CÆSAR IN BRITAIN.
Down to the middle of the first century before Christ the British Isles
were scarcely more known to the civilised nations of southern Europe
than the North Pole is to the men of our own day. The trade which had
probably long existed in the tin of Cornish mines had been purposely
kept in mysterious darkness by the Phœnicians who profited thereby,
so that Herodotus, the much inquiring, only mentions the Tin-islands
(Cassiterides) to say that he knows naught concerning them. That trade
had now probably become, save for the short passage of the channel, an
overland one, and enriched the merchants of Marseilles. A citizen of
that busy port, Pytheas by name, who seems to have been contemporary
with Alexander the Great, professed to have travelled over the greater
part of Britain, and afterwards to have sailed to a great distance
along the northern coast of Germany. It was the fashion of later
authors, such as Polybius and Strabo, to sneer at his alleged voyage
of discovery and to doubt his veracity, but the tendency of modern
inquiry is in some degree to restore the credit of this Marco Polo of
pre-Christian times, to show that in some points he had a more correct
knowledge of geography than his critics, and to deepen our regret that
his work is known to us only in a few passages selected and perhaps
distorted by his hostile reviewers. It must be admitted that if he
reported that the circumference of Britain was 40,000 stadia (about
5,000 of our miles), and that he had traversed the whole of it on
foot,[3] his statement was not altogether consistent with fact.
Such, however, was all the information that the Greeks and Romans
possessed concerning our island near the middle of the first century
B.C., at the time when Cicero was thundering against Catiline, and
Pompey was forcing his way into the temple at Jerusalem. Her time,
however, for entrance on the great theatre of the world was near
at hand, and it was for her a fortunate circumstance, and one not
inconsistent with the part which she has played thereon in later ages,
that the man who brought her on to the stage should have been himself
the central figure in the world’s political history--Gaius Julius Cæsar.
Sprung from one of the oldest and proudest families of Rome, yet
nephew by marriage of the peasant-soldier Marius, Cæsar, the high-born
democrat, possessed in his own person that combination of qualities
which has ever been found most dangerous to the rule of a narrow and
selfish oligarchy. The outworn machine which men still called the Roman
republic was obviously creaking towards an utter breakdown, and must
soon, if the provinces were not to be bled to death by greedy senators,
be replaced by the government of a single man, whether that man were
called king, or general, or dictator. The only question was who that
single man should be. Cæsar felt that he was the man of destiny,
foreordained to stand on that awful eminence. He flung out of the Roman
forum and senate-house, teeming as they were with squalid intrigues
and echoing to the cries of ignoble factions, and at the age of forty
set himself to a ten years’ apprenticeship to empire on the banks of
the Loire and the Saône, amid the vast forests of Britain or of Gaul.
The French historian, Michelet, has finely said: “I would that I could
have seen that pale countenance, aged before its time by the revelries
of Rome: that delicate and epileptic man, walking at the head of his
legions under the rains of Gaul, swimming across our rivers or riding
on horseback among the litters in which his secretaries were carried,
and dictating five or six letters at once: agitating Rome from the
furthest corners of Belgium: sweeping two millions of men from his path
and in the space of ten years subduing Gaul, the Rhine and the northern
ocean”.
At the end of the first three years of Cæsar’s proconsulship (58–56
B.C.) having apparently almost completed the conquest of Gaul, he stood
a conqueror on the southern shore of the Straits of Dover, looked
across at the white cliffs of Albion, and dreamed of bringing that
mysterious island within the circle of Roman dominion. Pretexts for
invasion were never lacking to an adventurous proconsul. There were
close ties of affinity between many of the northern tribes of Gaul
and their British neighbours. Some tribes even bore the same name.
The Atrebates of Arras were reflected in the Atrebates of Berkshire;
there were Belgæ in Somerset and Wiltshire as well as in Belgium; even
men call Parisii were found, strangely enough, in the East Riding of
Yorkshire. Then there was also the connexion, whatever may have been
its value, between the religion of the continental and the insular
Celts. Our information concerning the Druids (chiefly derived from
Cæsar himself) is somewhat vague and unsatisfactory, but there is
no reason to doubt his statement that the Druidic “discipline” had
originated in Britain and had been carried thence into Gaul, and thus
any religious element that there may have been in the resistance of the
Gallic tribes to Roman domination would look across the channel for
sympathy and inspiration.
