians and the people of
Gades used to sail to the British seas.[2411] Sir George Cornewall
Lewis,[2412] indeed, argues that ‘if the date of the voyages of Hanno
and Himilco is correctly fixed, it follows that at a period subsequent
to the expedition of Xerxes, the Carthaginians ... had not carried
their navigation far along the coasts of the Atlantic; and that they
sent out two voyages of discovery--one to the south, the other to the
north--at the public expense’. All that we know about the date of
Himilco’s voyage is that it was not later than the fifth, probably
in the sixth century B.C.,[2413] and, according to Pliny,[2414] its
object was ‘to explore the outer parts of Europe’. Anyhow the evidence
remains that after Himilco’s time, if not before, the Carthaginians
traded by sea with Britain.[2415] Dr. Arthur Evans, I know, warns us
that ‘a truer view of primitive trade as passing on by inter-tribal
barter has superseded the idea of a direct commerce between remote
localities’.[2416] But the testimony of Diodorus, that is to say of
Pytheas, proves that traders purchased tin off the Cornish coast from
the natives who had prepared it for market, carried it across the
Channel, and unloaded it on the coast of Gaul, whence it was conveyed
overland to the mouth of the Rhône. If this was not ‘direct commerce’,
what was? That there was ‘inter-tribal barter’ in ancient times, no
well-informed person would deny; but that there was also ‘direct
commerce between remote localities’ is as well attested as any fact of
ancient history can be.
Mr. C. T. Newton indeed argues that ‘if the Phoenicians frequented
any portion of the British coast, it is probable that they would have
given names to the more important harbours and promontories, as they
did in Africa and Spain’.[2417] But is it not also probable that they
found it sufficient to hold, or even to occupy temporarily, as occasion
required, one or more of the Scilly Islands, or perhaps St. Michael’s
Mount, and that they may have given names to these places, although the
names have not survived.[2418] Their settlements in Africa and Spain
were not temporary but permanent.
I freely admit that the testimony of Festus Avienus is not conclusive;
but I see no reason for rejecting the statement of Strabo that the
Phoenicians traded directly for tin with the Cassiterides--that is to
say, the British Isles--and that they originally monopolized the trade.
M. Salomon Reinach,[2419] who supports the view that the Phoenicians
traded directly with Cornwall, insists, referring to a well-known
passage in Thucydides,[2420] that the overland route must have been
earlier than the maritime. ‘Corinth,’ says Thucydides, ‘being seated
on an isthmus, was naturally from the first a centre of commerce; for
the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnese, in the old days when
they communicated chiefly by land, had to pass through her territory
in order to reach one another.’[2421] M. Reinach argues that ‘nothing
could have suggested to the Phoenicians the idea of going with their
ships in search of tin if they had not already known the existence not
only of the metal but also of the distant country which produced it ...
the Phoenicians of Spain no more discovered the Cassiterides and tin
than the Portuguese discovered India and spices’. This may be freely
admitted. But the Phoenicians may well have acquired the knowledge upon
which they acted long before the direct overland trade which Diodorus
describes began. Tin was probably conveyed in very early times from
Cornwall to Gaul for the use of tribes who inhabited that country
before the immigration of the Celtic-speaking invaders; and, since Gaul
was in communication with Britain from the beginning of the Bronze
Age,[2422] the knowledge that tin was to be obtained in Britain might
have reached Phoenician ears even before Gades was founded.
But the most striking contribution which M. Reinach has made to the
literature of this subject is the suggestion that the traders who
first sailed from the Mediterranean into the English Channel were
not Phoenicians but Phrygians. Speaking of the well-known passage,
which I have already quoted, in which Pliny says that Midacritus was
the first who imported tin from ‘the tin island’,[2423] he argues
that the generally accepted identification of Midacritus with the
Phoenician Melcarth is erroneous. He points out that in Pliny’s list
of discoverers all except the most famous names are accompanied by a
complementary designation, for example (Toxius), _Caeli filius_[2424].
Therefore, even if, as has been supposed, what Pliny wrote was not
_Midacritus_ but _Melicertus_ (Melcarth), that unfamiliar name would
have been followed by some explanatory addition. M. Reinach then quotes
two passages from Hyginus[2425] and Cassiodorus[2426] respectively. In
the former we read that ‘King Midas, the Phrygian, son of Cybele, was
the first to discover lead and tin’ (_Midas rex Cybeles filius Phryx
plumbum album et nigrum primus invenit_); in the latter, that ‘Midas,
the ruler of Phrygia, discovered tin’ ([Aes enim Ionos Thessaliae rex],
_plumbum Midas regnator Phrygiae reppererunt_). It is clear then, says
M. Reinach, that, as the Jesuit scholar, Hardouin, perceived more than
two centuries ago, for _Midacritus_ in the MSS. of Pliny we ought to
read _Midas Phryx_. He adds that from a fragment of the Seventh Book
of Diodorus, preserved in the Chronicle of Eusebius, we learn that the
maritime supremacy of the Phrygians began about 903 B.C., and that of
the Phoenicians in 824.[2427]
DENE-HOLES
Of the various theories which have been published as to the object of
dene-holes three only are worth considering, namely, that they were
granaries; that they were refuges; and that they were sunk in order to
obtain chalk.
Subterranean granaries have of course been used in many
countries;[2428] but it is said that no grain has ever been found in
any dene-hole,[2429] whereas grain has been found in shallow pits and
on numerous other prehistoric sites in Britain.[2430] On the other
hand, a thorough exploration of the famous group of dene-holes in
Hangman’s Wood, Essex, revealed fragments of two millstones.[2431]
The Reverend E. H. Goddard remarks that ‘very similar places’ in
Brittany were used by ‘the peasant armies during the war in La
Vendée’ as refuges and lairs, and argues that dene-holes served a
similar purpose.[2432] Perhaps, though it would have gone hard with
the fugitives if their lairs had been discovered; but, seeing that
strongholds were available, it is difficult to admit that they were
dug with that object. The theory that they were shafts sunk for the
extraction of chalk rests mainly upon the evidence of Pliny, who states
that chalk was obtained in Britain for manure ‘by means of pits sunk
like wells with narrow mouths to the depth commonly of one hundred
feet, where they branch out like the veins of mines’ ([creta] _petitur
ex alto, in centenos actis plerumque puteis, ore angustis, intus ut
in metallis spatiante vena_[2433]). Messrs. T. V. Holmes and W. Cole,
who superintended the exploration of the dene-holes in Hangman’s Wood,
argue that ‘the above account could not have been given to Pliny by
any man who had ever descended into one of our [Essex] ... dene-holes,
which are entered by ... narrow shafts, but whose lofty symmetrical
chambers cannot be described as “branching out like the veins of
mines”.’[2434] I think, on the contrary, that, allowing for the natural
inaccuracy of a writer who gave his own version of information supplied
by one who had perhaps himself not descended into a dene-hole, Pliny’s
description was remarkably correct: the chambers which open out at the
bottom of the shafts in Hangman’s Wood are arranged in the shape of a
star-fish; the only material error with which Pliny can be charged is
that he compared them to the veins of mines; and that he was alluding
to them I have no doubt. Messrs. Holmes and Cole are, however, on
firm ground when they point out that his informant may have wrongly
assumed that the shafts were sunk in order to obtain chalk because the
chalk that was extracted from them was utilized. ‘And,’ they continue,
‘a foreigner accidentally discovering secret pits--and our surface
trenches showed our dene-holes to have been secret excavations--would
almost necessarily be deceived as to their use by natives.’ But is
it not possible that Pliny’s informant may have been a Briton? And,
assuming that he was deceived as to the purpose of the dene-holes, why
was he allowed to learn the existence and arrangement of the chambers,
and, approximately, the depth of the shaft?
Nevertheless, Messrs. Holmes and Cole are undoubtedly right in the
main. It has been argued that dene-holes are situated in places which
must always have been uncultivated, whereas the tracts in which chalk
lay near the surface may have been already occupied; that chalk has
been obtained in Wiltshire in modern times by mining although it was
to be had near the surface; and that the labour of sinking the shafts
may have been compensated by saving the cost of transporting chalk from
distant parts, where it was the surface rock.[2435] But, as Messrs.
Holmes and Cole observe, ‘there is plenty of bare chalk within a mile’
of Hangman’s Wood; and, as they pertinently ask, if the dene-holes were
sunk for chalk, why was their position so carefully kept secret?[2436]
Again, Mr. Spurrell, who admits that where chalk lay very deep shafts
may have been sunk merely in order to obtain it, remarks that ‘it is
evident that where the land is white with chalk the pits of great
depth so often found there could not have been dug for manure, and the
natives of Kent in such situations scout the idea as absurd’.[2437]
Messrs. T. E. and R. H. Forster contend that the elaborate design of
the chambers in Hangman’s Wood is ‘in reality a strong confirmation’
of the truth of ‘the chalk-quarry theory’; for ‘the star-fish-shaped
pit ... enables the miner to win more chalk at one sinking; and if
no examples of it were known, it would be necessary to postulate its
existence in order to supply the missing link between the primitive
bell-pit and the pillared and galleried mine of the kind seen at
Chislehurst’.[2438] But is the ‘bell-pit’ primitive, and is there a
link, missing or otherwise? Anyhow it is incredible that the people
of Essex, if they had undertaken the prodigious labour of sinking 70
shafts simply in order to obtain better chalk than what they could have
found hard by at the surface, would have contented themselves, after
boring through 60 feet of sand and gravel, with ‘the very uppermost
[and therefore worst] chalk’.[2439] As Mr. Holmes remarks,[2440] ‘it
must be obvious that the course which would commend itself to all
seekers after superior chalk would be to begin operations where chalk
is at the surface, make a shaft 10 to 20 feet deep, and procure chalk
lying at that depth’; and, while he freely admits that ‘a farmer might
naturally prefer to get chalk at a depth of 60 to 80 feet on his own
land rather than ... from some one else’s pit a mile or two away’, he
emphasizes the absurdity of supposing that ‘any people ... concentrated
their pits where they got the least return for their labour, and where
there was no counterbalancing advantage ... as they must have done at
Hangman’s Wood and Bexley on the Chalk-pit hypothesis’.[2441]
Charred wood, bones of animals, and large quantities of coarse
pottery have been found in a dene-hole near Dunstable,[2442] which is
sufficient evidence that some dene-holes were occasionally inhabited.
I conclude that dene-holes were intended to serve as granaries; that
they may have been used occasionally as places of concealment; and that
the chalk which was taken out of them was used, if it was wanted, for
manure. It is significant that their name means ‘_Dane_-holes’, that
is, hiding-places from the Danes.[2443]
The ‘bell-pits’ which have been already mentioned, and which are
sometimes confounded with dene-holes, were undoubtedly made for the
sake of the chalk; and, unlike dene-holes, they were made broad in
order that a large amount of material might be taken out of them at
each haul.[2444]
Some of the Kentish dene-holes, if Mr. Goddard is rightly informed,
contained bronze implements;[2445] and those of Essex are almost
certainly post-neolithic.[2446] Some bell-pits are ancient, but I doubt
whether it could be proved that any were pre-Roman: Pitt-Rivers[2447]
indeed believed that it was from the Romans that the Britons learned to
use chalk as top-dressing.
THE COAST BETWEEN CALAIS AND THE SOMME IN THE TIME OF CAESAR
The question of the period during which the gulf of St. Omer existed
has given rise to much discussion. According to Reclus,[2448]
Desjardins,[2449] and many other writers,[2450] even in the time of
Caesar this so-called gulf, which was really a shallow salt-water
‘mere’, covered the lowlands north-east of the hills of Artois between
Sangatte and Dunkirk, and extended inland to within a short distance
of St. Omer. No evidence, however, has been adduced to show that it
existed at that time;[2451] and it has been proved by M. J. Gosselet
that it did not exist before the latter part of the third century of
our era, for Gallo-Roman remains, including 2,354 coins, some of which
belong to the time of Postumus, have been found in the area. As M.
Gosselet says,[2452] the _Sinus Itius_ is a mere invention of writers
of the seventeenth century.
The ancient topography of Wissant, of the estuary of the Liane, and of
the headlands of Blancnez, Grisnez, and Alprech, is discussed in the
article on the Portus Itius.[2453]
The inland extension of the bay formed by the estuary of the Canche
has steadily diminished since the time of Caesar; and whereas, during
the last century at all events, the headland on its southern side has
gained considerably on the sea, the ‘Pointe de Lornel’ on the north and
the neighbouring sand-dunes have suffered continual erosion.[2454]
The country which lies between the hills of Artois and the sea, from
the mouth of the Canche to the mouth of the Somme, is, as Reclus[2455]
remarks, of recent formation; and, as late as the ninth century, the
environs of the town of Rue, which is now about six miles from the
sea, were covered by a vast shallow lake, 20,000 hectares, or about 78
square miles, in extent.
