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The greater part of the vast literature which has accumulated on the question of the identity of the Portus Itius is obsolete;[2665] and it is now sometimes taken for granted that the choice is restricted to Wissant and Boulogne.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.