Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

VIII. THE THEORY THAT CAESAR LANDED AT LYMPNE OR HYTHE

The most dexterous advocate of the theory that Caesar landed on Romney Marsh was Thomas Lewin; and it says a great deal for his persuasiveness that not one of his critics appears to have detected the inconsistencies with which his work abounds. Those which vitiate his argument, in so far as it relates to the tides, I have mentioned already.[3072] The rest all spring from one and the same source. When Lewin wrote his book, he adopted a theory as to the configuration of Romney Marsh which, after obtaining what he considered ‘more accurate information’,[3073] he discarded. This information he embodied in an appendix to his second edition; but at the same time he allowed the statements based upon his former researches to stand. Thus on page 65, note 4, he implies that ‘the heart of the marsh’ was inhabited; but in his preface (pages v-vi) he affirms that ‘the eastern end of the Marsh where Caesar arrived was as much terra firma in his day as in our own’, virtually admitting, as the context and the map which faces page liii alike show, that the rest was inundated at every high tide. On page 92 he says that ‘the sea, as is proved incontestably by the fragments of ships and anchors which have been dug up, flowed to the very base of the hill, and formed there the port of Limne. Stutfall [castle], therefore, was formed for the protection of the shipping.’ On pages lxviii and lxix the incontestable proof is not only contested but flung to the winds: ‘the fragments of ships and anchors’ are silently annihilated; Stutfall Castle, it now appears, ‘was for the protection, not of the port, but of Saxonicum littus’; and the ‘Portus Limanis’ (sic) becomes a ‘narrow gut’, extending from a point near Shorncliffe to West Hythe behind a bank of shingle broken by a narrow entrance nearly opposite Hythe. In an article which Lewin contributed to the fortieth volume of Archaeologia he remarks that if the Portus Lemanis had been at the foot of Lympne Hill, ‘we should expect to find some vestiges, however faint, of the port itself’: but, he adds, ‘I have never heard or read (though I have often inquired) that any remnant of a pier or sunken vessel, or even any anchor or other part of a ship’s tackle, was ever discovered in this part.’[3074] Are we to infer, then, Mr. Lewin, that when you told us on page 92 of your book that ‘fragments of ships and anchors’ had been ‘dug up’ at the foot of the hill, you were romancing? On turning back to page 42, we find that the above-mentioned ‘narrow gut’ first came into existence in the time of the Saxons; but on page lxix we learn with bewilderment that it ‘must have continued such until the abandonment of Britain by the Romans or nearly so’. In the article which he contributed to Archaeologia Lewin changed his mind again. In the map which illustrates this article the ‘narrow gut’ extends no further westward than Hythe. On page 44 of the book we read that Caesar landed on ‘the western side’ of ‘the creek of Limne’ or ‘port of Limne’, the very existence of which the author’s later and ‘more accurate information’ led him to deny. On pages lxxii and lxxiv Caesar’s landing-place is silently transferred from ‘the western side’ of ‘the creek of Limne’ to Hythe. On page 44 two islands mentioned (according to Lewin) by Valerius Maximus are identified with ‘two islands’ depicted on ‘old maps’ of ‘the bay of Limne’: on page lxxiii we are asked to identify them with two ‘islands’ in the ‘narrow gut’ above mentioned.

The reader now understands that, according to the theory of the ancient configuration of Romney Marsh which Lewin adopted in his Appendix and illustrated in the map facing page liii of his book, it would have been impossible for Caesar to land opposite Lympne, because on that theory the marsh between Lympne Hill and the shingle beach was flooded by the sea at high tide. Nevertheless, I shall consider the arguments by which Lewin defended his original view—that Caesar landed opposite Lympne—because distinguished scholars still hold that there was a harbour there in Roman times.