THE CONFIGURATION OF THE COAST OF KENT IN THE TIME OF CAESAR
This volume is not a treatise upon the physical geography of Ancient
Britain; and I am only concerned with geographical questions in so far
as they are essential to a right understanding of the history. It is
impossible to understand the narrative of Caesar’s invasions of Britain
without considering how far the physical geography of that part of the
island which was the theatre of his operations differed from what it is
now.
I. BETWEEN RAMSGATE AND SANDOWN CASTLE
Thanet, as everybody knows, was an island in Caesar’s time; and
Bede[2456] says that it was separated from the mainland by an estuary
three furlongs broad: but the late George Dowker[2457] concluded from
‘an attentive examination of the estuary’ that it was ‘much shallower
and narrower than is generally supposed’.
John Lewis,[2458] a well-known antiquary of the eighteenth century,
and William Boys,[2459] the historian of Sandwich, maintained that an
estuary, in which was included the harbour of Richborough, known to
the Romans as Portus Ritupis, had extended from the cliffs of Ramsgate
southward to Walmer, covering the sites of Stonar and Sandwich and
indeed the whole of the low ground between Sandwich and Deal, and
washing the shore of an island on which stood Richborough Castle. A
recent writer, Mr. H. Sharpe,[2460] who endorses this opinion, argues
that the Roman road from Canterbury to Richborough harbour (_ad portum
Ritupis_[2461]) terminated at Each End. The road ‘cannot’, he insists,
‘have run to Sandwich in Roman times. Montagu Burrows ... _Cinque
Ports_, 1888, p. 30,[2462] says--“Sandwich and Stonar are wholly
English. No Roman remains have been found at either” ... there is
good reason to suppose that the land upon which it [Sandwich] stands
and the land over which the Sandwich end of the road runs were not
formed when the Romans were here.’[2463] And again, ‘There is another
reason for supposing that Each End was ... the place where the boats
left the mainland for the island [of Richborough]. [The road running
northward from Dover] is marked on the Ordnance map[2464] as a Roman
road, and if complete would run to Each End, not to Richborough Castle
or to Sandwich ... the last mile from [Woodnesborough] to Each End, is
missing.’[2465]
Now, in regard to Stonar, Professor Burrows, as we shall presently
see, is mistaken; and, granting that the Roman road from Dover would,
if complete, run to Each End, how can Mr. Sharpe prove that it did
not run further? The late George Dowker stated, in a paper which was
published after his death, that he had himself ‘traced the Roman road
to Woodnesborough, and thence by Each End to near the Richborough
Island’;[2466] and the views of Lewis and Boys, which Mr. Sharpe
endorses, as to the wide extent of the estuary at the time of the
Roman conquest of Britain have been stultified by discoveries to which
Mr. Sharpe does not allude. Roach Smith affirms that ‘Roman remains,
indicative of habitations, have been discovered in the sand-hills
considerably to the north of Sandown Castle’, and that ‘coins have been
found at Stonar, opposite to Richborough’; and from these facts he
infers that ‘the recession of the sea from the low land between Thanet
and Walmer probably commenced at a period much earlier than has been
commonly supposed’.[2467]
That the hill on which Richborough Castle stood was nearly if not quite
insulated is generally admitted;[2468] but Mr. George E. Fox remarks
that it ‘was probably not washed by the open sea, though a broad
channel may have flowed close beside it, forming one of the southern
mouths of the strait, while a narrow strip of salt-marsh and sand-bank
lay between it and the open sea’. It would be more correct to say that
the island, on its eastern side, was separated by a channel from Stonar
Beach, the southern extremity of which lay east by north of the site of
Sandwich: the sand-hills were on the south-eastern side of this beach,
from which they were divided by a narrow channel. Mr. Fox goes on to
say that ‘a large extent of what is now marshland, lying to the west of
the hill, may then have ... formed the haven,[2469] making of the camp
hill an island’. He argues, however, that, on the eastern side, the
channel ‘could not have hugged the hill very closely, as at no great
distance to the south of the station on this same side, and in the
low ground presumably near the shore, fragments of a Roman house were
discovered in 1846’.[2470]
In the year 1876 Dowker affirmed that ‘the low shore and sand hills’
which now extend from the Deal beach to the latitude of Sandwich
‘extended [in the time of Caesar] much less than at present’;[2471] and
in a map which accompanied his paper[2472] he contrasted the low-water
line between Walmer and Sandwich, as he believed it to have existed
in 55 B.C., with the low-water line as it existed at the time when
he wrote. In the latitude of Sandwich the modern low-water line is
traced on this map a mile and a half east of the hypothetical ancient
line, which distance gradually diminishes to three-quarters of a mile
in the latitude of Worth and about one furlong in the latitude of
Deal. I find a difficulty in reconciling this map with Dowker’s own
statement that ‘Roman pottery, coins and traces of the Roman occupation
have been found in the sand-hills--and indeed below the sand-hills
considerably northward of Deal, beyond Sandown Castle’;[2473] and from
the fact which this statement records it follows that, in the time of
the Roman occupation of Britain, the shore-line at the place where the
discoveries in question were made cannot have been widely different
from what it is now.
II. BETWEEN SANDOWN CASTLE AND WALMER CASTLE
When we endeavour to trace the shore-line, as it existed in Caesar’s
time, opposite Deal and Walmer, we find that the writers who have
dealt with the question differ widely among themselves; while Dowker
again shows himself a most troublesome witness. Unfortunately this
meritorious geologist, who laboured hard to elucidate the geographical
questions connected with the ancient history of East Kent, was a bad
writer, and sometimes failed to make his meaning clear.
Major Rennell, who was in his day ‘the acknowledged head of British
geographers’,[2474] believed that Caesar landed at Deal. ‘Of course,’
he says, ‘the margin of the ancient beach, on which Caesar landed,
must now be very far within land, as well as very considerably
raised.’[2475] The words ‘of course’ prepare us for the discovery that
Rennell quotes no authority and gives no reasons.
Professor Montagu Burrows,[2476] also without giving either authority
or reason, tells us that Deal ‘probably had once a haven, which was
choked up in very early times’. But choked up it was not unless
it existed; and observe that its existence is only ‘probable’. As
a matter of fact, the so-called probability is unsupported by any
evidence.[2477] The professor goes on to say that ‘the old town [of
Deal] was already separated from the sea by a considerable interval
when Henry [the Eighth] built the three castles of Deal, Sandown,
and Walmer for the protection of the coast, which had now become a
continuous stretch of steep shingly beach’. Now if, in the time of
Henry the Eighth, ‘the old town was _already_ separated from the sea by
a considerable interval,’ the inference is that it had once been quite
close to the sea; and of this there is no evidence. Was the professor
thinking of Leland,[2478] who describes ‘Deale’ as ‘half a Myle fro
the Shore of the Se, a Fisshcher Village iii. Myles or more above
Sandwic’? If so, why should he assume that because Deal in the time
of Leland, that is to say, of Henry the Eighth, was half a mile from
the sea, it had once been on the sea? The only conceivable reply to
this question would be that as Upper Deal is now more than half a mile
from the sea,[2479] and as, according to Leland, it was only half a
mile from the sea in the time of Henry, it may once have been actually
on the seashore. But Deal Castle was built by Henry; and the sea was
therefore at least as far from Upper Deal in his time as it is now. The
truth is that Leland’s ‘Myles’ were sometimes very long: he tells us
that Sandwich was ‘iii. Myles’ from Deal, and it is really six.
Dowker, in the paper which he published in 1876,[2480] maintained that
‘Deal probably did not exist in Roman times’, and that, when Caesar
landed in Britain, ‘the coast was cut back behind Deal’:[2481] that
is to say, he virtually committed himself to agreement with the view,
already stated, of Major Rennell. In the same paper he affirmed that
‘the present town of Deal is situated on a comparatively recent beach’,
and went on to say, in proof of his assertion, ‘I have evidence of
the beach at the back of Deal containing mediaeval remains.’[2482]
What the evidence was, he did not say; and what he meant by ‘the beach
at the back of Deal’, I do not know. In 1887 another paper[2483]
was published, containing a report of his views. Herein I find that
there is ‘no evidence’ of ‘a shore-line cutting far back beyond the
Deal beach’. No evidence in 1887, though in 1876 the evidence was
irrefragable.[2484]
The opinion of Stukeley,[2485] who believed that Caesar had landed
between Walmer Castle and Deal, was diametrically opposed to that of
Rennell. He maintained that Caesar’s camps must have been ‘absorpt by
the ocean, which has so long been ... wasting the land away’. ‘Even
since Henry the VIII^{ths} time,’ he continued, ‘it has carried off
the seaward esplanade of the three castles’ [of Walmer, Deal, and
Sandown].[2486] But it does not follow that in the interval which
separated the time of Caesar from the time of Henry the Eighth the
sea in the neighbourhood of Deal had been continuously gaining upon
the land. It would appear that in the last four centuries it has
alternately advanced a little and receded.[2487] In 1615, 1626, and
1627 the waves were wearing away the walls which had been erected for
the protection of the castles of Walmer and Deal.[2488] During the
latter half of the eighteenth century, however, shingle was being
rapidly thrown up along the coast between St. Margaret’s Bay and a
point which, as Mr. Elvin[2489] says, was ‘considerably to the north
of Sandown Castle’; and, although during the first thirty years of
the nineteenth century the sea was again encroaching, at all events
at Walmer, the bank of shingle between the Rifle Range at Kingsdown
and Walmer then began again to increase, while northward of Deal as
far as Sandown Castle the sea was simultaneously gaining ground. In
1885 shingle was still accumulating at Walmer Castle and also at Deal,
although it was recognized that at the latter place its movements
were variable. For some years previously, however, the shingle which
formerly protected the cliffs between St. Margaret’s and Kingsdown had
been travelling northwards past Walmer to Deal; and during the fourteen
years that followed 1885 the same process was going on: I daresay it is
going on still. At Deal, wrote Dowker in 1899,[2490] ‘the shore line
has been nearly stationary until we approach the north end of Deal,
where the ... sea had washed most of the beach away and carried it past
the Castle.’ Finally, it must be borne in mind that from various places
between Walmer and the North Foreland a great deal of shingle has been
abstracted.[2491] Still, if _The North West View of Walmer Castle_,
by S. and N. Buck, which was published in 1735, was approximately
accurate, the sea was a good deal nearer the castle then than it is
now; and the observations that were made between 1741 and 1884 show
that while in that period the sea at Sandown Castle gained 200 feet
upon the land, off Deal Castle the increase of shingle amounted to 120
feet, and off Walmer Castle to no less than 385.
The Reverend Beale Poste, a well-known antiquary of the nineteenth
century, maintained[2492] that the bank of beach upon which Deal stands
must have existed in the time of Caesar, ‘since numerous Roman coins
are found at neap tides at low water on the chalk at the edge of the
beach.’ He added that ‘when the piles for the pier were driven into
the beach in 1842, it was found in a highly concrete state, almost
like rock, denoting great antiquity’. The former statement, if it is
correct,[2493] would seem to prove that the shore-line has receded, in
other words, that the sea has on the whole gained upon the land since
the days of Caesar; the argument based upon the condition of the beach
into which the piles were driven only tends to show that the lower
stratum of the beach was old.
Quite recently a discovery has been made which ought to set the
question at rest. Romano-British interments have been unearthed
about seven hundred yards north of Walmer Castle, ‘on the low ground
... adjoining, and only on a slightly higher level than the Castle
meadows.’[2494] The spot where they lay is about two hundred and fifty
feet west of the high-water mark of ordinary tides. The discovery, as
Mr. Cumberland Woodruff remarks,[2495] proves that ‘the shore lands
[between Walmer and Deal] were protected then as now, though probably
[or rather certainly] by a much thinner line of shingle’.[2496]
The conclusion appears to be this. There is no reason to suppose that
the coast-line between Sandown Castle and Walmer Castle was very
different in Caesar’s time from that which is depicted on the Ordnance
Map; and there is positive proof that between Walmer Castle and Deal
Castle, at some period of the Roman occupation, it was nearly the same.