There was already a certain amount of commercial intercourse between
Britain and Gaul, and Cæsar endeavoured to ascertain by questioning the
merchants engaged in that trade what was the size of the island, what
were its best harbours, and what the customs and warlike usages of the
natives. On none of these points, however, could he obtain satisfactory
information. The proconsul therefore sent a lieutenant named Volusenus
with a swift ship to reconnoitre the nearer coast, but he returned in
five days without having ventured to land. Meanwhile, as the object
of the general’s prolonged stay in the territory of the Morini became
more and more evident, messengers from certain of the British tribes
began to cross the channel, charged--so Cæsar says--with a commission
to promise “obedience to the rule of the Roman people,” and to give
hostages as a pledge of their fidelity. The arrival of the ambassadors
and their attempt to turn the proconsul from his purpose by fair speech
and unmeaning promises we may well believe. How much the Regni and the
Cantii knew about the rule of the Roman people, and what intention
they had of loyally submitting to it, may be left uncertain. Cæsar,
however, availed himself of the opportunity to send over with these
returning envoys a certain Celtic chieftain named Commius, whom he had
himself made king of the continental Atrebates, and on whose fidelity
he thought that he could rely, to exhort the native tribes peacefully
to accept the dominion of the Roman people, as the representative of
whom Cæsar himself would shortly make his appearance among them. This
mission of Commius proved quite fruitless. As soon as he landed--so he
said--the Britons arrested him and loaded him with chains, and it was
only after the defeat which will shortly be described that they sent
him back to Cæsar. As we find Commius only four years later taking a
leading part in the insurrection of the tribes in the north of Gaul,
and professing an especial hostility to all who bore the name of
Roman, we may, perhaps, doubt whether, even at this time, his pleas
for subjection were as earnest, or the chains imposed upon him by the
Britons as heavy, as Cæsar’s narrative would seem to imply.
Cæsar had determined to make his exploratory voyage with two legions,
the Seventh and the Tenth. He perhaps hoped that actual war would
not be necessary to bring about the formal submission of the tribes
on the coast, and he therefore did not take with him more than the
8,000 to 10,000 men, which were probably the actual muster of two
legions, and a body of cavalry whose precise number is not stated. As
fighting, however, might, after all, prove to be necessary, he took
care that one of the legions which accompanied him should be the famous
Tenth on whose courage and devotion he often relied, not in vain. To
transport the legions he had collected about eighty cargo ships (_naves
onerariæ_), many of which had been employed the year before in his
naval campaign off the coast of Brittany. He had also a certain number
of galleys (_naves longæ_) capable of being rowed much faster than
the heavy transport ships could sail. On these latter his staff of
officers, quæstors, legates and prefects were embarked, and no doubt
the proconsul himself was their companion.
The fleet set sail about midnight on August 26, B.C. 55, or on some
day very near to that date. The port of embarkation was probably near
to Cape Gris Nez and at the narrowest part of the channel, but almost
every sentence of the following narrative has been the subject of
an animated topographical discussion, and Cæsar himself mentions no
names of places that can be certainly identified.[4] Whatever may have
been the harbour from which the legions embarked it was not the same
which had been appointed as a rendezvous for the cavalry. These latter
were to be borne upon a little fleet of eighteen transports which
were detained by a contrary wind at a port eight miles farther up the
channel. As we shall see, their ill fortune in the matter of weather
continued throughout the expedition, and their consequent inability
to co-operate with the legions may have been the chief cause of the
expedition’s failure.
As for the main body of the fleet, it must have made an extremely
slow voyage, for it was not till the fourth hour of the day (about
8.30 A.M.) that the foremost ships caught sight of the shores of
Britain. The landing was evidently not to be unopposed: on all the
hills armed bodies of the enemy were drawn up. The word used by Cæsar
signifies properly “hills,” but as he goes on to say that “the sea
was commanded by such steep mountains that a weapon could easily be
hurled from the higher ground to the shore,” we are probably right in
understanding these “hills” to be the well-known chalk cliffs of Kent.