When we come to examine Lewin’s final view—that Caesar landed at Hythe—we shall find some difficulty in doing justice to it; for he carefully avoids committing himself to any clear explanation of his meaning. If we look at his map[3075] of the ‘narrow gut’, which he believed to have extended from West Hythe to a point opposite Shorncliffe, we shall see that, on his theory, Caesar must have done one of two things. Either he must have landed on the shingle west of the mouth of the gut, or he must have landed on the shingle east of that mouth; for Lewin clearly gives us to understand that the Roman ships did not sail into the harbour.[3076] He maintains that on the day on which the first landing occurred a fierce struggle took place between the Romans and the Britons in ‘the field south of Hythe’.[3077] In order to reach this field, the Romans would have had to walk along the shingle either westward or eastward, and then along the northern shore of the ‘narrow gut’. But Caesar distinctly states that as soon as the Romans stood on dry land, that is to say, on Lewin’s own showing, on the shingle beach, they put the Britons to flight.[3078] What becomes, then, of the imaginary combat in ‘the field south of Hythe’? Furthermore, Lewin, while he is constrained to admit that this field is ‘below high-water mark’, assures us that it was ‘certainly dry at low water’.[3079] But he himself strenuously maintains that the Romans began to land three hours after low tide.[3080] Perhaps he was uneasily conscious that he had contradicted himself when he suggested that the Britons ‘would unquestionably have possessed the skill to embank the port and drain the land in the immediate neighbourhood’.[3081]

The theory that Caesar landed at or near Hythe involves another mystery, which Lewin does not attempt to clear up. Where was the camp which, in 54 B.C., Caesar linked by ‘a single defensive work’ (una munitione[3082]) with the ships which he found it necessary to haul up on dry land, and how was the defensive work constructed? Lewin tells us that the ships could not possibly have been drawn up opposite Shorncliffe, because the shore there ‘is rocky and precipitous’.[3083] Therefore, if the landing took place near Hythe, they must have been drawn up on the beach west of Shorncliffe, and on the seaward side of the ‘narrow gut’,—as he suggests, opposite Hythe. If so, of what was the ‘defensive work’ composed? Surely not of shingle? The entrenchments which a child constructs with his toy spade at Margate would have been just as effective. But if not of shingle, what other material was available on a shingle beach? And what was the direction of the ‘defensive work’ which connected the ships with the camp? Presumably the camp was on dry land behind the ‘narrow gut’, and constructed not of shingle but of earth. Now the entrenchment which protected the ships and connected them with this camp could hardly have been carried across the ‘narrow gut’, which was deeply submerged at every high tide! I can only suppose, then, that the connecting work was really constructed, by some occult process, of shingle; traced out along the shingle beach either eastward towards Shorncliffe, or westward to West Hythe Oaks, and then along the northern shore of the ‘narrow gut’ until it joined the camp. Or if, as Lewin suggests, the camp with which the ships were connected was distinct from the camp which Caesar marked out on an ‘advantageous position’ (loco idoneo[3084]) immediately after his second landing; and if, as he affirms,[3085] it ‘must have stood upon the seashore’, and its site ‘must long since have disappeared’; then it can only be concluded that camp and connecting work were both constructed of shingle!

Again, it is incredible that a gale which drove some of Caesar’s eighteen cavalry transports past Hythe or Lympne to a more westerly part of the island should have carried the rest back to the port from which they had started, which Lewin rightly identified with Ambleteuse. If the ships had been approaching Hythe when the storm arose, they would have been obliged, in order to return to Ambleteuse, to steer SE. by E. 9° S.[3086] Now Lewin himself maintains that the gale blew from the north-east.[3087] As a matter of fact, if it had blown from this quarter at Lympne or Hythe, it would have been practically innocuous; for off either of those places vessels would have been sheltered from it by the hills, and the transports which were driven westward would not have been, as they were, swept by the waves: if the gale had blown from the north-east off Walmer, its direction off Hythe would have been about east-north-east.[3088] Still, for the sake of argument, I will accept Lewin’s view. According to it, the ships would have been forced to sail within less than eight points of the wind. But in a heavy gale a ship will make as much as six points and a half of lee-way.[3089] Let us reduce this estimate to four, which is certainly a liberal reduction.[3090] It follows that the hapless transports would have been required, in order to reach their destination, to lie within less than four points of the wind, a feat which, I need hardly say, would have been utterly impossible.[3091] Furthermore, Lewin affirms, in an unguarded moment, that the gale, when a few hours later it wrecked Caesar’s ships as they rode at anchor, was still blowing from the north-east: but he does not explain how a north-easterly gale could have driven ashore, that is to say, driven in a northerly direction, ships anchored off Lympne or Hythe!

Such are a few of the absurdities in which Lewin’s theory plunges him. However, he shall be heard in his own defence.

