VII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT PEVENSEY
The two distinguished advocates of the theory that Caesar landed at Pevensey are not in complete accord. Airy holds that he sailed both in 55 and in 54 B.C. from the mouth of the Somme;[3001] Professor Ridgeway from Wissant.[3002] It has been proved in my article on the Portus Itius that he started from Boulogne; and whoever accepts that proof will, perhaps, skip this section. I am willing, however, for the sake of argument, to accept in turn both Airy’s identification of the Portus Itius and that of Professor Ridgeway: but I may remark that when Airy wrote he had forgotten that in Caesar’s time there was a natural harbour at Pevensey;[3003] and if Caesar had landed in a harbour he would not have left the fact unnoticed.
If we are to accept the premiss on which Airy himself lays so much stress, namely, that in 55 B.C. the tidal currents in the Channel, at any given period of the moon’s age, were the same as they are now, Caesar did not land at Pevensey. Airy, as we have seen, assumes that Caesar landed, in 55 B.C., on the third day before the full moon, and, appealing to the authority of Sir F. W. Beechey, he affirms that, off Hastings, the current turns westward five miles from the coast two hours later than it does close inshore. ‘If,’ he concludes, ‘we suppose Caesar to have first attempted the neighbourhood of St. Leonards, the tide, which a few miles from shore had turned to the west at 11 h., was, at 3 h., running in full stream to the west.’[3004] But, in order to prop up his theory, Airy is forced to place Caesar’s anchorage at five nautical or nearly six statute miles from the shore. To prove that such an assumption is absurd, it is only necessary to say that, at a distance of five nautical miles, Caesar could not have seen the armed men who, as he tells us,[3005] were swarming upon the cliffs, without the assistance of a powerful telescope.[3006] Lewin[3007] rightly concludes that Caesar must have anchored within a mile from the shore, at the outside, and probably within half a mile. Now high water at Dover on the 27th of August, 55 B.C., occurred at 7.42, and therefore at Hastings at 7.23 a.m.[3008] But off Hastings, within a mile from the shore, the current turns westward about the time of high tide,[3009] runs westward for about six hours and a half, and then runs eastward for about six hours. At 3 p.m., therefore, on the 27th of August, the tide off Hastings would have been running eastward, and would have continued to do so until about 7.50 p.m. And on the 28th of August, which Airy wrongly assumes to have been the day of Caesar’s landing, the tide off Hastings would have turned eastward about 2.53 p.m., and would have continued to run in that direction until about 8.53. Consequently, on the theory of the tides which Airy himself so strenuously maintains, it would have been impossible for Caesar to sail with the tide from Hastings or from St. Leonards to Pevensey.[3010] Even on Airy’s assumption that Caesar anchored five nautical miles from the shore, his theory cannot stand: he can only make a show of propping it up by assuming that Caesar landed on the 28th of August. On the 27th, the stream would have turned westward at about 9.30 a.m., and would have ceased running westward about 4 p.m. Therefore, even supposing that Caesar started on his seven miles’ sail in the ninth hour,[3011] he would have done so on the very last of the tidal stream, when it was barely moving; and it would have turned against him before he had half finished his voyage.
Very wisely, from his own point of view—for his silence has hitherto passed unnoticed—Airy ignored Caesar’s account of the voyage of his cavalry transports. Some of them, as we have seen, were ‘swept down in great peril’ (magno suo cum periculo deicerentur[3012]), evidently running before the gale, ‘to the lower and more westerly part of the island’ (ad inferiorem partem insulac quae est propius solis occasum[3013]): the others were carried back to the port from which they had started. That port, according to Airy, was the mouth of the Authie. The gale evidently blew from about the north-east; but, in order to give Airy the fullest latitude, I will assume that it was from the north-north-east, although in either case the ships which ran before the wind, once they had got under the lee of Beachy Head, would have been in smooth water! The course which the transports would have had to steer for the Authie, if they had been sighted off Pevensey, would have been SE. by E. 2° S., or within less than nine points of the wind. But in the gale they could hardly have made less than four points of lee-way.[3014] Therefore, in order to reach their supposed destination, they would have been obliged to lie within less than five points of the wind, which they could not have done.[3015] ‘No!’ said the harbour-master of Dover to me, after he had studied the chart, ‘No! they would have fetched Dieppe.’[3016] I have assumed that they could work to windward: if they could not, it is self-evident that they could not have returned to the mouth of the Authie.