Seeing therefore no suitable place for landing, Cæsar signalled for his
fleet to gather round him, and lay quietly at anchor for five hours.
Summoning his staff he imparted to them such information concerning the
nature of the country as he had been able to gather from Volusenus,
and explained that in maritime warfare such as that in which they were
now engaged, liable to be affected by rapid changes of the weather and
the sea, it was pre-eminently necessary that they should give prompt
obedience to his orders. At about 3 P.M., apparently, the fleet weighed
anchor, and, wind and tide having become favourable, moved forward
about seven miles and there halted opposite a level and open shore
which seemed well adapted for landing.
The barbarians, however, who were of course watching Cæsar’s movements,
sent forward their chariots and their cavalry, and following
themselves with rapid movements were on the spot to oppose the Romans’
disembarkation. It seemed for some time as if their opposition would
be effectual. The ships drawing many feet of water could not approach
near to the land, and the soldiers, with their hands encumbered by the
_pilum_ or the sword and their bodies weighted with the heavy armour of
the Roman legionary, found it no easy matter to jump from the ships,
to stagger through the slippery ooze, to defend themselves against
the attacks of the nimble and lightly armed barbarians. Seeing this,
Cæsar ordered up the galleys, which were rowed rapidly backwards and
forwards between the transports and the shore, and from the decks of
which slings, bows and _balistae_ freely employed worked havoc among
the barbarians, already disposed to terror by the unwonted sight of
the triremes. But as the soldiers still hesitated, chiefly on account
of the depth of the water into which it was necessary to plunge, the
standard-bearer of the Tenth legion, after a short prayer to the gods
for good luck to his legion, leapt into the sea, shouting with a loud
voice: “Jump! comrades! unless you would see your eagle fall into the
enemy’s hands. I at any rate will do my duty to the Republic and our
general.” His example was contagious. All the soldiers leapt from
the ships and were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with the
Britons, each man rallying to the standard that was nearest to him
as it was hopeless in such a _mêlée_ to form regular rank by legions
and cohorts. The barbarians, charging with their horses into deep
water, were sometimes able to surround smaller parties of the invaders
or to harass them from a distance with their darts. Hereupon, Cæsar
filled the boats of the long ships and some of the lighter skiffs with
soldiers, who rowing rapidly backwards and forwards carried help where
it was most needed.
It was probably at this stage of the encounter that an incident took
place which is recorded not by Cæsar himself but by Valerius Maximus,
an anecdote-collector of a later date. He tells us that a legionary
named Scæva with four comrades rowed to a rock surrounded by the sea
and from thence dealt destruction with their arrows among the Britons.
Before long the ebbing tide made their rock accessible from the shore
and the other soldiers thought it was time to row back to their
ship. Scæva, refusing to accompany them, was soon surrounded by the
barbarians, with whom he fought single-handed. Many he killed, but he
himself suffered fearfully. His thigh was pierced by an arrow, his face
smashed by a stone, his shield broken. At last he threw himself into
the sea and swam to his vessel. Cæsar and the officers began to applaud
him for his bravery, but he flung himself at the proconsul’s feet and
with tears implored forgiveness for the military crime of the loss of
his shield.
When the great body of the soldiers had at last struggled to the
shore and could fight on firm land, Roman discipline soon prevailed
over barbarian ardour. The Britons took to flight, but the absence
of cavalry, bitterly regretted by Cæsar, checked pursuit. Next day
there came ambassadors from the dispirited Britons praying for pardon,
bringing the liberated Commius and promising to obey all Cæsar’s
orders. After a grave rebuke for having violated the laws of nations
by imprisoning his messengers, the proconsul granted his forgiveness
and ordered the natives to hand over hostages for their good faith.
A few were given, the rest who were to be sent by the more distant
tribes were promised but never came. The reason of this failure of
the negotiations (if they had ever had a chance of success) was the
catastrophe which befel the lingering squadron with its freight of
cavalry. On the fourth day after Cæsar’s landing, the eighteen ships
with the horsemen on board drew nigh to Britain. Already they were
descried by their comrades on shore when so violent a storm arose that
they were hopelessly beaten off their course. Some were driven straight
back to the harbour which they had quitted, others with imminent danger
of shipwreck drifted down channel and at last, waterlogged and nearly
helpless, regained some port in Gaul.