The argument upon which Lewin lays the most stress has been already refuted.[3092] He maintains that at the time when Caesar, on the day of his first voyage, quitted his anchorage and sailed with the stream to the spot where he was to land, the stream must have been running down the Channel.[3093] Let us assume, in order to allow more than its due weight to his argument, that Caesar must have weighed anchor as early as 3.30 p.m.,[3094] though I shall afterwards prove that the assumption is both unnecessary and false; and let us also suppose that the tide did not actually turn eastward until after 5 p.m. Even then, unless Caesar could have calculated the exact time which it had still to run with more than the certainty of the experts who prepare the Admiralty Tide Tables, he would have had to face the risk that, before he could reach his landing-place, it might turn against him. Even if Heller[3095] is not right in interpreting the words ‘getting wind and tide simultaneously in his favour’ (et ventum et aestum uno tempore nactus secundum) as meaning that Caesar weighed anchor just after the stream had turned, there can be no doubt that this would have been the wisest course to pursue.

1. Having disposed, to his own satisfaction, of the question of the tides, Lewin remarks that ‘Hythe would be much nearer than Deal, and was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’.[3096]

Yes, nearer by a bare two miles, and a few yards nearer than Walmer! But, as Lewin himself insists,[3097] Caesar, when he sailed from Boulogne, did not intend to land either at Hythe or at Deal; and unless he intended to sail direct to one of those places, Lewin’s argument collapses. Moreover, since the greater part of the voyage was made upon the easterly-going stream, it would have taken longer to sail to Hythe than to the coast between Walmer and Deal. And when Lewin affirms that Hythe ‘was the natural port for vessels from Boulogne’, he apparently forgets that he has already told us that ‘Folkestone ... would be the natural port for Boulogne’,[3098] that Caesar’s fleet never entered Hythe harbour, and that ‘the mooring of the Roman vessels within it would be certain destruction’.[3099]

2. Lewin attempts to show that the wind which carried Caesar from Boulogne to his anchorage on his first voyage, and which would, if it had continued, have been in his favour if he had intended to sail on towards Deal, veered round before he quitted his anchorage.[3100] His argument runs as follows:—‘Caesar says that he started from his anchorage ... having got the wind in his favour, and the Latin word nactus implies that the wind had undergone a change.... When he embarked at Boulogne he despatched the cavalry to Ambleteuse ... with orders to follow him with all haste; but ... they did not leave that haven for Britain until the fourth day after,[3101] and no plausible reason can be given for this except that, for the whole of this interval, the wind was contrary; that is ... had shifted.’ In a later passage[3102] he maintains that if the wind had not shifted during the voyage, the length of the passage, and especially the tardy arrival of the transports, would be inexplicable. Moreover, he says, the word nactus ‘implies a change either in the wind or the tide: the tide had not changed, and therefore the change alluded to must have been in the wind’.[3103] While, however, he argues that the wind must have shifted, he endeavours to secure his retreat by affirming that, if it had not shifted, Caesar could nevertheless have sailed to Hythe as easily as to Deal. ‘Supposing,’ he says,[3104] ‘the wind to have blown from the south, it would have been favourable to a movement, from a point opposite Dover, either to the east or west.’

I freely admit—indeed I have myself maintained—that the wind had shifted during the voyage. It had shifted to a point unfavourable, or comparatively unfavourable, to ships sailing from North-Eastern Gaul to Britain. I also, like Lewin, maintain that it shifted again before Caesar quitted his anchorage. The fact is obvious. But what then? How can Lewin prove that before Caesar quitted his anchorage the wind did not shift to a quarter which would have been favourable to a run from a point off the cliffs of Dover towards Deal? Moreover, it is not true that if the wind had ‘blown from the south, it would have been favourable to a movement, from a point opposite Dover, either to the east or west’. If the wind had blown exactly from the south, it would certainly not have been called favourable to a movement from a point opposite Dover to Hythe, that is to say, within less than seven points of the wind; and if the wind had blown from any point west of south, the word ‘favourable’ would have been still less appropriate.[3105]

3. Lewin maintains that the wisest course which Caesar could have pursued when he sailed on from his anchorage in 55 B.C. would have been to steer westward. ‘Let us first consider,’ he says,[3106] ‘a priori, what a prudent commander might be expected to do under similar circumstances.... To the right he would see the precipitous chalk cliffs stretching away ... till they terminated at the South Foreland.... The lowlands about Walmer and Deal would not be visible; and it is at least doubtful whether Volusenus had included them in his survey ... tracing the line of cliffs westward, he could not fail to see that they terminated at Sandgate, and that a broad level plain there succeeded.’ At Hythe, he adds, there was a landing-place ‘distinctly visible from his moorings’.[3107]