But if any one is not convinced, let him hear Airy plead his own cause.
1. Airy argues that Volusenus would never have recommended Caesar to land under the cliffs of Dover, or at any point under the cliffs between Folkestone and Hythe. ‘No commander,’ he says, ‘would steer ships to a mural cliff three hundred feet high, with the intention of landing in order to invade the country; nor would any defenders station themselves there to repel an invasion; nor could a “telum” be thrown with any aim. But a daring officer might steer to a less perpendicular cliff, ten to thirty feet high, with the intention of forcing a landing.... Such are the cliffs between Hastings and Pevensey; and I conclude that they answer exactly to Caesar’s description.’ Assuming that the cliffs off which Caesar anchored, when he first approached the British coast, were in the neighbourhood of St. Leonards, Airy affirms that ‘the run of eight[3017] miles would bring him to the beach of Pevensey, answering perfectly to his description’.[3018]
Now whether Caesar did or did not steer towards ‘a mural cliff three hundred feet high’, he certainly anchored off cliffs which he calls ‘precipitous heights’ (angusti montes); and Airy makes too great a demand upon our credulity when he requires us to believe that Caesar described by the words angusti montes a ‘cliff ten to thirty feet high’. So much for the theory that Caesar anchored off the clifflets of St. Leonards:[3019] the argument that he could not have anchored off the cliffs of Dover shall be considered in its proper place. The reader has of course already observed that Volusenus, being a sane man, would never have recommended Caesar to ‘force a landing’ under any cliffs, great or small.
2. Airy argues that the Britons would naturally have assembled at Pevensey in order to oppose Caesar’s landing, because ‘Pevensey was the weakest point of Britain’.[3020] No! replies Lewin, Pevensey was not then the weakest point; for it was ‘backed by the Andred Forest’.[3021] Airy[3022] triumphantly observes that William the Conqueror landed there; but Lewin[3023] rejoins that when William landed the forest presented less difficulty to an invader than in Caesar’s time, as the Romans and the Saxons must have made clearances. Be this as it may, it is certain that William did not attempt to march northward through the forest. He returned, immediately after his victory, to Hastings: from Hastings he marched eastward to Romney, and from Romney to Dover.[3024] He had his own reasons for landing at Pevensey: but Caesar, for reasons equally good, chose the shortest passage; and although, as I have shown,[3025] these words are not to be taken in an absolutely literal sense, they alone exclude the notion that Caesar landed in Sussex. Obviously it is in the last degree improbable that Volusenus would have reconnoitred the coast so far westward as Pevensey; nor could the Britons have expected that Caesar would be so foolish as to double the length of his voyage in order to land there.[3026]
3. Airy argued that, except on the hypothesis that Caesar landed at Pevensey, it is impossible to account for the long duration of his first voyage. His rate of sailing, said Airy, if, as Dr. Guest maintained, he had started from Wissant and anchored off the Dover cliffs, would not have exceeded two miles an hour. ‘When in Shetland,’ he adds, ‘I have sailed in one of the ordinary fishing-boats of the country, hoisting a single lug-sail ... with a pleasant, easy breeze (sometimes dying away), from Lerwick to the head of Balta Sound, in Unst, in about eight hours. The distance, as measured on the Admiralty Chart, exceeds forty nautical miles.’[3027]
This was one of Airy’s more plausible arguments; and it demands consideration. To begin with, it must be pointed out that Caesar did not, as Dr. Guest believed, sail from Wissant, but from Boulogne, which is more than seven nautical miles further from Dover. Airy assumed[3028] that Caesar’s first voyage lasted from midnight till 10 a.m. But it is impossible to say how long it lasted. Caesar does not say that he started at midnight: he says that he started ‘about the third watch’ (tertia fere vigilia); and the third watch lasted, on the night of the 25th-26th of August, from midnight till 2.32 a.m., on the night of the 26th-27th till 2.33 a.m.[3029] Nor does he say that he reached Britain at 10 a.m.; he says that he reached it ‘about the fourth hour of the day’, which lasted on the 26th of August from 8.33 to 9.42.[3030] As Mr. Peskett says, ‘the possible duration of the voyage lies between the extreme limits of 9 h. 40′ and 6 hours.’[3031] Split the difference, and you will find that the average rate of sailing would have been about three knots and a half per hour. The answer to Airy’s argument is that Caesar’s narrative is quite consistent with the view that his ships may have remained for some time anchored off the Gallic coast in the expectation that the cavalry transports would sail out of Ambleteuse harbour to join them; and, further, that the wind may have shifted to an unfavourable quarter before the voyage was at an end.[3032]
4. Airy[3033] maintains that a river corresponding with Caesar’s description of the one on the banks of which he defeated the Britons on the day after his second landing,[3034] is to be found in the neighbourhood of Pevensey, and of Pevensey only. That river, he says, was the Rother, and the scene of the victory was Robertsbridge. He produces evidence to show that if Rye Sluice were broken, ‘the whole valley at Robertsbridge would now become a great tidal morass.’ This, he continues, ‘was its state in the age of Caesar, and it must have been a very formidable defence against an army advancing from the coast.’