On the night which followed this disastrous day, a night of full moon,
the unusually high tide, a marvel and a mystery to these children of
the Mediterranean, surrounded the Roman ships which had been drawn up,
as they hoped, high and dry on the beach. Cables were broken, anchors
lost, some of the ships probably dashed against one another; it seemed
as though Cæsar would be stranded without ships and without supplies
on the inhospitable shore of Britain. He at once sent out some of his
soldiers to collect supplies from the Kentish harvest fields, and set
others to repair those ships, whose repair was yet possible, at the
expense of their hopelessly ruined companions. He admits an entire loss
of twelve, but leaves us to infer that the remainder were patched into
some sort of seaworthiness. By this time undoubtedly the one thought of
both general and army was how to get safe back to Gaul; and naturally
the one thought of the Britons, who knew all that had occurred, was how
to prevent that return. The promised hostages of course never appeared;
and a troop of barbarians ambushed in a neighbouring forest watched for
a favourable opportunity of attacking the Romans. That opportunity
came one day when the soldiers of the Seventh legion were out foraging
in the harvest fields. The sentinels in the Roman camp descried a cloud
of dust rising in the direction whither their comrades had gone, and
brought word to the general, who at once suspected that the precarious
peace was broken and that mischief was abroad. Sallying forth with four
cohorts he found that it was even so. The barbarians had emerged from
their ambush, had fallen upon the unsuspecting legionaries, quietly
engaged in reaping the British harvest, had slain a few of them and
were harassing the rest with “alarums and excursions” by their cavalry
and their charioteers.
At this point Cæsar interrupts his narrative to describe the British
custom of using chariots in war, a custom which was evidently strange
and disconcerting to the Roman soldiery. “This,” he says, “is their
manner of fighting. First they drive their horses about in all
directions, hurling darts, and by the very terror of their horses and
clashing of their wheels often throw the ranks [of their enemies]
into confusion. Then when they have insinuated themselves between the
squadrons of the [hostile] cavalry they leap from their chariots and
fight on foot. The charioteers meanwhile gradually draw out of the fray
and so place the cars that if their friends should be overborne by the
multitude of the enemy they may easily take refuge with them. In this
way they combine the rapid movements of cavalry with the steadiness
of infantry, and have acquired such a degree of dexterity by daily
practice that they can hold up their galloping horses in the steepest
descents, check and turn them in a moment, run along the pole or sit on
the yoke, and then as quickly as possible fly back into the car.” It
will be observed that Cæsar says nothing about the famous scythe-armed
chariots of the Britons which, as has been often suggested, would
surely on a battlefield be as dangerous to friends as to foes.
Cæsar’s arrival rescued his troops from their perilous position, and
he was able to lead them back in safety to the camp. Many stormy days
followed, during which warlike operations were necessarily suspended
on both sides, but the barbarians employed the interval in beating up
recruits from all quarters, attracted by the hope of plunder and of
making an end at one blow of the army of invasion, whose scanty numbers
moved them to contempt. When fighting was resumed the legions easily
repelled the British attack, and some horsemen who had been brought
by Commius, though only thirty in number, enabled Cæsar to pursue the
flying foe for some distance, to kill many of them and to lay waste a
wide extent of country with fire and sword. The usual group of penitent
ambassadors appeared the same day in Cæsar’s camp; the usual excuses
were offered; were accepted as a matter of necessity; and twice the
number of hostages was ordered to be surrendered. It did not greatly
matter how many were demanded, for Cæsar had no intention of awaiting
their delivery. Soon after midnight the Roman fleet set sail, and the
whole army returned eventually safe to Gaul, though two of the ships
bearing 300 men drifted down the coast of Picardy, and the soldiers,
attacked by no fewer than 6,000 of the Morini, had much ado to defend
themselves till the general sent a force of cavalry to their succour.