On the other hand, it is certain that since Caesar landed a great deal
of shingle has accumulated along this part of the coast, especially at
Walmer; and it may be inferred that the beach was less steep then than
it is now.
III. THE GOODWIN SANDS
Before we attempt to inquire what was the condition of the Goodwin
Sands in the time of Caesar, it will be well to state the relevant
facts which have been ascertained since exact observations began to be
recorded.
‘The north-eastern part of the North Goodwin,’ says the author of the
_Channel Pilot_,[2497] ‘dries in places 7 feet at low water; the South
Goodwin not more than 4 or 5 feet at any part.’
The form of the sands is altered periodically by the tides. Beale Poste
argued in 1857 that the Goodwin Sands were still growing, as ‘Kingsdown
Mark, a pile ... built in the reign of Elizabeth to show the South Sand
head, is ... of no use, the sand having now extended itself a mile
further to the southward’. Moreover, he says, it was stated in the
Report of the Commission of the Harbours of Refuge for 1845 that ‘the
Brake Sand, a branch of the Goodwin Sands in the Small Downs, had moved
_bodily inwards_ towards the shore seven hundred yards within the last
fifty years’. This, he maintains, can only mean that ‘a deposit has
taken place on the inward side of the sand ... while the outward side
has been eroded by the winds and tides’.[2498] In 1885 it was found
that ‘the former Bunthead shoal’ had ‘entirely disappeared’,[2499]
and that ‘the whole body of the South Calliper’ had ‘moved about a
mile north-eastward’. Again, it was ascertained by ‘a re-survey of
the Downs, Goodwin Sands, and adjacent coast’, executed in 1896, that
since 1887 considerable changes had taken place. ‘The Goodwin Sand,’ we
learn from this source, ‘has continued its general movement towards the
coast, and the area of drying sand has largely increased.’[2500]
The results of borings carried out at various times in the Goodwin
Sands have shown that blue clay, resting on chalk, was found at the
depths of 7, 15, 57, and 78 feet.[2501] From these data Sir Charles
Lyell[2502] concludes that the Goodwins ‘are a remnant of land, and not
“a mere accumulation of sea sand”;’ and, referring to the destructive
storm mentioned in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_[2503] as having
occurred in 1099, he conjectures that ‘the last remains of an island,
consisting, like Sheppey, of clay, may perhaps have been carried away
about that time’.
Dr. Guest[2504] holds that in Caesar’s time the Goodwin Sands did
not exist. He reminds us that, according to Somner,[2505] it was the
opinion of ‘several men of judgement’ that they had not appeared until
after the time of Earl Godwin, and, remarking that this was also the
view of Sir Thomas More, he argues that ‘we may infer that such at
that period was the opinion of educated men who had local knowledge’.
Leland,[2506] he goes on to say, ‘attributed the decay of Sandwich
to the Goodwin Sands, and as Sandwich was a flourishing port in the
fourteenth century, we may infer that it was not till the fifteenth
that the sands attained those formidable dimensions which produced
so much mischief.’ Immediately north of Sandown Castle there is, he
observes, a tract of land covered with low sand-hills, which, in
Philipot’s map of Kent, are called the ‘smale downs’,[2507] and upon
which the sea has long been encroaching. He accounts for the name
given to the roadstead by assuming that it once formed part of the
‘smale downs’, and affirms his belief that ‘the flats round Sandwich
once projected into the sea as a low ness or foreland,--probably
divided into islands, of which Lomea [an island which John Twine
asserted to have formerly existed about four miles from Thanet] was the
easternmost’. He assumes that as Lomea is not mentioned in Domesday
Book, it perished by some natural convulsion before the end of the
eleventh century, and goes on to say that ‘After the destruction of
this island, the Goodwin Sands may have been gradually accumulated,
not necessarily on the site of the island, but near it, and the Downs
just as gradually excavated’.[2508] Beale Poste[2509] also affirms
that in 1098 ‘an island named Lomea was overflowed, on which occasion
the sands are said to have been formed. This is mentioned by Giraldus
Cambrensis, and from him by Twine.... But Earl Goodwin (_sic_) died in
... 1053, and Domesday-book negatives that any extensive tract of land
was overflowed and lost, in this direction.’
Now John Twine[2510] (or Twyne) merely says that he has read about
Lomea in the works of ‘certain writers’. It was once, he says, a low
fertile island, which was submerged in consequence of a great storm,
and covered with sand, and it is now the Goodwin Sands. As for Giraldus
Cambrensis, I have searched his writings diligently, and I can find no
mention whatever therein either of Lomea[2511] or of the Goodwin Sands.
The name ‘Downs’ is easily accounted for. ‘The DOWNS,’ says the author
of the _Channel Pilot_,[2512] ‘in a general sense, implies the numerous
banks lying immediately off the coast between the South and North
Forelands ... that [anchorage] which is commonly ... known as the Downs
is off the town of Deal between Walmer Castle and the northern part of
the town,’ &c. I see no reason to doubt that the name of the roadstead
is derived from the aforesaid banks and from the sand-_dunes_ on the
shore.
Somner,[2513] remarking that, according to the common opinion, Lomea
was submerged in 1097, observes that there is no notice of such an
island either in Domesday Book or in ‘any Author whether foreign or
domestick, of any antiquity, that ever I could meet with’.
The late C. H. Pearson[2514] inferred from ‘the legend of their
formation’[2515] that the sands were ‘first remarked about the end
of the eleventh century’, and that they were ‘probably formed by
bank-currents gradually depositing sand about a shoal’.
On the other hand, S. Pritchard,[2516] the historian, so called, of
Deal, argues that the sands must have existed ‘from all time’ as
otherwise Deal and the adjoining country would inevitably have been
inundated. Why? The island, the former existence of which is assumed by
Sir Charles Lyell, would have been as good a protection as the sands;
and in the time, which was certainly anterior to the Roman invasion
of Britain, when the shingle bank had not accumulated to a sufficient
height,[2517] the very small area in the neighbourhood of Deal which is
below high-water mark may have been inundated, unless, as Dowker[2518]
and Mr. Spurrell[2519] believe, the level of the land has been
depressed since the Roman occupation.
The reader has doubtless already concluded that it is impossible to
affirm either that the Goodwin Sands existed in the time of Caesar,
or that they had not then accumulated to such a degree as to attract
attention, or that their place was occupied by an island. If the
silence of Domesday Book and, as it should seem, the absence of any
other positive testimony constitutes an argument against the hypothesis
of Sir Charles Lyell,[2520] the same argument may be advanced to show
that before the Norman Conquest the sands had not begun to appear.
Yet, as we shall see in a subsequent article, there is some reason to
believe that either sands or an island were there when Caesar invaded
Britain.[2521] Tradition, vague as it is, combined with Lyell’s
authority, disposes me to accept tentatively the latter alternative.
IV. THE SOUTH FORELAND AND THE DOVER CLIFFS
Professor Montagu Burrows[2522] affirms that ‘the space over which the
tides travel [in the Straits of Dover] must be at least two miles wider
than it was some 2,000 years ago’. This is one of the _ex cathedra_
statements in which the professor’s work abounds, and for proof of
which his amazed readers search his pages in vain. Dowker’s estimate
is more moderate: he only bids us ‘assume the Straits are now one mile
wider than when Caesar visited our shores’;[2523] but, like Professor
Burrows, he requires us to make this assumption in the dark.
In M. Vivien de St.-Martin’s great work it is stated that Cape Grisnez
‘perd en moyenne 25 centim. par an; autrement dit, il recule 25 m. par
siècle’.[2524] Assuming the accuracy of this statement, and assuming,
further, that the rate of erosion has been constant since the invasion
of Caesar, Cape Grisnez then projected seaward 489 metres, or about 534
yards further than it does now. I take for granted that the statement
is based upon exact and prolonged observation; but when did that
observation begin?[2525]
As for the South Foreland, it is certain that, as Dowker says,[2526]
it is (or at all events was in 1885 and for some years previously)
‘being gradually undermined by the sea’; but it would be a great
mistake to leap to the conclusion that this erosion has been going
on continuously since the time of Caesar. In 1850 Captain K. B.
Martin, who was harbour-master of Ramsgate, affirmed that the cliff
between Dover and the South Foreland, being protected by ‘an inclined
plane of shingle’ from the sea, had ‘preserved its contour from time
immemorial’.[2527] The phrase is somewhat vague: but the captain was a
careful observer; and we may believe him when he tells us that since
his boyhood, fifty years before the time when he wrote, there had
been no change.[2528] Why, then, were the Dover cliffs and the South
Foreland being gradually eaten away in 1876, when Dowker wrote, and in
1884? Simply because the supply of shingle had, from various causes,
been cut off.[2529] The erosion, said Mr. E. R. N. Druce, Engineer to
the Government pier at Dover, takes place ‘at no particular rate, but
falls of cliff at the points above named have taken place at intervals
for some years past ... since they have lost the protection of the
shingle at their base’. He added that the loss was ‘confined to areas
bare of shingle’, and that, so far as he could ascertain, there existed
no ‘data for determining the rate of erosion from early maps or other
documents’.[2530] It would appear, then, that Professor Burrows’s
assertion is based upon pure imagination.
When the subsidence which had taken place in the Neolithic Age was
virtually complete the sea was bordered by a narrow plain, to which
the high ground descended gradually. Erosion was at first rapid while
the waters were devouring loose talus; but when beaches had had time
to form it was of course retarded.[2531] How slow it is where the
rocks are hard is proved by the fact that the contour of a prehistoric
camp near Hastings shows that the seaward defence was formed not by
an artificial rampart but by the East Cliff.[2532] Yet Professor
Burrows asks us to believe that erosion has been as rapid in the
chalk of the South Foreland as in the soft cliffs between Flamborough
Head and the Thames.[2533] Generally speaking, as erosion proceeds,
cliffs become higher;[2534] and it is obvious that if the Channel had
been two miles wider in Caesar’s time, the Dover cliffs, if they had
existed, would have been insignificant. But since Caesar described
them as ‘precipitous heights’,[2535] and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses
of cliff’,[2536] they were evidently little lower then than now. Let
the reader ponder these things, and he will realize how monstrously
exaggerated is the estimate which assigns to the Straits of Caesar’s
time a breadth two miles less than our modern maps show.[2537]
V. DOVER HARBOUR
That a natural harbour existed at Dover in the time of Caesar is beyond
dispute. It is mentioned under the name of _Portus Dubris_ in the
_Itinerary_ of Antonine;[2538] and it was connected by a Roman road
with Canterbury and London, and also with Richborough. Napoleon the
Third[2539] affirms that it was entirely choked up about 950 A.D.; but
this is a blunder, for the harbour is mentioned in Domesday Book.[2540]
Even as late as 1582 it was stated by an engineer, named Thomas
Digges, that ‘Before the peere was builte out, there are men alyue can
remember that was no banckes or shelues of beache to be seene before
Douer,[2541] but all cleane sea betwene Arteclif [Archcliff] tower and
the castle clyffe’.[2542] Captain Martin[2543] holds that the remains
of anchors which have been dug up out of meadows in the valley prove
that the estuary was navigable as far as Crabble;[2544] and he believes
that it actually extended to Water’s End,[2545] and covered the sites
of the villages of Charlton and Buckland. Canon Puckle, however, argues
that ‘the primitive haven’ covered a space which extended barely a
quarter of a mile inland, ‘bounded by the lower half of St. James’
Street, Dolphin Lane, and Russell Street, and the east end of Dolphin
Lane,’[2546] and he states that when this area was ‘partly uncovered in
excavating for the new Russell Street gas works, quays and hawser-rings
were brought to light’. Captain Martin’s estimate, which is based
upon very uncertain data, must be regarded as an exaggeration: the
estuary may possibly have extended up to Crabble, but was certainly
not navigable so far except perhaps by coracles. Many years ago the
remains of a Roman bath were discovered on the site of St. Mary’s
church,[2547] and in 1887 a statue belonging to the period of the Roman
occupation was found ‘during excavations for the foundation of the
Carlton Club, in the Market Place’.[2548] These discoveries help to
define approximately the western limit of the harbour; and I believe
that Planche 17 of the Atlas accompanying Napoleon’s _Histoire de Jules
César_[2549] represents it with tolerable accuracy.
[Illustration: MAP OF ROMNEY MARSH PROPER and the parts adjacent
Reproduced from the map facing page liii of T. Lewin’s “Invasion of
Britain by Julius Cæsar,” 2nd. Edit. Showing what lands would have
been covered by the sea at high water (medium spring tides) before the
construction of the Rhee Wall. The figures denote the depth in feet,
according to levels taken by J. Elliott, of the present surface below
the high-water mark of Spring Tides.