Undoubtedly; so formidable that it would have been absolutely impassable. How Caesar’s cavalry succeeded in forcing their way over this ‘great tidal morass’ Airy omits to explain. If he had studied Caesar’s description[3035] of the much less formidable morass over which his ablest marshal, Labienus, tried in vain to construct a causeway, and from which he was obliged to retreat, he would hardly have made Caesar attempt to cross ‘a great tidal morass’ in the face of an enemy.
Caesar, as we have seen, descried at daybreak, on his second voyage, the coast of Britain ‘lying behind on the left’;[3036] and if these words mean, as all commentators except Airy and Professor Ridgeway maintain, that he had drifted to some point east or north-east of the South Foreland, they alone dispose of Airy’s theory. Airy of course saw this; and accordingly he put his own construction upon the passage. ‘I cannot conceive,’ he says,[3037] ‘that the expression refers to any direction but to that of the drift; it asserts that, in reference to the direction of tidal current, the coast was on the left hand. It is therefore indecisive as to place.’
Lewin, in his reply,[3038] overlooked one consideration, which by itself overthrows Airy’s interpretation. If, as Airy would have us believe, Caesar’s vessel had not drifted as far east as Dover, she was, owing to the direction of the current, moving parallel with the British coast.[3039] How, then, could Caesar, in the case supposed by Airy, have said that he saw Britain ‘lying behind on the left’ (sub sinistra relictam)?
The theory that Caesar landed at Pevensey is irreconcilable with the fact that the four chieftains who attacked his naval camp in 54 B.C. belonged not to Sussex but to Kent.[3040] Airy endeavoured to answer this objection by the remark that the men of Kent were more numerous than those of Sussex, and would therefore have gone to the assistance of their countrymen.[3041] But, replied Lewin,[3042] ‘as the men of Kent were distinct from the Regni, or men of Sussex, the natural inference to be drawn from the assault of the camp by the men of Kent surely is that the camp was in Kent.’ I may point out further that, considering the state of internecine war in which the Britons habitually lived, and which was only suspended for the time under the pressure of a common danger,[3043] it is not credible that the men of Kent would have consented to make a long march away from their own territory in order to undertake an operation which would have properly devolved upon another tribe, and unlikely that they would have been sufficiently well organized to feed their army during a march of such duration.
The distance between the mouth of the Somme, which Airy identifies with the Portus Itius, and St. Leonards, where he maintains that Caesar first reached Britain, is, as he himself says,[3044] ‘about 52 nautical miles,’ that is to say, rather more than 65 Roman miles: the distance between the Portus Itius and Britain, according to Caesar’s estimate,[3045] was about 30 Roman miles. To say nothing of this glaring discrepancy, Caesar’s account of his return voyage from Britain to Gaul in 54 B.C. presents a difficulty which taxed all Airy’s ingenuity to explain away. Caesar[3046] tells us that he started in the second watch in a dead calm (summa tranquillitate), and reached Gaul at daybreak. Naturally the opponents of Airy’s theory insist that to cross from Pevensey to the mouth of the Somme in this time would have been impossible.