On the arrival of Cæsar’s despatches in Rome the senate ordered a
solemn _supplicatio_ or thanksgiving to the gods, which was to last
for twenty days. The British expedition had been a daring and a showy
exploit, but no one knew better than Cæsar himself that it had been an
entire failure, and that nothing had really been done towards bringing
a single British tribe under “the rule of the Roman people”. If this
island was to be conquered, it was plain that a much larger force than
two legions would be needed for the work. This Cæsar recognised, and
accordingly he determined to make another attempt next year (B.C. 54)
with five legions (perhaps about 21,000 men) and 2,000 cavalry. The
previous campaign had evidently convinced the general of the importance
of mounted men for this kind of warfare. He was also determined to
have a longer interval before the autumnal equinox for the conduct of
his campaign than he had allowed himself in the previous year, and
accordingly somewhere about July 23 he set sail from the Portus Itius.
He would, in fact, have started at least three weeks earlier, but the
wind had been blowing persistently from a point a long way to the north
of west. As soon as it shifted to the south-west, the fleet (which
with all its companions consisted of 800 ships) started at sunset. In
the night, however, the wind fell and the tide (which probably neither
Cæsar nor any of his officers understood) carried the ships far out of
their course. When the sun arose they saw that Britain was far behind
them, on their left hand. Dropping their sails, they took to the oars,
and Cæsar has words of well-deserved praise for his sturdy soldiers,
who rowed so well that they made the heavy transport ships keep up with
the lighter galleys which, as before, accompanied them. By a little
after noon they reached the coast of Britain, apparently at their old
landing-place. Their disembarkation was not now opposed; the Britons
having, as it seems, lost heart when they saw so vast a flotilla
approaching their shores.
Notwithstanding his larger armament, Cæsar’s second invasion was in
many respects a mere _replica_ of the first, and it is hardly worth
while to describe it in equal detail. There was again a violent
tempest which swept the fleet from its anchorage, destroyed forty of
the ships, and obliged Cæsar to waste ten precious days in repairing
the remainder. Toilsome as the task must be, he judged it advisable
to draw all his ships up on land and surround them with a wall of
circumvallation. When we remember that this was the precaution adopted
by the Greeks who warred in Troy, we see how little essential change
had been wrought in naval warfare in the course of 1,000 years.
Meanwhile the Britons had assembled in large numbers in order to oppose
the progress of the invaders, and had entrusted the national defence to
a chief named Cassivellaunus who ruled over some of the tribes north
of the Thames. Hitherto he had made himself apparently more feared
than loved by his dealings with neighbouring tribes: the Trinobantes,
especially, who dwelt in the district now known as Essex, had seen
their king murdered and their king’s son made a fugitive by his orders;
but now in the supreme hour of danger the hard, unscrupulous soldier
was by general consent chosen as a kind of dictator.
After some preliminary skirmishes in which the heavily armed Roman
legionaries suffered severely from the dashing onslaught and rapid
retreat of the British chariots and cavalry, Cæsar determined to
cross the Thames and beard the lion Cassivellaunus in his den. He
was stationed on the north bank of the river which was fordable, but
defended by sharp stakes placed in the bed of the stream. It is not
quite clear from Cæsar’s account how this obstacle of the stakes was
dealt with by his soldiers. Possibly they may have been partly removed
by the cavalry whom he says that he sent first into the water. They
were followed by the legionaries, who went, he says, so swiftly and
with such a dash, though only their heads were out of water, that the
enemy, unable to stand before the combined rush of horsemen and foot
soldiers, left their stations on the bank and scattered in flight.
As was so often the case with these Celtic tribes, domestic discord
in some degree lightened the labours of the invader. We have seen
that Cassivellaunus had obtained by violence the sovereignty of the
Trinobantes of Essex. Mandubracius, the son of the dead king, had fled
to Gaul and cast himself on the protection of Cæsar, in whose train
he returned to Britain. There was still probably a party in favour
of the dethroned family, and it was not a mere formality when Cæsar
ordered the tribe to accept Mandubracius for their chief, to supply
his troops with corn, and to deliver forty hostages into his hands.