ROMNEYMARSH
as (according to T. Lewin’s final view) It was certainly in the
TIME OF THE SAXONS
probably in the
TIME OF THE ROMANS
and perhaps in the
TIME OF THE BRITONS]
VI. BETWEEN DOVER AND SANDGATE
During the last three centuries, at all events, the coast between
Sandgate and Dover has undergone considerable changes. Large quantities
of stone have been removed from the Folkestone cliffs; and landslips
have occurred at Shakespeare’s Cliff, between Folkestone and Sandgate,
and behind East Wear Bay.[2550] It would be useless, however, for our
purpose, to describe these changes in detail; for they do not affect
the topographical questions that belong to the history of Caesar’s
invasions of Britain. Excepting the disappearance of the little
haven that once existed at Folkestone, the general character of this
section of the coast was much the same in 55 B.C. as to-day. It may
be, however, that the aspect of the high ground above East Wear Bay
was different. Between the cliffs and the heights which rise about
a quarter of a mile to the north of them there is a wild and broken
plateau, called the Warren, through which the railway runs. Referring
to this, William Phillips, a geologist of some repute, wrote in 1821,
‘The cliff, bounding this ruin towards the sea, is, from its position,
not _in situ_; and it is equally clear that the enormous masses of
which it is composed, have fallen forward [probably by ‘repeated
falls’] from near the summit of the cliff _in situ_.’[2551] When these
convulsions began to transform the landscape cannot, as far as I know,
be ascertained.
VII. ROMNEY MARSH
Between Hythe and Dungeness, on the other hand, there has been complete
transformation. There, within the brief span of historical time, wind,
tide, and river, and finally the labour of man, have wrought changes as
remarkable as those that in other regions required the lapse of ages
which the imagination fails to conceive. The antiquary who walks from
Westenhanger Station to the brow of Lympne Hill, and looks out over the
vast field of shingle that extends seaward, and, on his left, towards
Hythe, and then over the broad level of the marsh that stretches away
on his right between the Wealden upland and Dymchurch Wall, will easily
picture to himself the scene that once was there.
1. Before we attempt to construct a map which may represent the
coast-line between Sandgate and Dungeness, as it was in the time
of Caesar, it will be well to state those relevant facts which are
accepted by all geographers. There was a time when the area of Romney
Marsh was covered by a bay. At a later epoch the marsh was fringed by
a bar of shingle, which extended from Winchelsea to a point nearly
opposite Shorncliffe. Between West Hythe and Shorncliffe streams
flowed down from the hills, gradually forced an opening in the shingle
opposite Hythe, through which the sea entered, and thus formed Hythe
harbour, which, after remaining open for many centuries, was finally
choked up about 300 years ago. For some time after the marsh became
habitable the shingle protected it from the sea on the south, but
gradually was so diminished that it became necessary to construct a
sea wall. The river Rother debouched at some point within the area
of Romney Marsh. During the Roman occupation of Britain there was a
harbour called the Portus Lemanis, which has been located by one writer
at Romney and by others at Lympne, while some have identified it with
Hythe Haven. West of West Hythe Oaks, the marsh ‘is a rich mould ...
while all to the east, as far as Sandgate, is (with the exception of a
narrow strip to the south and east of Hythe, between the sea-beach and
the hills) one vast bed of shingle’.[2552]
2. The whole of Romney Marsh, properly so called,[2553] is even now
below the level of high water at spring tides. The hills which form its
northern boundary have themselves changed since the time when the waves
broke against their base. In the course of ages they have lost their
original sharpness of outline, and, as we learn from the geologist who
has described the formation of the Weald, have been ‘worn down into
undulating ground’;[2554] and nearly 200 years ago a local observer
described how, after an unusually wet season, Lympne Hill had been
completely transformed, in a single night, by a landslip.[2555] But
these changes are insignificant in comparison with that by which the
old Bay of Appledore has become a fertile pasture. Of what material
is this land composed? According to the late Thomas Lewin, it is
‘absolutely and exclusively a sea deposit’; and, in proof of this
assertion, he pointed to ‘the marine shells which pervade the whole
mass’.[2556] But it needs little acumen to see that the presence of
marine shells in the marsh does not justify Lewin in using the words
‘absolutely and exclusively’; and the late Colonel George Greenwood
maintained that the marsh had been formed by material brought down from
the Weald by ‘the aqueous erosion of the Rother’.[2557] As a matter of
fact, it was formed by the combined action of river and sea.[2558] But
unless and until a series of borings are systematically made, it will
be impossible to describe the recent strata with precision.[2559]
According to Topley, ‘The cause of the original formation of Romney
Marsh is altogether unknown. It is usually attributed to “the meeting
of the tides”; but as this takes place over a rather wide area, and
as shingle beaches and alluvial flats occur where no tides meet, the
explanation is not altogether satisfactory.’[2560] The well-known
geologist, F. Drew, explains that as soon as the bay had become
so shallow from the accumulation of silt that its bed was exposed
at low water, the sediment carried down by the Rother began to be
deposited on the surface. Like Topley, he confesses that how the silt
had accumulated is ‘not quite clear’; and he thinks that ‘the newly
formed surface’ may have been ‘actually upheaved by oscillation of
level, forming a plain well raised above the level of the sea’,[2561]
which, however, before the historic period, must have suffered a
subsidence.[2562] This supposition was based upon the fact that trees
are found near Appledore a few feet below the surface, which, if they
are _in situ_, must have grown at a time when the marsh was above the
level of the sea, and were perhaps contemporaneous with the submerged
forests of Devonshire and Cornwall.[2563] Some authorities, however, as
we shall presently see, hold[2564] that they were drifted into their
present position.
The late James Elliott, who in the middle of the nineteenth century
was engineer of Dymchurch Wall, diligently investigated the history
of the marsh, and added much to our knowledge. While the marsh was
being formed it was gradually closed by a bar of shingle, composed
of pebbles which had been partly broken off from the cliffs on the
south-west, partly carried down by rivers,[2565] and had been driven
up the Channel by the prevailing winds.[2566] Elliott remarks that
‘the result of such a protection from the open sea would be, that all
matter brought down by the hills would rest nearly where it was first
deposited, and, in process of time, dry land, at certain states of the
tide, would appear’; and that, on the ebb of every tide, ‘all the water
in the bay gradually receded towards the hills, and ... made its exit
at the eastern end of the shingle bank.’[2567] He concludes that the
shingle extended rapidly until it reached the eastern end of what is
now Dymchurch Wall, but that its progress thenceforward was extremely
slow. Meanwhile the sediment deposited by the sea was gradually raising
the surface of the marsh.[2568] Elliott, whose statements and opinions
were incorporated by Lewin in his book on the invasions of Caesar,
affirms that the advancing shingle spit was ‘intersected only by a
channel between Lydd and Romney’, which was ‘the mouth of the estuary
which lay behind the shingle’;[2569] but Lewin, in a later article on
the _Portus Lemanis_,[2570] appears to have abandoned this view, for
he there implies that the spit was continuous. At some period which
preceded the erection of the Rhee Wall, that is to say, the first
enclosure or ‘inning’ of the marsh, it would appear to have reached the
foot of the hills at West Hythe Oaks.[2571] The result, according to
Lewin, was that the marsh was temporarily enclosed. But, he says, ‘this
bar to the exit of waters from the marsh could not long continue, for,
though the sea was excluded, the Limen [that is to say, the Rother]
... and twenty smaller streams were continually increasing the volume
of water within the marsh, and ... the shingle spit was burst asunder
between Romney and Lydd.’ Thus, if Lewin’s final view is correct, the
sea again found an entrance on the west of Romney, and continued to
overflow the marsh at high tide until it was finally shut out by the
erection of the Rhee Wall. West Hythe Oaks was not the final goal of
the shingle spit. For a long period, as Lewin remarks, ‘the shingle
from the west continued to advance ... and for a time without again
touching the hills;’ but at length the advancing spit ‘was again
wrested aside and dashed against the hills at Hythe, between the
present barracks and the more eastern of the two Hythe bridges over
the canal’. According to Elliott, however, whose view was adopted by
Lewin in the Appendix to his book on the invasion of Britain by Caesar,
the shingle was not ‘dashed against the hills at Hythe’, but opposite
Shorncliffe. Anyhow the final result was that from the eastern end of
what is now Dymchurch Wall to a point nearly opposite Shorncliffe there
extended an irregular tract of shingle, broken only opposite Hythe by
an opening, which led to a narrow harbour extending along the foot of
the hills. This opening was due to the streams which flowed down from
the hills and found a vent by bursting the barrier of shingle, and
the scour of which kept the harbour open until, about three hundred
years ago, it was finally choked up. According to Elliott, the western
extremity of this harbour was at West Hythe Oaks; according to Lewin’s
final view at Hythe itself. Between Dymchurch and Hythe the shingle
formed a broad field; but the section between Hythe and Shorncliffe,
which formed the southern boundary of Hythe harbour, was long and
narrow. The whole tract was ‘perfectly flat and _above high-water
mark_’; and Elliott argues that it extended much further seaward in
Caesar’s time than it does now, because, while the supply of shingle
drifted from the south-west was cut off by the gradual elongation of
Dungeness, the eastward movement of the shingle along the fringe of the
marsh still went on.[2572] This argument he supports by a comparison
of the Ordnance Survey map executed in 1817 with an old map of the
marsh, probably made about the year 1550, which is in the Cottonian
MSS.[2573] at the British Museum. Assuming the accuracy of the old map,
it would appear that in the 267 years the shingle had receded about
two furlongs; and Elliott concluded that in Caesar’s time the coast
line at Hythe must have been nearly a mile from the hills. Having had
considerable experience in the handling of old maps, I so far differ
from Elliott that I am rather disposed to assume the inaccuracy of the
one on which he relies; but he is quite justified in concluding that
the coast line was much further from the Hythe hills in 55 B.C. than
now.[2574]
Elliott’s account of the formation of the Marsh has, however, been
recently disputed in a paper by George Dowker,[2575] which, although
it swarms with bibliographical and historical mistakes,[2576] cannot
safely be ignored. The author begins by endeavouring to show that
the Rother originally entered the sea at Romney; that it gradually
raised both its bed and its banks by depositing sediment; and that
‘the Rhee Wall was, in the first place, a natural river-bank’--the
bank of the Rother--‘subsequently raised and altered by the Barons of
the Cinque Port of Romney’,[2577] but (if I have grasped his meaning,
which is often obscure) only between Snargate and Warehorn.[2578] He
tells us that ‘The sequence of changes in the Marsh may be summarized
as follows:--Firstly, a shallow bay existed in a depression in the
underlying rocks. Into this bay the waters of the Rother, Tillingham,
and Brede, on their way to their outlet near Romney, deposited their
silt, so that the northern half of the Marsh had become dry land
previous to the time of the Romans. Around this bay were formed
sand-hills. In time of flood the waters of the river that ran out at
Romney overflowed, and, depositing silt, raised the banks on either
side. A slight depression of the land commenced, and has continued.
Beaches accumulated, especially between Romney and Hythe, and between
Romney and Winchelsea. Romney probably formed a promontory near
Dymchurch, near where the ancient river, then called the Limen,
discharged its waters.’[2579] He explains that originally the sea was
excluded from the marsh by sand-hills, and that ‘the sand-hills appear
to have been formed at a period before the accumulation of the beaches
had commenced, since the beach effectually stops the formation of
sand-hills’.[2580] No sand-hills now exist in the marsh, except between
Rye and Lydd, near New Romney, and near West Hythe; but, says Dowker,
‘We may connect these sand-hills by a hypothetical line extending
from Rye to Hythe.’[2581] The reason which he gives for believing
that there has been a depression of the land since the time of the
Romans is that he has found evidences of post-Roman subsidence in ‘the
neighbourhood of Richborough, Reculvers, and the Swale marshes of
Sittingbourne’.[2582]
Now Dowker gives no sufficient reason for refusing to accept Elliott’s
view (which he travesties) that the sea once found its way over the
marsh through a gap between the advancing shingle and the hills,
and also through a break in the shingle spit,--in other words, for
maintaining that the marsh had become dry land before the shingle
beach was formed. The notion that the Rhee Wall was, ‘in the first
place, a natural river-bank’ is simply fantastic. To begin with,
its direction is almost a straight line, whereas it is well known
that in open plains, where the slope is slight, rivers invariably
pursue tortuous courses.[2583] Along what is now called the Rhee Wall
runs the high road from Appledore to New Romney. It occupies what
was formerly a channel embanked on either side; and this channel
provided an outlet for the waters of the Rother, whose actual mouth
was at Appledore.[2584] As Elliott says, ‘In erecting this wall it
became necessary to provide some exit for the waters from the hills
as well as for the drainage of the land enclosed. This was done by
cutting a channel parallel with the wall from the pool or lake at the
_embouchure_ of the river Limene at Appledore to the sea at Romney ...
the wall was necessary to be continued across this lake until it met
the high land at Appledore.’[2585] Again, I cannot understand why,
if Romney Marsh Proper became dry land before the time of the Romans
without being artificially enclosed, Walland Marsh and Guildford Marsh,
which lie west and south of the Rhee Wall, should still have been
periodically overflowed by the sea; nor is it clear how in that case
the Rother could have excavated its hypothetical channel along the line
of the Rhee Wall. Lastly, it is impossible, on Dowker’s theory, to
locate the Portus Lemanis. He denies that it was at Lympne: it could
not, on his theory, have been at Hythe or at West Hythe, for he implies
that the shingle beach, behind which lay the historic Hythe Haven, did
not yet exist;[2586] and Romney--the only other possible site--is, as I
shall afterwards show, out of the question.