But Airy is never so confident as when he has to defend an untenable position. He roundly asserts that his critics do not understand Caesar’s language. Summa tranquillitas, he tells them, does not mean ‘a dead calm’: it means ‘a stiff north-west wind’. Professor Thompson, he informs us, assured him that a favourable wind ‘is compatible with a “tranquillum mare”’; and he refers, in support of this view, to a passage in one of Cicero’s letters,[3047]—‘I am forced to wait for fair weather owing to the open ships ... of the Rhodians’ (Nos Rhodiorum aphractis ceterisque longis navibus tranquillitates aucupaturi eramus). He also appeals to two passages in Vergil:— placidi straverunt aequora venti, Creber et adspirans rursus vocat Auster in altum,[3048] and postquam alta quierunt Aequora, tendit iter velis portumque relinquit.[3049] ‘It appears to me,’ he observes, ‘that Virgil’s idea of circumstances favourable to navigation always implied the co-existence of brisk wind and smooth water.’ The idea that Caesar’s fleet was rowed across the Channel he scouts as ridiculous. ‘If,’ he adds, ‘with smooth water there had been a brisk breeze, the steerage would have been good ... the voyage would have been easy ... we have only to suppose a stiff north-west wind, capable of carrying the ships 7 or 8 miles an hour.’[3050]
Now as to the first of these passages, the context shows that Cicero had been weatherbound by the violence of the trade winds; and he uses the word tranquillitates in the sense of ‘fine weather’ in contrast with these.[3051] His vessels were undecked; and therefore he could not venture to set sail in a rough sea. It can hardly be inferred from this passage, which Airy does not understand, that summa tranquillitas means ‘a stiff north-west wind’. The first passage quoted from Vergil simply says that gentle winds (placidi venti—an expression by no means identical with summa tranquillitas) stilled the sea, and that then a southerly wind invited Aeneas to set sail: the second tells us that Aeneas set sail after the cessation of a storm. If Cicero does not imply that summa tranquillitas means ‘a stiff north-west wind’, neither does Vergil. If Airy had really known his authorities, he would have called to mind the passage in which Cicero[3052] relates, in language virtually identical with that of Caesar, that he was prevented from sailing by ‘an astonishingly dead calm’ (mirae tranquillitates). And if he had known his Caesar, he would have thought of the passage[3053] which tells how the ships of the Veneti were becalmed in their fight with Decimus Brutus,—‘suddenly there was a dead calm, and they could not stir’ (tanta subito malacia ac tranquillitas exstitit ut se ex loco commovere non possent). If tanta tranquillitas means ‘such a dead calm’, as it assuredly does, it is not easy to see how summa tranquillitas can mean ‘a stiff north-west wind’. If these passages do not fix the meaning of summa tranquillitas, we may dispense with further research.[3054]
I confess that I do not know whether more to admire the audacity and resource which Airy displayed in controversy, or the sublime lack of humour which permitted him to translate summa tranquillitas by ‘a stiff north-west wind’.
So much for the late Astronomer Royal. If I do not ignore the arguments of Professor Ridgeway, it is because I am unwilling to appear wanting in due respect for his reputation. But I would ask him to explain one little difficulty which he has left unnoticed,—namely, how Caesar’s cavalry transports could have contrived to return, as, on his theory, they must have done, from a point near Pevensey to Sangatte, that is to say, to steer E. 9° N. in the teeth of a gale which unquestionably blew from some point east of north? Let the professor consult any seafaring man, and he will learn that such a feat would have been absolutely, absurdly impossible.
1. Professor Ridgeway labours to show that the distance of Pevensey from Wissant corresponds with the distance, as stated by Caesar, of Britain from the Portus Itius. He assures us that, according to certain MSS. (which, however, he does not specify), that distance was not ‘about thirty’, but ‘about forty miles’ (circiter milium passuum XXXX....a continenti[3055]).
It is surprising that so distinguished a scholar should have committed himself to a statement which five minutes’ search in any critical edition of the Commentaries would have shown to be unfounded. The MSS. to which he appeals have no existence; or, if they exist, they have never come to light.[3056] But, as I have already shown, on other grounds,[3057] Caesar may have written XXXX; so let Professor Ridgeway have the benefit of the doubt, though I need hardly say that the distance of Pevensey, and even of Bexhill, from Wissant is much more than forty Roman miles.
2. The professor then invokes the authority of Dion Cassius. ‘If,’ he argues, ‘Caesar, on coming into the land of the Morini, found, as Dio says, that all the landing places opposite the continent were held by Britons, by which he evidently means the landing places in the narrow part of the Channel, would Caesar obstinately persist in crossing at the narrowest spot, or like a wise general seek for a more suitable, although more distant landing place?’ This view, he pleads, is supported by the fact that Caesar describes the passage from the Portus Itius not as the shortest, but simply as the most convenient (commodissimus).[3058]
Mr. H. E. Malden makes the obvious reply that Caesar did not, in point of fact, avoid the landing-places in question for the reason suggested by Professor Ridgeway; for ‘he landed in the teeth of a British army’.[3059] Moreover, as we have already seen, Caesar tells us that he sailed from the coast of the Morini ‘because the shortest passage to Britain was from their country’.