Five other tribes whose unimportant names are given by Cæsar came in
and made their submission; and from them the general learned that not
far distant was the town (_oppidum_) of Cassivellaunus, filled with a
multitude of men and cattle, and defended by forests and marshes. “Now
the Britons,” says Cæsar, perhaps with a sneer, “call any place a town”
(_oppidum_) “when they have chosen a position entangled with forests
and strengthened it with rampart and ditch, so that they may gather
into it for shelter from hostile incursion.” Thither then marched Cæsar
with his legions. He found a place splendidly strong by nature and art,
but he determined to attack it from two sides at once. After a brief
defence, the natives collapsed before the headlong rush of the Romans,
and streamed out of the camp on the opposite side. Many were slain,
many taken prisoners, and a great number of cattle fell into the hands
of the Romans.
In order probably to divert the forces of his enemy from his own
_oppidum_, the generalissimo Cassivellaunus had sent orders to the
four kings of Kent to collect their forces and make a sudden attack on
the naval camp of the Romans. The attack was repulsed by a vigorous
sortie: many of the Britons were slain and one of their noblest leaders
taken prisoner. Hereupon Cassivellaunus, recognising that the fortune
of war was turning against him and that his own confederates were
falling away, sent messengers to offer his submission and obtain peace
through the mediation of his friend, perhaps his fellow-tribesman,
Commius. Cæsar, who had his own reasons for desiring a speedy return
to Gaul and who doubtless considered that enough had been done for
his glory, accepted the proffered submission. He “ordered hostages to
be delivered, and fixed the amount of tribute which was to be yearly
paid by Britannia to the Roman people. He forbade Cassivellaunus to
do any injury to Mandubracius or the Trinobantes,” and with these
high-sounding phrases he departed. As he carried back many captives and
not a few of his ships had perished in the storm, he had to make two
crossings with his fleet, but both were accomplished without disaster.
Of Cassivellaunus himself no further information is vouchsafed us, nor
do we know what was the fate of the abandoned allies of Rome.
The great general in this instance “had come and had seen” but had
not “conquered”. Most valuable, however, to us is the information
which he has given us concerning our sequestered island, though in
some cases it is evidently inaccurate. We need not linger over Cæsar’s
geographical statements, though it is curious to see how certain errors
of earlier geographers still lingered on even into the Augustan age of
Roman literature. Thus he thinks that, of the three sides of Britain’s
triangle one looks towards Gaul and the east, another towards Spain and
the west, while the third, which has no land opposite it, faces north.
Besides Ireland, which is half the size of Britain, there are other
islands, apparently on the west, concerning which certain writers have
said that they have continual night during thirty days of winter. As
to this Cæsar was not able to obtain any definite information, but his
own _clepsydræ_ (water clocks) showed him that the nights in July were
shorter in Britain than on the continent.
“Of all the natives far the most civilised are those who inhabit the
district of Kent, which is all situated on the coast: nor do these
differ greatly in their manners from the inhabitants of Gaul. Those who
live farther inland sow no corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are
clothed in skins. All the Britons however dye themselves with woad,
which gives them a blue colour and makes them look more terrible in
battle. They wear long hair and shave every part of the body except the
head and the upper lip. Ten or a dozen men have their wives in common,
especially brothers with brothers, fathers with their sons, the
woman’s offspring being reckoned to him who first cohabited with her.”
This ghastly statement is probably a mere traveller’s tale, utterly
untrue of the Celts of Britain or of any other Aryan tribe. It has been
thought that it may possibly have been derived from an institution
something like the Sclavonic _mir_, which caused all the descendants of
one married couple for two or three generations to herd together in a
single household. “The interior of Britain is inhabited by tribes which
are, according to their own tradition, aboriginal: the sea-coast by
those which for the sake of plunder have crossed over from Belgic Gaul,
and after carrying on war have settled there and begun to cultivate
the land. It is in consequence of this that nearly all of them have
the same tribal names as those of the states from which they came.
There is an infinite number of inhabitants, and one constantly meets
with buildings almost like those of Gaul, as well as a great number of
cattle.”