I am not concerned to dispute Dowker’s theory that the sea was excluded
from the marsh on the south by sand-hills before the shingle beach was
formed, though the mere presence of patches of blown sand near West
Hythe and near Romney does not justify him in connecting them by ‘a
hypothetical line extending from Rye to Hythe’; nor does he offer any
theory to account for the disappearance of this hypothetical line after
it began to be protected by a barrier of shingle. The important point
is that the fact of the erection of the Rhee Wall proves that before it
existed Romney Marsh Proper was liable to be flooded by high tides.
3. It has long been a vexed question where, in the time of Caesar,
and during the Roman occupation of Britain, the Rother discharged
itself. Hasted[2587] affirms that the bed of the river ‘may yet very
easily be traced ... under the hills from _West Hythe_ to Appledore’.
Beale Poste,[2588] who agrees with him, says that, according to the
_Itinerary_ of Antonine, the port of the river Lemanis, which he
identifies with the Rother, was the Portus Lemanis; that, according
to Somner, ancient records mention ‘the Lymne branch of the Rother
as still in existence in ... 820 at ... Warehorne, at about ...
three miles from the bend of our river towards Lymne’; and that ‘we
find the name Portus Limneus in Ethelwerd’s _Chronicle_, iv, 3, in
his annals of ... 893, which seems to imply the “Port of the river
Lemanis”.’ Holloway,[2589] the historian of Romney Marsh, after saying,
like Hasted, that ‘traces of the ancient bed of a river are still
visible under the foot of the Kentish cliffs’, adds that ‘our ancient
chroniclers, according to Lambarde, called this same place “Limene
Mouthe”, and which is interpreted by Leland to betoken the mouth of
the river Rother’. Drew[2590] holds that the river Limen, or, as it is
called by the anonymous geographer of Ravenna, Lemana,[2591] must in
the ninth century have flowed past Sandtun, ‘the patch of Blown Sand
between West Hythe and Butter’s (or Botolph’s) Bridge,’ because in a
charter of the year 833 allusion is made to ‘a piece of land at Sandtun
that was bounded on the south by the river Limen’. Finally, Mr. F. P.
Gulliver thinks it probable that the Rother had, a thousand years ago,
two ‘main distributaries’, one of which flowed out ‘through an inlet in
the bar south-west of Hythe’.[2592]
Hasted’s statement is quite incorrect. Elliott, who knew every inch of
Romney Marsh, positively affirms that ‘between Lymne and Appledore ...
not the slightest trace of any river remains’;[2593] and his statement
is confirmed by Topley.[2594] Dowker[2595] also observes that if the
Rother had ever flowed out near Hythe, ‘it must have occupied the
space where the Military Canal exists, in which case it has left no
historical or other trace behind, and against such a river the Ree
Wall could have been no protection.’ Moreover, if there is any force
in the argument of Drew, the river flowed south of the blown sand near
Butter’s Bridge, that is to say, a good mile from the hills.[2596]
Elliott accounts for the belief that the river entered the sea near
Lympne by the fact that a depression exists along the foot of the
hills, ‘many taking that to be the river which in truth was only an
estuary ... and which would only assume something of the character of
a river at low water.’[2597] In reply to Beale Poste, it is sufficient
to remark that the _Itinerary_ does _not_ say that the port of the
river Lemanis (or rather Lemana) was the Portus Lemanis, nor does it
even mention the river: it simply gives the distance of the Portus
Lemanis from Durovernum, or Canterbury.[2598] Beale Poste misquotes
Somner, who does not say a single word about ‘the Lymne branch of the
Rother’.[2599] It is quite true that we find the words _portu Limneo_
in the Chronicle of Ethelwerd;[2600] but it is not easy to see how
these words convey any more information about the geographical position
of the port than the words _portus Lemanis_. As to Holloway’s argument,
all that Lambarde[2601] says is that Robert Talbot,[2602] ‘a man of
our time,’ was of opinion that Shipway, near West Hythe, was so called
‘because it lay in the way to the Haven where the ships were woont to
ride.[2603] And that haven,’ adds Lambarde, ‘taketh hee to be the same
which ... is called ... of Antoninus _Limanis_, of our chroniclers
Limene Mouth, and interpreted by Leland to betoken the mouth of the
river of Rother.’ The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ states distinctly that
the mouth of the Limen was at Appledore;[2604] and Leland was far
too acute to be duped by the notion that it had ever been at Lympne:
‘where the Ryver _Limene_ should be,’ he says, ‘I can not tel, except
yt should be that that cummeth above Appledor ... and that ys Cowrs ys
now changed.’[2605] With regard to Drew’s argument, allusion is made in
two charters[2606] to ‘a piece of land at Sandtun, that was bounded on
the south by the river Limen’, namely, a charter of King Aethilberht of
Kent, dated February 20, 732, and a charter of King Ecgberht of Kent,
dated 833. In the latter it is stated that there were salt-pans ‘in
the same place’, namely at Sandtun;[2607] and in both the boundaries
of the land are defined in almost identical terms,--‘the boundaries
of this piece of land are, on the east the King’s land; on the south
the river called the Limen; on the west and on the north the Hudan
Fleot.’[2608] That Sandtun was the patch of blown sand between West
Hythe and Botolph’s Bridge is a pure assumption on the part of Drew.
Furthermore, he would have found it difficult to indicate the position
of ‘the King’s land’ on the east, seeing that on the east, if the Limen
debouched opposite Lympne, there was only shingle or sea. Finally, it
is certain that before 833 Romney Marsh Proper had been enclosed;
and how a river could have flowed along the north of the marsh across
the Rhee Wall, or how, if it had worked this miracle, it should have
subsequently disappeared without leaving any trace of its existence,
is more than I can understand.[2609] At all events the level of the
marsh, which is 6 feet 6 inches lower at Appledore Dowles than at West
Hythe Oaks, proves that, even assuming the former existence of such a
river, centuries must have elapsed from the time when it ceased to flow
beneath the hills to the time when the shingle closed the marsh at West
Hythe Oaks.[2610]
Elliott[2611] concluded, ‘from several careful surveys of the whole
district,’ that the mouth of the Limen was at Appledore, where it
entered the estuary; and, as Roach Smith[2612] truly remarks, this
conclusion is confirmed by the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. ‘We now,’ says
Elliott,[2613] ‘find the whole country about the mouth of the Limene,
at Appledore, in a circuit of about a mile (and at no other part),
at a few feet under the present surface, covered with trees of the
oak, alder, and birch ... evidently, from their position, having been
drifted from a distance, and deposited where now found.’ Lewin[2614]
points out that this ‘is the very lowest part of the marsh’; and he
holds that ‘the presence of oak trees ... decides that the trees are
not _in situ_,[2615] for ... there is something in the Marsh mould
uncongenial to the oak’. The course of the river, Elliott tells us, is
‘still traceable between Appledore and the Isle of Oxney, and thence
into the estuary, about half a mile south of Appledore’. Once, as we
have seen, according to Elliott, the estuary found an exit opposite
Lympne: when this was closed, there remained only the channel between
Romney and Lydd.[2616]
4. It is now necessary to inquire what was the geographical position of
the Portus Lemanis. The reader will, of course, see that this question
is quite distinct from that which he has just been considering. Whether
the Rother ever flowed along the north of the marsh or not, everybody
admits that the sea once had access there even at low tide; and the
question is whether the Portus Lemanis was this estuary, or rather that
part of it which lay below Lympne Hill. This is the generally accepted
view.[2617] In support of it Appach[2618] argues as follows:--First,
the name ‘Lympne’ is obviously a corruption of _Lemanis_, and Leland
found a tradition existing that Lympne had once been a port. Secondly,
at Lympne, Stone Street, the Roman road from Canterbury, ‘terminates
abruptly,’ and ‘no trace whatever of its continuance southward into
the marsh can be discovered’. ‘For what reason,’ asks Appach, ‘could
this road have been made if Lympne was not then a port?’ He goes on
to observe that, according to the _Itinerary_ of Antonine, ‘Portus
Lemanis was one stage distant from Canterbury;’ that, besides Stone
Street, the only Roman roads which converged at Canterbury were those
which led to Reculver, Richborough, and Dover; and therefore that the
Portus Lemanis must have been situated on Stone Street, and obviously
at its termination. Thirdly, according to the _Itinerary_, the distance
from Canterbury to the Portus Lemanis was 16 Roman miles, or about
25,872 yards;[2619] and the actual distance from ‘the margin of the
marsh below Lympne measured along the Stone Street to the point where
all the Roman roads at Canterbury would converge, if produced, is
fifteen statute miles’, or 26,400 yards.[2620] Fourthly, the existence
of Stutfall Castle proves that the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne; and,
moreover, the castle ‘had no southern wall because the sea came up to
the foot of the fortifications’. Fifthly, in the _Table of Peutinger_,
Lemanis is ‘marked with a castle, like Richborough and Dover’.
These arguments may, at first sight, appear conclusive: in reality
they are worthless. (1) Leland[2621] does not mention any tradition
about the port: he simply asserts that ‘Lymme Hill or Lyme was sumtyme
a famose Haven, and good for Shyppes that might cum to the Foote of
the Hille’. Lambarde,[2622] it is true, says that there was in his
time a tradition that Shipway was so called because ‘it lay in the
way to the Haven where the ships were woont to ride’; and he calls
this tradition ‘the report of the countrie people, who hold faste the
same opinion which they have by tradition receaved from their Elders’.
Also he himself asserts that ‘at the first, ships were accustomed to
discharge at Lymme’. But Shipway ‘lay in the way’ to West Hythe, not to
Lympne. As for the alleged tradition, everything depends upon the date
of its origin; and this cannot be ascertained. The name ‘Lympne’ may
be connected with _Lemanis_; but this does not prove that the Portus
Lemanis was at the foot of the heights on which Lympne stands: if it
had been east of Stutfall Castle, and the nearest town in Roman times
or later had been on the site of Lympne, the origin of the name would
be perfectly clear. (2) Appach insists that Stone Street ‘terminates
abruptly’ at Lympne; but, as a matter of fact, a road diverges to the
right from the straight course of Stone Street at New Inn Green, and
terminates just north of Stutfall Castle.[2623] Mr. Thurston of Ashford
points out that if the course of Stone Street were continued in a
straight line from New Inn Green, it ‘would point to the Shipway [or
Shepway] Cross, and continue down the present roadway which descends
the hill to West Hythe; and’, he adds, ‘this is the only place along
the hill where a roadway could possibly descend it in a straight line,
and I believe it was naturally selected as the road to the ships or
port.’[2624] (3) As for the argument based upon the distance given
in the _Itinerary_ from Canterbury to the Portus Lemanis, a moment’s
reflection will convince any reader who uses his map that it holds good
for the theory that the Portus Lemanis was at West Hythe as well as for
the view which Appach defends. (4) The situation of Stutfall Castle
may no doubt be used as an argument to prove that the Portus Lemanis
was at Lympne: but the castle is barely a mile and a half from West
Hythe Oaks, which, as we shall presently see, was in all probability
the western end of the port; and, although it was believed when Appach
wrote that the castle had no southern wall, excavation has since proved
that it had.[2625] Appach’s last argument depends, like the one which
precedes it, upon the assumption that Stutfall Castle would have been
useless unless it had stood in _immediate proximity_ to the Portus
Lemanis. What if Lemanis was ‘marked with a castle’? Why should not the
castle have protected the neighbouring part of ‘the Saxon shore’ and a
harbour at West Hythe?