3. The professor contends that his theory is supported by Caesar’s account of his voyage in 54 B.C. Mr. Malden[3060] told him that Caesar could not have sailed from Wissant [or, as he ought to have said, from Boulogne] to Pevensey with a south-west wind;[3061] and that, since the tide must have carried him in 54 B.C. at least as far as the South Foreland,[3062] it would have been impossible for his men to row to Pevensey—a distance of fifty-five miles—between dawn and noon, that is to say in less than nine hours. The professor replied to the former objection that Caesar ‘evidently sailed, not direct for Pevensey, but rather across Channel’.[3063] The reply was as true as it was futile; but it was true only because Caesar was bound, not for Pevensey but for East Kent. Mr. Malden’s second objection the professor endeavoured to rebut by the following arguments:—First, that as Caesar’s men began to row at 3 a.m.,[3064] continued rowing till noon, and had the tide in their favour for the first six hours, they could, if necessary, have rowed fifty-five miles in nine hours. Secondly, that fifty-five miles is an excessive estimate; and that the actual distance was not more than thirty-nine; for accessum est ad Britanniam[3065] [the words by which Caesar describes the arrival of his fleet] ‘seems to denote nothing more than what he expressed by the words Britanniam attigit[3066] in the story of the former voyage. But,’ continues the professor, ‘he did not land at all at the place where he Britanniam attigit, but dropped down with the tide seven miles further. Moreover, Caesar does not say that he made for the very spot where he had landed before, but simply remis contendit ut eam partem insulae caperet qua optimum esse egressum superiore aestate cognoverat[3067] [“rowed hard to gain the part of the island where, as he had learned in the preceding summer, it was best to land”]. The high cliffs formed his landmark.’ The professor is presumably referring to the cliffs eight miles east of Pevensey, which, as Airy points out, are ‘from ten to thirty feet high’: these cliffs would evidently have made a most conspicuous ‘landmark’. However, the professor contrives to reduce the length of the voyage by eight miles at one end: he curtails it at the other by simply denying, like Airy, that when Caesar ‘saw Britain lying behind on the left’, he had drifted past the South Foreland. He insists that Caesar ‘might use the word relictam [‘left behind’] when, instead of finding himself close to the shore of Britain, he discovered that, between the course he had sailed and the way he had drifted, he had moved away from Britain’.[3068] This remark only shows that the professor did not know what was the direction of the flood tide. Unless Caesar had got past the South Foreland by the time when he ‘saw Britain lying behind on the left’, the tide had not carried him ‘away from Britain’.
The professor’s argument comes to this. He says that Caesar’s men rowed as hard as they could; that they could have rowed fifty-five miles in nine hours, but that they only did row thirty-nine! He asks us to believe that they rowed fifty-five miles in nine hours, though, on his own showing, the tide was against them for one-third of that time![3069] Finally, when he argues that because Caesar did not land in 55 B.C. at the point where he Britanniam attigit, therefore he did not land in 54 B.C. at the point where accessum est ad Britanniam, he forgets two things:—first, that Caesar distinctly says that in 55 B.C. he sailed on seven miles from the point where he first Britanniam attigit, whereas all commentators except Professor Ridgeway have drawn from Caesar’s narrative the inevitable inference that in 54 B.C. he landed at the point where accessum est ad Britanniam; secondly, that the Britons expected him to land in 54 B.C. at the point where accessum est ad Britanniam, for ‘large forces had assembled there’ (magnae manus eo convenissent). Does the professor seriously mean to argue that if Caesar had landed elsewhere, he would not have said so?[3070]
Not a single argument of the least weight has been or can be adduced to show that Caesar landed at Pevensey or anywhere on the coast of Sussex.[3071] On the other hand, there is not a single objection which has here been brought against that theory which is not alone sufficient to overthrow it. The truth is that Airy, with all his scientific knowledge and controversial skill, was not adequately equipped to discuss the question: his classical scholarship left much to be desired; and, having once committed himself to the preposterous theory that the Portus Itius was in the estuary of the Somme, he was forced to look for Caesar’s landing-place far to the west of that part of Britain in which Caesar’s narrative inevitably places it. To that part of Britain our inquiry must henceforth be confined. Whether Caesar landed east or west of the cliffs of Dover, he landed in Kent.