“They use either golden money or thin bars of iron of a certain
weight which pass for money.” Thus (according to the best reading
of a much-disputed passage) does Cæsar speak as to the numismatic
attainments of the Britons. We shall probably never know more than this
as to the iron currency or quasi-currency of our predecessors; but
the statement as to their gold currency has been entirely confirmed
by modern discoveries. The most curious fact, however, in connexion
with the pre-Roman gold coinage of Britain is that it is evidently an
imitation, though a most barbarous imitation, of the coinage of Philip
II. of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. In the British
imitations the fine classical features of the Macedonian monarch are
twisted into the ignoble profile of a savage, while the curls of the
hair and the leaves of the laurel crown, mechanically repeated and
magnified, fill up the greater part of the coin. The effigy of a
charioteer on the reverse of the coin is attempted to be copied in the
same grotesque fashion with rather less success than the drawing of a
child upon its slate. The charioteer himself is gradually resolved into
a cluster of atoms, and though the likeness of the horse is for some
time preserved, he is furnished with eight legs and gradually dwindles
away into the spectre of a rocking-horse. Yet these queer pieces
of money which occasionally turn up in English soil are intensely
interesting, as showing how the influence of Greek art penetrated
even into our world-forgotten island three centuries before the birth
of Christ, travelling possibly by the same commercial route between
the Euxine and the Baltic by which the Runes passed up from Thrace to
Scandinavia, and the highly prized amber descended from Stralsund to
Odessa.
Cæsar proceeds to inform us that “tin (_plumbum album_) is found in the
midland parts of the country [as to this he was of course misinformed];
iron in the maritime regions, but in small quantities; all the bronze
used is imported. There is timber of all kinds, as in Gaul, save the
fir and the beech. They do not think it right to eat hares, geese or
poultry, but keep these animals as pets. The climate is more temperate
than that of Gaul, the cold less intense.” One regrets to learn from
Strabo, who wrote half a century after Cæsar, that though “the climate
is rainy rather than snowy, even in clear weather mists prevail so long
that through the whole day the sun is visible only for three or four
hours about noon”.
In reviewing the history of Cæsar’s invasions of Britain we naturally
inquire what was his object in fitting out those expeditions, why did
they fail and why did he acquiesce in their failure. Whatever may have
been the motive of the first (which, according to him, was chiefly the
assistance given by the Britons to the cause of his Gaulish enemies),
the second expedition at any rate, on which from 20,000 to 30,000 men
were employed, cannot have been a mere reconnaissance, undertaken in
the interests of scientific discovery. It was no doubt politic to
stimulate the zeal of his partisans in Rome by voyages and marches
which appeared to be
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought,
but the general would hardly have spent so much treasure and risked the
lives of so many of his legionaries without some hope of substantial
advantage to himself, his soldiers, or the republic. Evidently the
Britons fought better than he expected. Probably also, the forests
and the marshes of the country made the movements of his troops
exceptionally difficult. We can perceive also that the country was not
so rich as he had hoped to find it--an important consideration for a
general who had to reward his soldiers by frequent opportunities of
“loot”. “We already know,” wrote Cicero to his brother Quintus, “that
there is not an ounce of silver in that island nor any hope of booty
except slaves, among whom I do not think you will expect to find any
skilled in literature or music.” The only spoil that we hear of Cæsar’s
carrying back from Britain was a breastplate adorned with precious
pearls, which he dedicated in the Temple of Victory at Rome.
One argument which doubtless influenced Cæsar against attempting a
third expedition was derived from the peculiarly stormy and baffling
character of the sea at the Straits of Dover. Each of his expeditions
had been endangered and all but ruined by these unaccountable tides,
these suddenly rising gales. He had to learn by bitter experience how
different was that strange chopping sea from the peaceful waters of the
Mediterranean. Had he been able to survey the channel more thoroughly,
he would probably have found it worth while to make his passage at
a broader part of it, like that which now separates Newhaven from
Dieppe; perhaps even to anticipate the Saxon chieftains of the fifth
century, to occupy the Isle of Wight, or to seek for his fleet the
shelter of Southampton Water. After all, however, a sufficient reason
for not renewing the attempt to conquer Britain was to be found in the
precarious state of Roman dominion in Gaul. Cæsar evidently thought
that his work in that country was practically finished in B.C. 55,
when he first set his face towards Britain. Far otherwise: the hardest
part of that work was yet to come. Five months after Cæsar’s return
from his second expedition he heard the terrible tidings of the utter
destruction of fifteen Roman cohorts by the Eburones. Then followed
the revolt of Vercingetorix, bravest and most successful of Gaulish
champions; the unsuccessful siege of Gergovia; the siege, successful
but terribly hard to accomplish, of Alesia. Certainly we may say that
the two years and a half which followed his return from Britain were
among the most anxious, and seemed sometimes the most desperate stages
in all that wonderful career which ended when, ten years after he had
sailed away from Britain, he fell pierced by more than twenty dagger
wounds--
E’en at the base of Pompey’s statua,
Which all the while ran blood.