The late antiquary, W. H. Black,[2626] remarked further, that the
discovery of a Roman altar in Stutfall Castle, erected by the ‘admiral
of the British fleet’ (_praefectus classis Britannicae_), proves that
the Portus Lemanis was at Lympne; and, observing that ‘the Saxon
Chronicle tells us of the arrival of a fleet of Danes at “Limene
mouth”’, he argues that ‘it is impossible to deny the identity of
Lymne with that name’. But, whatever may be the etymological connexion
between _Lympne_ and _Limene_, it has been shown already that according
to the very chronicle which Black cites, the mouth of the Limen was
at Appledore;[2627] and the discovery of the Roman altar is perfectly
consistent with the view that the harbour which was the admiral’s naval
base was near West Hythe.
Elliott originally held that the Portus Lemanis was the estuary at
Lympne;[2628] and his opinion was quoted by superficial writers in
support of this view several years after he had himself discarded it.
For he finally came to the conclusion that, even as early as Caesar’s
time, there was no harbour at Lympne.[2629] He tells us that ‘recent
investigations in taking a series of levels over the whole of Romney
Marsh have established the fact that the estuary must have been closed
at the eastern extremity (where the Portus Lemanis is commonly looked
for) many centuries before the sea was shut out from ... Romney Marsh
Proper; for at the extreme eastern end of Romney Marsh, by Hythe
Oaks, the surface of the land is 18 inches higher than it is a mile
westward, a state of things that could not have existed had there been
any outlet towards the east after the closing of the Marsh westward.
The inset and outset of the tides twice a day to and from the estuary
would have counteracted the silting, and produced not an elevation,
but a depression of the surface. There is ... a regular and continuous
fall of the land next the hills, from Hythe Oaks into Appledore Dowles
... the lowest part of the Marsh being 6 feet 6 inches lower than
the land at Hythe Oaks. There could have been no silting after the
inclosure of the Marsh, and the present level is such as it was when
the Marsh was reclaimed.... The barrier which sealed up the eastern
mouth of the estuary was the accumulation of shingle from the west, and
(_sic_) which long before the historic period had reached the hills
at Hythe Oaks. If Romney Marsh, at the foot of the castrum [Stutfall
Castle], was dry land at that time [A.D. 368-9, when Theodosius[2630]
was in Britain] and occupied by the Romans (as we know to have been
the case), Stutfall could not have been the “Portus Lemanis” ... as it
was not accessible from the sea, and lay a mile and a half at least
from it. The sea could not have flowed there without putting the whole
of Romney Marsh Proper under water to the depth of eight or ten feet
every springtide.’ Similarly, Lewin[2631] states, on the authority of
Elliott, that ‘the greater elevation of the soil towards the east of
Romney Marsh Proper can be only accounted for by the fact that when
the shingle “full” had been thrown quite across the Marsh at West Oaks
... the sea still entered from the west, and that, thenceforth, the
process of silting went on for many centuries ... most rapidly towards
the east, where the water was tranquil, and less rapidly towards the
[site of the subsequently erected] Rhee Wall, in which direction was
the scour of the current’.
‘Many centuries’ is a vague expression; but for ‘many’ substitute
‘three’, and, even for the time of Caesar, the argument still holds
good,--unless Elliott’s theory of the formation of the marsh is to be
rejected.
But there are writers whom Elliott’s reasoning (if indeed they have
considered it) leaves unconvinced. According to Mr. George E. Fox, it
has been proved by excavation that the existing _castellum_ at Stutfall
is not earlier than the time of Constantine;[2632] but Sir Victor
Horsley, while confirming this statement, tells us that he has himself
found ‘in the foundation of the chief gate an altar ... marked with
barnacles, having been clearly at one time under the sea’; and from
this he infers that an earlier fort was ‘overwhelmed by an incursion
of the sea over Romney level’. Sir Victor also tells us that he has
found ‘in the concrete boulder formation of the south wall ... a coin
of Maximinus, who flourished 237 A.D.’, and ‘at the foot of the wall
on the inner side, a Gaulish coin of Tetricus the elder, of a date
about 260, and finally in the black soil of the camp, i.e. in the
most recent and superficial layers, numerous coins of the Constantine
family’.[2633]
I do not know whether Sir Victor Horsley concludes from these
discoveries that there was a harbour at Lympne when the earlier
hypothetical _castellum_ at Stutfall was destroyed; but at all events
that is the opinion of Mr. Fox. But the ‘incursion of the sea’ which
Sir Victor Horsley believes to have overwhelmed the original fort, if
it was not caused by an abnormally high tide rushing in between Romney
and Lydd before the erection of the Rhee Wall, may have been due to a
similar tide which burst the bar of shingle between Dymchurch and West
Hythe. Even after the marsh had been artificially enclosed, such floods
occurred. Stukeley[2634] tells us that ‘George Hunt, an old man, living
in the farm-house ... says, once the sea-bank broke, and his house with
all the adjacent marshes was floated’,[2635] &c.
Lewin maintained that the Portus Lemanis was neither at Lympne nor at
West Hythe, but at Hythe. This, it should be noted, was the conclusion
at which he finally arrived:[2636] when he wrote his book on the
invasion of Julius Caesar, he held that in 55 B.C. there was a port at
Lympne, although in the Appendix to that book he discarded this view,
and argued that the only port was a pool harbour extending behind a
shingle spit from West Hythe Oaks to a point opposite Shorncliffe.
His final view, as we have already seen,[2637] was that this harbour
extended no further westward than Hythe itself: but in giving utterance
to this opinion he did not explain why he had abandoned the one which
preceded it, and indeed made no allusion to it at all.
He states that ‘in the course of ages’, after the shingle had reached
West Hythe Oaks, it ‘was again wrested aside and dashed against the
hills at Hythe, between the present barracks and the more eastern of
the two Hythe bridges over the canal’. He goes on to say that ‘the
part between Hythe Oaks and Hythe (now Duck Marsh) was thus barred
from the sea, and became a lake into which flowed the rivulet called
Slabrook and other springs, and these waters accumulating forced their
way back at Hythe Oaks, and there opened a way for themselves ...
into the estuary in the west; but, as the flood was not considerable,
the outlet was of no great breadth. The shingle spit ... was again
carried along eastward until it reached Shorncliffe.... Between Hythe
and Shorncliffe, however, was left behind (i.e. north of) the spit, a
triangular space, into which flowed two streams ... one from Saltwood
and the other called Seabrook, and the waters within this spit were
gradually swollen, until they forced a passage through the shingle, at
a point near the end of the elm avenue at Hythe.’ The change which his
opinion underwent will be at once apparent to any one who compares the
map which Elliott constructed for _The Invasion of Britain by Julius
Caesar_ (facing page liii) with that which accompanies the article in
the fortieth volume of _Archaeologia_[2638] (facing page 369). Lewin
argues that it was so easy to exclude the sea from Duck Marsh that
‘probably the inclosure was made by the Britons before the arrival of
the Romans. On the south-east,’ he explains, ‘the shingle bank was
continuous up to the hills ... on the west the sea entered only from
the marsh at the foot of the hills by a narrow channel; and all that
was required was a short dam at this point between the shingle bed
and the hills.’ The remains of this dam, Lewin observes, are ‘still
distinguishable ... at Hythe Oaks, but the part next the hills has been
swept away by the military canal. This partial inclosure, prior to the
inclosure of Romney Marsh, accounts for a fact otherwise inexplicable,
viz. that Duck Marsh is not within the jurisdiction of Romney
Marsh.’[2639]
Perhaps. But the date of the construction of the dam is not known.
May it not have been made after, or simultaneously with, the erection
of the Rhee Wall, to secure Romney Marsh against all possibility of
inundation, not to protect Duck Marsh, which, according to Lewin’s
earlier view, was originally overflowed by Hythe harbour? In other
words, is it not possible that when the dam was made Hythe harbour
extended westward as far as West Hythe Oaks? This, as I have already
said, was not merely Lewin’s original view: it was also the view which
Elliott, his friend and adviser, retained _after_ the publication of
the article in _Archaeologia_. At all events this view finds expression
in a map which Elliott prepared for Furley’s _History of the Weald
of Kent_, which was not published until 1871, five years after the
appearance of Lewin’s article. That being the case, and considering
that Lewin did not explain the reasons which led him to change his
opinion, I am unable to follow him.
In support of the theory that the Portus Lemanis was at Hythe Lewin
argues, first, that Stone Street terminated at West Hythe; secondly,
that the port could not have been at West Hythe; otherwise ‘_the whole
of West Hythe ... would have been deluged_’. ‘The very name,’ he adds,
‘shows that Hythe was the principal town, and West Hythe an accretion
to it.’ Thirdly, he affirms that Roman remains have been found at
Hythe; and, fourthly, that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe. He
also bases an argument upon the itinerary of Richard of Cirencester,
which, as every scholar now knows, is a forgery.[2640]
Stone Street does terminate, as Lewin says, at West Hythe; but the
fact goes to prove that it gave access to a harbour which was at West
Hythe.[2641] Granting that West Hythe would have been ‘deluged’ if the
port had been there, what then? Why should it not have been? Lewin does
not explain what he means by ‘the whole of West Hythe’; and, in default
of this explanation, it is impossible to understand his argument.[2642]
He himself, as we have seen, in his book on the invasion of Britain
by Julius Caesar makes the port extend westward as far as West Hythe
Oaks; and Black shows that, so far from its being true that West Hythe
is merely an ‘accretion’ of Hythe, Hythe is merely East Hythe, and
that it is so called in Ogilby’s _Britannia_.[2643] The discovery of
Roman remains at Hythe does not prove that Hythe was the Portus Lemanis
any more than the discovery of Roman remains at Dymchurch proves that
the Portus Lemanis was there. Or rather, the discovery does not prove
that the Portus Lemanis extended no further westward than Hythe; for
I freely admit that it extended in front of and to the east of it. It
is not proved that a branch from Stone Street led to Hythe;[2644] and
if there was such a branch, the fact does not prove that the harbour
did not extend as far as West Hythe Oaks. Finally, Black points out
that, whereas the distance of Lympne (and, he might have added, of West
Hythe) from Canterbury corresponds with that of the Portus Lemanis from
Durovernum, as given in the _Itinerary_ of Antonine, the distance of
Hythe by road from the same place is two miles further.[2645]
5. The first step taken for the enclosure of Romney Marsh was the
erection of the Rhee Wall. By whom and at what date this work was
executed is not certainly known. It is generally attributed to the
Romans; but Lewin[2646] assures us that Mr. Smiles, in his _Lives of
the Engineers_, ‘expresses an opinion that the Marsh was reclaimed by
the Belgae.’ What Mr. Smiles[2647] really says is that ‘the reclamation
of this tract is supposed to be due to the Frisians’; and he does not
tell us by whom the supposition is entertained, or on what grounds it
is based. Lewin himself, asking whether [Appledore] ‘Dowles’ is not
derived from the Celtic word _dol_, says that ‘if a part of Romney
Marsh was named by the Ancient Britons, the marsh itself must have
been reclaimed by them’.[2648] From the same word Appach[2649] draws
precisely the opposite inference. ‘Apuldore Dowles,’ he says, ‘appears
to be allied to the Welsh _dol_, a bend. If so, it would mean a bend
or curve, and so a recess or bay; and Apuldore Dowles would mean the
bay of Apuldore.’ Whatever may be the value of this argument, the name
‘Apuldore Dowles,’ does not go to prove that Romney Marsh was ‘inned’
by the Britons; for, as Appach[2650] truly remarks, there is no other
local name in Romney Marsh Proper which shows any trace of a Celtic
derivation.
Mr. W. A. S. Robertson,[2651] on the other hand, states, on the
authority of Professor Skeat, that ‘Rumenea’, the name by which,
according to Lambarde,[2652] Romney was known to the Saxons, is
compounded of the Gaelic word _ruimen_ (marsh) and the Saxon affix
_ea_ (river); and he concludes that ‘before the Roman occupation there
was in this great estuary sufficient land, uncovered by water, to be
denominated ... _Rum_ or _Ruimen_’. Again, arguing that the καινος
λιμην, or ‘new harbour’, mentioned by Ptolemy,[2653] was at Romney, he
says that ‘if it was called into existence by ... the Rhee Wall, it
follows that the Rhee Wall’ was ‘probably formed at least as early as
the first century of the Christian era’.
