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.
But it would seem that Airy was not quite convinced of the soundness of his own reasoning. ‘If,’ he says, ‘any reader thinks that the reasons for excluding the Portus Itius from the land of the Morini are not sufficiently cogent, the whole is easily reconciled with the hypothesis that the Portus Itius was the mouth of the Somme by supposing that in the time of Caesar the Morini stretched south-west of the Somme ... the geography which limits their territory to the north of the Somme is 120 years later. Any one who reflects on the change of boundary of Russia, of Prussia, of Turkey, and of other European States, within a period of much less than 120 years, will find no difficulty in admitting this change in the limits of the Morini.’[2736]
It is sufficient to answer that there is no analogy between the political history of Europe in the earlier half of the nineteenth century and that of Gaul in the 120 years that followed the invasion of Britain by Caesar. The Gallic peoples during that period were not at war with one another; and there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the Morini possessed a wider seaboard in Caesar’s time than 120 years later. Lewin’s reply to Airy is worth quoting[2737]:—‘He offers, as a solution of the difficulty, that in the time of Caesar the Morini stretched south-west of the Somme. If so, then the Somme itself, from which Caesar sailed, and to which he returned, was, according to the Astronomer-Royal, in the country of the Morini; and yet, a few lines before, the Astronomer-Royal had stated that the order (after Caesar’s second return) for legions to march into the country of the Morini made it certain that he was not in their country! Thus to avoid Scylla, it is laid down, as certain that Caesar did not sail from the Morini; and then, to avoid Charybdis, the reader is invited to assume that the place of embarkation was amongst the Morini.’
Finally, Airy affirms that the mouth of the Somme was by far the best harbour which Caesar could have selected, and that its capability for his purpose ‘is proved by the ... experience of William of Normandy, who at one tide floated out of it 1400 ships’.[2738]
Now William the Conqueror assembled his fleet and embarked his army not in the mouth of the Somme but in the mouth of the Dive:[2739] he was merely obliged, as Lewin says,[2740] ‘to take temporary shelter ... at the mouth of the Somme.’ But this blunder is of no great consequence. The Somme might have served Caesar’s purpose if only it had not been twice as far from that part of Britain to which he intended to go as Boulogne.