NOTE
ON CÆSAR’S POINTS OF ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE IN HIS EXPEDITIONS TO
BRITAIN.
I. As to the point of embarkation from Gaul, the controversy lies
principally between Boulogne and Wissant, Sir George Airy’s suggestion
that Cæsar sailed from the estuary of the Somme being not easy to
reconcile with his own statement that he went to the country of the
Morini, “because thence was the shortest transit to Britain”.
Boulogne, which was called by the Romans first Gesoriacum and then
Bononia, was undoubtedly the regular harbour for passengers to Britain
under the empire, and there would be little doubt that Cæsar started
thence if he had not told us that the second expedition (presumably
also the first) sailed from Portus Itius. It is not clear why Cæsar
should have called Gesoriacum by any other name.
The advocates of Wissant identify the Itian promontory with Cape Gris
Nez, well known to all passengers from Dover to Calais, and think that
its name would be naturally shared with the neighbouring village of
Wissant, which was probably at one time nearer to the sea than it is
now. On the whole, though the arguments on both sides are pretty evenly
balanced, those in favour of Wissant seem slightly to preponderate.
II. Sailing, then, from some port in Picardy (either Boulogne or
Wissant), Cæsar reached a part of the British coast which from his
description looks like the chalk cliffs west of Dover. So far there
is not much difference between the commentators, but what happened
in the afternoon when, after his long halt, he found the wind and
tide both in his favour, gave the signal to weigh anchor, and “having
advanced (_progressus_) about eight miles from that place, brought his
ships to a stand at a level and open beach”? Certainly the natural
rendering of these words would seem to be that he went seven English
miles up channel, and so if he had really anchored off Dover he would
reach Deal, and that port would be, as it has been generally supposed
to be, the scene of the world-historical landing of the first Roman
soldiers in Britain. It must be admitted, however, that there are great
difficulties in this hypothesis. The most careful and minute inquiries
that have been made seem to show that on that day (the fourth before
the full moon) and at that hour (3 P.M.), the tide, if it ebbed and
flowed as it does now, would be setting down, not up, the channel: and
accordingly many authors have come to the conclusion that Cæsar sailed
westward for those seven miles and landed either at Hythe or Lymne
(well known afterwards to the Romans as Portus Lemanis), or possibly at
some such place as Appledore, now inland but then at the head of a very
sheltered bay.
The discussion is much complicated by the undoubted fact of the great
changes which have taken place in that part of the coastline, and Dr.
Guest is perhaps entitled to argue that these changes may have so
altered the set of the tides as to allow him to postulate an eastward
flowing tide when Cæsar weighed anchor in the afternoon. It must,
however, remain for the present a disputed question: Cæsar’s word,
“_progressus_,” on the one side, the present course of the tides on the
other. On the whole it seems to me that the balance of probability is
slightly in favour of Deal.
Among the authors who have written on this question may be mentioned
Airy, Lewin, Appach, in favour of some port west of Dover; Long,
Merivale, Guest, in favour of Deal. Guest’s arguments are perhaps
the most satisfactory, but justice should be done to the extremely
painstaking little treatise of Appach (_Caius Julius Cæsar’s British
Expeditions_, etc., 1868), who, however, surely attempts the impossible
in his elaborate back-calculations of the winds and tides of two
thousand years ago.
On the question of the point of departure from Gaul, reference may
be made to T. R. Holmes’s _Conquest of Gaul_ (London, 1899) and to
F. Haverfield’s review of that book in _English Historical Review_,
xviii., 334–6.