If the ‘new harbour’ was at Romney! There is not the slightest
evidence that it was there.[2654] As for the word _ruimen_, how can
Mr. Robertson prove that it was applied to Romney Marsh ‘before the
Roman occupation’? Moreover, supposing that the marsh was not embanked
by the Britons, there was ‘sufficient land uncovered by water to
be denominated _Ruimen_’ twice every day, when the tide was low,
before the Rhee Wall was made; and the name lends no support to Mr.
Robertson’s theory.
I do not attach much importance to the argument, first propounded
by Sir W. Dugdale[2655] and often repeated since, that because the
Britons, according to Tacitus[2656]--or rather, according to a speech
put by Tacitus into the mouth of a British chief--were employed by the
Romans in draining and embanking marshes, therefore the Romans enclosed
this particular marsh. But, considering that Roman remains have
frequently been discovered in that part of the marsh which lies on the
east of the Rhee Wall,[2657] it is surely inexplicable that if the wall
was built by the Britons, no Celtic remains have ever been found there.
Appach[2658] not only rejects the theory that the Britons built the
Rhee Wall, but denies that Romney Marsh Proper was enclosed during the
Roman occupation. He maintains that, in Caesar’s time, ‘the northern
portion, at all events, and possibly the whole of the interval between
the island of Romney and the high ground of Kent was open sea.’ For,
he argues, ‘Lympne was the ancient Portus Lemanis ... that place could
not have been a port unless there had been free access to it from the
Channel, and it is clear from the manner in which the marsh and shingle
were deposited, that there was always open sea between Lympne and the
Channel until the interval between the ancient island at Romney and the
high ground of Kent had been closed by the gradual growth of the marsh
and shingle.’
The assumption upon which this argument rests has been already
disproved: the Portus Lemanis was not at Lympne. Appach’s theory forces
him to assume that the sediment which formed the marsh was deposited at
an incredibly rapid rate. He maintains[2659] that ‘the upper portion
of Romney Marsh, for a depth of thirty feet ... below its present
surface (which would give sufficient water for the heaviest of Caesar’s
ships at the lowest Spring tides) might very well have been deposited’
in ‘about five hundred years’. But, according to Elliott,[2660] the
average rate at which the silt was deposited was not more than about
one-eighth of an inch _per annum_.
Dowker, on the other hand, although he once regarded it as ‘evident
that at the period of Caesar’s invasion the marsh was little better
than a swamp, great part being under water at high tide’, maintained
that the discovery of Roman pottery on the west of Dymchurch disproved
Appach’s theory.[2661] But he did not take account of dates. Appach
himself[2662] noted the discoveries which had been made near Dymchurch;
but he observed that while some of the objects discovered had been
pronounced by the Society of Antiquaries to be ‘decidedly Roman’,
others had been attributed by the same body to subsequent periods; and
he concluded that the marsh had not been enclosed before the middle of
the fifth century.
This theory is pulverized by one fact which Appach ignores. Dymchurch
is not the only place in Romney Marsh Proper where Roman remains have
been found: they have been discovered in Eastbridge, at Newchurch,
at Ivychurch, and indeed over the whole area.[2663] On the other
hand, Welland Marsh, Guildford Marsh, and Denge Marsh--those parts of
Romney Marsh, popularly so called, which extend westward of the Rhee
Wall--have yielded none.[2664] The inference is certain: Romney Marsh
Proper was enclosed during the Roman occupation of Britain.
6. The conclusions which we have now reached are, first, that the
Rother did not, in the time of Caesar, enter the sea at Lympne, but
debouched into the estuary near Appledore; secondly, that the marsh
was then closed at West Hythe Oaks, and therefore that there was no
harbour at Lympne; thirdly, that the Rhee Wall had not then been built,
and therefore that the marsh was still flooded at spring tides by the
inrush of the sea between Romney and Lydd; fourthly, that the Portus
Lemanis was a pool harbour extending from West Hythe to a point nearly
opposite Shorncliffe; and, lastly, that the Rhee Wall was built in
Roman times.
But, as the reader will hereafter see, if these conclusions are
erroneous, the error will not lead us astray when we have to determine
the place where Caesar landed in Britain.
PORTUS ITIUS
I. REVIEW OF THE CONTROVERSY
The greater part of the vast literature which has accumulated on the
question of the identity of the Portus Itius is obsolete;[2665] and
it is now sometimes taken for granted that the choice is restricted
to Wissant and Boulogne. Nevertheless, as I am determined to set the
question at rest, I shall examine the claims of three other ports,
which, in recent times, have found advocates whose names command
respect,--the estuary of the Somme, Ambleteuse, and Calais.
The question began to be seriously discussed in the fifteenth century.
The Italian geographer, Raymond de Marliano, identified the Portus
Itius with Calais;[2666] and in the following century the famous
Ortelius[2667] did the same. Chifflet[2668] and other scholars, well
known in their day, chose St. Omer, situated, as they believed, at
the head of a wide and shallow gulf, which was erroneously assumed to
have covered the low-lying lands between Sangatte and Dunkirk.[2669]
Adrien de Valois[2670] declared for Étaples; and numerous other absurd
suggestions were defended with more or less ingenuity. From Dieppe
to Ghent there was not a harbour, a roadstead, or a fishing port,
which had not its champion. But the controversy soon began to centre
itself between Wissant and Boulogne. Camden[2671] was the first to
declare for Wissant. Du Fresne[2672] (commonly called Du Cange), one
of the most illustrious French scholars of the seventeenth century,
defended its claims against Sanson; and d’Anville,[2673] Henry,[2674]
Walckenaer,[2675] and Sir Richard Colt Hoare[2676] followed his
example. Cluver[2677] wrote briefly but effectively on the other side;
and Scaliger[2678] characteristically exclaimed that those who did
not, like himself, decide for Boulogne, were lunatics. During the last
half-century, although Wissant has not lacked able defenders, the
case for Boulogne has been tending to prevail. But the arguments of
Haigneré, of Napoleon the Third, of Desjardins, and finally of Rudolf
Schneider failed to silence opposition. Men so able as George Long, Dr.
Guest, Dean Merivale, Dr. Hodgkin, Karl Müller, and Alphonse Wauters
remained unconvinced: Freeman[2679] roundly asserted that ‘since Dr.
Guest’s exposition of the matter it is hardly necessary to say that
“Portus Itius” or “Iccius” is not Boulogne’: Professor Ridgeway and Mr.
H. E. Malden, in their animated controversy[2680] on the question of
Caesar’s landing-place, agreed in identifying the harbour from which
he sailed with Wissant: more recently Dr. Emil Hübner[2681] has done
the same; and the well-known Caesarian scholar, Professor H. J. Heller,
at the close of a pungent criticism[2682] of Schneider’s dissertation,
concluded that the identity of the Portus Itius was still an open
question. Mr. H. F. Tozer,[2683] indeed, has recently pronounced the
question to be insoluble; and Mommsen,[2684] who in 1889 still adhered
to his old belief, that ‘among the many possibilities most may perhaps
be said in favour of the view that the Itian port ... is to be sought
near Ambleteuse’, nevertheless remained convinced that ‘it requires the
implicit faith of local topographers to proceed to the determination
of the locality with such data’.
Evidently, then, unless the problem is to be abandoned in despair,
there is room for another treatise. But this treatise must justify
its existence. I have not ‘the implicit faith of local topographers’:
but there are more data than Mommsen had leisure to examine; and the
locality can be determined with absolute certainty.
There is indeed a summary way of dealing with the question which has
long since satisfied practical men: doubt is confined to the minds
of scholars and of those who look to them for guidance. Men who are
familiar with war and who have a sufficient knowledge of the conditions
of navigation in the Straits of Dover know that there was only one
port on the north-eastern coast of Gaul which would have answered all
Caesar’s requirements, and that Caesar would not have made a foolish
choice. Accordingly the greatest of modern soldiers affirmed without
hesitation that the greatest soldier of Rome had sailed to Britain from
Boulogne. But this reasoning, perhaps because of its simplicity, has
not seemed conclusive to the learned world.
II. THE DATA FURNISHED BY CAESAR, STRABO, AND PTOLEMY
Caesar says that, before his first expedition to Britain, he sent Gaius
Volusenus to reconnoitre the British coast and ascertain what harbours
were capable of accommodating a large fleet, and that he himself
marched with his whole force for the country of the Morini, ‘because
the shortest passage to Britain was from their country’ (_quod inde
erat brevissimus in Britanniam traiectus_); and he goes on to say that
he ordered ships from the neighbouring districts, and likewise the
fleet which he had built in the previous summer for the war with the
Veneti, to assemble there. He set sail soon after midnight with about
80 transports, some ships of war, and some small fast-sailing vessels
(_speculatoria navigia_) from a port which he does not name, and sent
his cavalry to ‘a further port’ (_in ulteriorem portum_) about 8 Roman
miles off, with orders to embark there in eighteen transports, which
had been prevented by contrary winds from reaching the port whence he
himself sailed, and to follow him. In another chapter he speaks of the
_ulterior portus_ as _superior portus_; and it is admitted that this
port was either north or east of the one from which he himself sailed.
On the fourth day after he landed in Britain (the day of landing being
doubtless reckoned as the first day[2685]) the eighteen transports set
sail. They were getting close to Britain and were descried from the
Roman camp when a storm suddenly arose, and none of them could keep on
its course, but some were carried back to the place from which they
had started, that is to say, to the _superior portus_; while the rest
were driven down ‘in great peril to the lower and more westerly part
of the island’ (_ad inferiorem partem insulae, quae est propius solis
occasum magno suo cum periculo deicerentur_), whence, after anchoring
for a time and shipping a quantity of water, they were compelled to
stand out to sea, and ran for the Continent. When Caesar returned to
Gaul, two of his ships were unable to reach ‘the same ports’ (_eosdem
portus_) as the rest of the fleet, and were carried ‘a little further
down’ (_paulo infra_). Before his second expedition he assembled a
fleet of about 540 transports and 28 ships of war at the Portus Itius,
‘from which port he had ascertained that the passage to Britain was
most convenient,[2686] being about 30 [Roman] miles from the Continent’
(_quo ex portu commodissimum in Britanniam traiectum esse cognoverat,
circiter milium passuum_ XXX _transmissum a continenti_). His entire
flotilla amounted to more than 800 sail, as it included privately owned
vessels. The transports were of small draught and comparatively broad,
and were constructed for rowing as well as sailing. Caesar was delayed
at the Portus Itius for about 25 days by north-westerly winds.[2687]
His entire army, which was with him all that time, amounted to 8
legions and 4000 cavalry. He set sail about sunset, accompanied by 5
legions and 2000 cavalry, with a light south-westerly wind, or, to
speak more accurately, the wind called _Africus_, which may have blown
from any quarter between south-west and W. by S. ⅓ S. Labienus was left
behind with 3 legions and 2000 cavalry ‘to protect the ports’ (_ut
portus tueretur_), which implies that on the second expedition, as on
the first, Caesar thought it necessary to keep more than one port under
his control; and during his absence Labienus built 60 ships.[2688]
Strabo,[2689] evidently referring to Caesar’s first expedition, says
that he sailed from ‘the Itian’ [naval station?] (τὸ Ἴτιον), and that
the length of his voyage to the point which he reached ‘about the
fourth hour’ was 320 stades, which is equivalent to 40 Roman miles.
Ptolemy[2690] mentions the Itian promontory. Its longitude, he says,
was 22° 15′, and its latitude 53° 30′; and he places it on the west of
Gesoriacum, or Boulogne. The longitude of Gesoriacum, he says, was 22°
30′, and its latitude 53° 30′.
III. CAESAR SAILED FROM THE PORTUS ITIUS ON BOTH HIS EXPEDITIONS
It is necessary to inquire whether Caesar sailed from the same port
on both his expeditions; for he mentions the _ulterior portus_ only
in connexion with the first; and if on that occasion he sailed from
the Portus Itius, the search for the Portus Itius is conditioned by
the existence of the _ulterior portus_. Drumann,[2691] remarking that
Caesar chose the Portus Itius in 54 B.C. because he had ascertained
that the passage from it to the island was _the most convenient_,
argues that ‘before it was consequently unknown to him’, and that ‘at
first he sought _the shortest passage_’. Long,[2692] on the other hand,
insists that when Caesar says that he had ascertained that the passage
from the Portus Itius was the most convenient, he apparently means
‘that he had by his first voyage found out that this was the best place
to sail from’. ‘His first voyage,’ Long continues, ‘was very lucky, and
there was no reason to change his place of embarkation, particularly
as he intended to land, and did land, at the place where he had landed
before. Besides this, when he speaks (v. 8) of his landing-place on the
second voyage, he says, “qua optimum esse egressum superiore aestate
cognoverat”; the same form of expression that he uses in speaking of
the place of embarkation (v. 2), except that he does not there use the
words “superiore aestate”.’ I may observe that it is not quite true
that Caesar in 54 B.C. ‘intended to land, and did land, at the place
where he had landed before’.[2693] On the other hand, Mr. H. E. Malden
has remarked (though he has since abandoned the conclusion to which
his remarks led him) that Caesar ‘names the second [port] and does
not name the first ... he especially mentions that he disembarked on
both occasions at the same place, he gives himself every opportunity
for saying that he sailed from the same port, if he did so, but yet
he never says it’.[2694] Strabo admittedly implies that in the first
expedition Caesar’s point of departure was the Portus Itius: but his
testimony does not settle the question; for he may only have been
putting his own construction on Caesar’s words. Rudolf Schneider[2695]
concludes that it is impossible to _prove_ that the Portus Itius was
the starting-point of both voyages, but that it most probably was,
because Caesar, before his first expedition, had stayed long enough in
the country of the Morini to find out the most convenient harbour. I go
further, and shall prove, in the course of this discussion, that, on
his first as on his second expedition, Caesar sailed from the Portus
Itius.[2696]
IV. THE VALUE OF CAESAR’S ESTIMATE OF THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PORTUS
ITIUS AND BRITAIN
Rudolf Schneider[2697] insists that it is idle to lay stress on
Caesar’s estimate of the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain,
first, because he had no means of making an accurate calculation, and,
secondly, because we cannot tell whether he reckoned the distance to
the nearest point of Britain or to his own landing-place. As regards
correspondence with Caesar’s estimate, Schneider continues, there is
nothing to choose between Boulogne, Wissant, and Calais: Dover is 34
Roman miles from Boulogne, 25 from Wissant, 28 from Calais. It might
perhaps be argued that, if Caesar took his own landing-place as the
terminus, it would be hardly safe to ignore his estimate. For Wissant
is 27 Roman miles from Deal, and Boulogne 39; and, assuming that Caesar
landed near Hythe, Wissant is 32 Roman miles from that port, and
Boulogne 37. It appears, however, to me almost certain that Caesar’s
estimate referred to the distance from the Portus Itius to the nearest
frequented port of Britain;[2698] and it must not be forgotten that
the ancient writers generally overestimated the distance from one
port to another.[2699] Moreover, it is not absolutely certain that
Caesar estimated the distance of the Portus Itius from Britain at 30
Roman miles. _XXX_ is indeed found in all the extant _MSS._;[2700] but
as Strabo unquestionably used the _Commentaries_ when he wrote his
notice of Caesar’s voyage, and estimated its length as 320 stades, it
is not improbable that he found in his copy the number _XXXX_.[2701]
Schneider, however, points out that Strabo’s estimate of the length
of the south coast of Britain differs from Caesar’s; and the accuracy
of the _MSS._, as regards the number _XXX_, may perhaps, as he says,
be supported by a comparison of Pliny with Caesar. Pliny[2702] says
that the shortest passage between Ireland and Britain is 30 miles, and
Caesar[2703] says that the passage from Ireland to Britain is equal
in length to the passage from Britain to Gaul. On the whole, we may
conclude that Caesar’s estimate of the distance between the Portus
Itius and Britain does not help us to decide whether the Portus Itius
is to be identified with Wissant or with Boulogne. But, in considering
the arguments for the identity of the Portus Itius with the mouth of
the Somme, Caesar’s estimate must obviously be taken into account.[2704]
V. THE ESTUARY OF THE SOMME
The advocate of the Somme was the late Astronomer-Royal, Sir George
Airy. His arguments shall be considered for the benefit of those
who are influenced by his great reputation; but one fact, which he
ignores, is alone sufficient to wreck his theory. If Caesar sailed
from the mouth of the Somme, the _superior portus_, from which his
cavalry transports sailed was, as Airy of course maintains, the mouth
of the Authie, and the place where he landed in Britain was, as Airy
likewise maintains, Pevensey. Therefore, on Airy’s theory, the cavalry
transports, when they were approaching Britain and were seen in the
offing from Caesar’s camp, were approaching Pevensey; and the gale
which prevented them from reaching their destination and drove some of
them ‘in great peril’ (_magno cum periculo_) westward down the coast,
carried the others back to the mouth of the Authie.[2705] But, as the
harbour-master of Dover remarked to me, and as any one may see for
himself who has the most rudimentary knowledge of seamanship, it would
have been utterly impossible for them to fetch the mouth of that river.
But to timid reasoners this may appear too summary a method of
disposing of Airy’s theory. Let us then hear what he has to say.
First, Airy maintains that Caesar, when he says that he ‘set out for
the country of the Morini’ (_in Morinos proficiscitur_), merely implies
that he arrived ‘near it or close to it’, not necessarily that he
actually entered it. He insists that in every instance in which Caesar
‘uses the inflexions or derivatives of “proficiscor”’ ‘another sentence
or another clause is required to denote arrival at the journey’s
end’.[2706]
Now Caesar uses _proficisci_ with _in_ thirty-five times. If the
reader will turn to the lists of those passages in Meusel’s _Lexicon
Caesarianum_ (ii, 96, 1240), he will find that in almost every instance
in which Caesar says that he himself or any one else ‘started for’ or
was about to ‘start for’ this or that place, the context proves that
the place was reached. Of course the proof is generally furnished
by ‘another sentence or another clause’, or by more than one other
sentence. But this is not always the case.[2707] And for the passage
in question similar proof is forthcoming. Immediately after telling us
that he marched for the country of the Morini, Caesar goes on to say
that he ordered his fleet to assemble there.[2708] As Long sensibly
remarks,[2709] ‘when a man says that he “marches for” or “towards the
country of the Morini because the passage from there to Britain was
the shortest”; that he ordered all his ships to come there; and that
while he was waiting “in these parts” (_in his locis_[2710]) to get his
ships ready, ambassadors from a large part of the Morini came to him,
there is only one conclusion, which is, that he was in the country of
the Morini and sailed from it.’ If Caesar had removed his ships from
the country where he had assembled them and had sailed from some other
place, he would surely have said something to warn his readers against
drawing the conclusion which, to every one except Airy, has always
appeared inevitable.
Secondly, Airy points to the passage[2711] in which Caesar relates that
while he was collecting ships for the first expedition envoys came
to him from the Morini: ‘the visit of the ambassadors,’ he argues,
‘without any mention of hostile occupation, seems to imply that neither
Caesar nor any part of his army was in the country of the Morini at the
time of preparing the naval expedition, and appears to render it most
improbable that he had passed through their country.’[2712]
No unbiassed reader would assent to this conclusion. The Morini
naturally sent ambassadors to Caesar because they wished to deprecate
his wrath. Similarly in 53 B.C. the Ubii sent envoys to him when he
was in their country, not as an enemy but as a friend.[2713] Besides,
Airy, not having a really intimate knowledge of the _Commentaries_,
overlooked another important point:--the Morini did not act as
one undivided state; some only of their _pagi_, or sub-divisional
communities, sent ambassadors: others sent none.[2714]
Thirdly, Airy refers to Caesar’s statement, that, on returning to the
Portus Itius from his second expedition, he directed Gaius Fabius to
winter in the country of the Morini with one legion.[2715] ‘It appears
to me,’ he says, ‘that the order (after his second return) for legions
to march _from the Portus Itius_[2716] “in Morinos” makes it certain
that he was not in their country.’[2717]
The words ‘from the Portus Itius’ beg the question. One legion (not
‘legions’) was sent into the country of the Morini, not from the Portus
Itius but from Samarobriva, in the country of the Ambiani, where, as
the context shows, all the legions were temporarily assembled.[2718]
Similarly in the following year, 53 B.C., Caesar concentrated all his
legions at Durocortorum, or Reims, immediately before distributing them
in their respective quarters for the winter.[2719]
Fourthly, Airy refers to the well-known passage in which Strabo[2720]
says that ‘the Itian’ [naval station?] is παρὰ (τοῖς Μορινοῖς). Παρά,
he seriously affirms, means ‘near to’, not ‘in’ (the country of the
Morini[2721]).
If Airy’s sense of humour had not been dormant, it would surely have
occurred to him that, in a matter of pure scholarship, it was unlikely
that all Greek scholars should be wrong while he alone was right. Dr.
Guest took the trouble to refute him;[2722] and if he had referred to
other passages in Strabo,[2723] he would have seen for himself that
παρ’ οἷς means ‘in whose country’.
Airy was far too vigilant a controversialist not to see that there were
well-grounded objections to his theory; and he attempted to anticipate
them. Caesar, as we have seen, states that when his fleet was returning
to Gaul after the first expedition, two of the ships failed to make
the same harbours as the rest, and ‘were carried a little lower down’
(_duae_ [naves] _eosdem quos reliqui portus capere non potuerunt et
paulo infra delatae sunt_[2724]); and he goes on to say that the troops
who landed from these two ships were attacked by the Morini while they
were marching from the place where they had disembarked to his own
camp. The words _paulo infra delatae sunt_ are interpreted by almost
every commentator except Airy[2725] as meaning that the two ships were
carried a little further down the coast than the other ships; and if
this interpretation is correct, it is obvious that the harbours in
which the other ships came to land were in the country of the Morini.
But Airy is unmoved by this consensus of opinion. ‘The word “delatae”,’
he says, ‘is repeatedly used by Caesar for “drifted”, and “infra
delatae” is “drifted down”, the word “down” apparently relating not to
any geographical direction, but to the force of the wind.’[2726]
As a matter of fact, Caesar uses the past participle of _defero_ in
the sense of ‘drifted’ four times,[2727] namely, in the passage which
we are now considering and in _B. G._, v, 8, § 2 (_longius delatus
aestu orta luce sub sinistra Britanniam relictam conspexit_), _B.
C._, iii, 14, § 2 (_una ex his_ [navibus] ... _delata Oricum atque
a Bibulo expugnata est_), and _B. C._, iii, 30, § 1 (_praetervectas
Apolloniam Dyrrachiumque naves viderant ... sed quo essent eae delatae
... ignorabant_). None of these passages lends the slightest support
to Airy’s theory; and the other three passages in which he uses the
adverb _infra_[2728] in a local sense, namely, _B. G._, vi, 35, § 6
(_transeunt Rhenum ... XXX milibus passuum infra eum locum ubi pons
erat perfectus_[2729]), _B. G._, vii, 61, § 3 (_nuntiatur ... magnum
ire agmen adverso flumine sonitumque remorum in eadem parte exaudiri et
paulo infra milites navibus transportari_[2730]), and _B. C._, i, 64,
§ 6 (_reliquas legiones expeditas educit magnoque numero iumentorum in
flumine supra atque infra constituto traducit exercitum_[2731]), are
fatal to it.
Again, the passage in which Caesar says that the distance from the
Portus Itius to Britain is about 30 [Roman] miles,[2732] assuming
that it is genuine, might well have disconcerted a less resourceful
reasoner; for the distance from the mouth of the Somme to St. Leonards,
off which place Airy maintains that Caesar anchored on his first
voyage,[2733] is about 65 Roman miles; and to Pevensey Level, where
he makes Caesar land, a little more. But Airy confidently grapples
with the difficulty. ‘I conceive,’ he remarks, ‘that the sentence has
been mistranslated. The Portus Itius and the continent are placed in
contradistinction. The _convenient passage_ was from the Portus Itius,
the distance of 30 miles was from the continent.’[2734]
Read the sentence again,--_portum Itium ... quo ex portu commodissimum
in Britanniam traiectum esse cognoverat, circiter milium passuum XXX
transmissum a continenti_. Classical scholars are agreed that these
words can only mean what Airy insists that they do not mean, namely,
that the distance from the Portus Itius to Britain was about 30 Roman
miles. If not from the Portus Itius, from what port? What would have
been the good of specifying the distance if Caesar had been thinking of
some other port which he did not use?[2735]
Furthermore, the distance from the mouth of the Somme to Pevensey Level
is about twice the distance from Boulogne to Dover, to Hythe, or to
Lympne; and Caesar says that the reason why he marched for the country
of the Morini was that the passage from their country to Britain was
the shortest.