This argument rests upon the absolutely groundless assumption that Volusenus had not reconnoitred the coast on the north of the South Foreland;[3108] in other words, that Volusenus, whom Caesar specially selected as a thoroughly competent man, had grossly neglected his duty and disobeyed his instructions. Besides, even if the landing-place at Hythe had been ‘distinctly visible’ from Caesar’s moorings,[3109] nothing would have been gained; for Caesar acted, not upon what he could see, but, as he tells us himself,[3110] upon what he had learned from the report of Volusenus. Whether he could or could not see ‘from his moorings’ the place where he was to land, he knew the direction in which he intended to sail. Finally, when Lewin considers ‘a priori’ that ‘a prudent commander might be expected under similar circumstances’ to land at Hythe or Lympne, he only advertises his own ignorance of a commander’s business. As I shall show presently,[3111] no commander who was not hopelessly incompetent would have dreamed, in the circumstances of ancient warfare, of attempting to land either at Hythe or at Lympne.

4. Lewin contends in his text that at Lympne and in his appendix that at Hythe there was a landing-place which exactly corresponded with Caesar’s description; and he denies that any such landing-place exists at Deal. He affirms[3112] that the shore on the western side of ‘the creek of Lympne’ was ‘apertum or open, for the heights to the north were at least a mile distant. The sea-beach was also molle or soft ... in a sailor’s sense, i.e. it consisted of shingle, than which nothing can be more favourable to the security of vessels.... Sand, on the contrary, is, in naval phraseology, of the hardest kind, as it has no “give”, and a ship beating against it would soon be dashed to pieces.’ He says that, according to Lucan,[3113] Plutarch,[3114] and Dion Cassius,[3115] there was ‘marshy ground’ at the place where Caesar landed, and he assures us that marshes were formed by the streams which entered the port of Hythe.[3116] He remarks that, according to Valerius Maximus,[3117] there were two small islands near the landing-place, which were the scene of an exploit performed by one of Caesar’s centurions: ‘on looking,’ he says, ‘at the old maps of this part of the coast, I find ... that the bay of Limne contained ... two islands.’ Like other people who had learned to measure the trustworthiness of Valerius Maximus, Lewin had himself been sceptical about the anecdote of the centurion; but how could he resist the testimony of the ‘old maps’? He admits that he was converted:—‘the circumstance, so apocryphal before, becomes thus no inconsiderable argument for placing the descent in this locality.’[3118] Afterwards he changes his mind, and transfers the islands some distance to the east of Lympne. They actually existed, he tells us, a few years before the publication of his book, ‘either near to or in the ancient port of Hythe’; they also are depicted in various old maps; and they were ‘carted away’ by the late James Elliott, the engineer of Romney Marsh.[3119] Furthermore, he assures us[3120] that the incident described by Valerius Maximus is also noticed by Plutarch,[3121] who ‘lays the scene in sight of Caesar himself, and therefore close to the camp; and in a marsh or swamp, which, with the light afforded by the account of Valerius, must be taken to mean a lagoon subject to the alternations of the high and low tides’.

Now as to the exact meaning of the word apertum in the passage to which Lewin refers, the commentators are not agreed. While he insists that the beach on which he believes Caesar to have landed was ‘open’, because ‘the heights to the north were at least a mile distant’, Dr. Guest[3122] denies that they were ‘open’, because ‘there is a range of heights at no great distance’. According to Long,[3123] ‘“open” means that from the beach he could see into the country.’ Now any one who has read the Commentaries attentively will see that all these explanations are wrong. For in his narrative of the second expedition[3124] Caesar tells us that he ‘felt little anxiety for the ships, as he was leaving them at anchor on a nice open shore’[3125] (eo minus veritus navibus, quod in litore molli atque aperto deligatas ad ancoras relinquebat). If the explanations which I have quoted were correct, the word apertum in this passage would be irrelevant. Whether the ‘heights’ were ‘at no great distance’, or ‘from the beach Caesar could see into the country’, the security of the ships would not have been affected in the slightest degree. The word apertum does not describe the country near the shore: it describes the shore itself; and, as C. Schneider[3126] says, apertum litus means a shore free from such obstacles or dangers as rocks, boulders, and the like.[3127] But, even assuming that Lewin was right in his interpretation of the word apertum, this much is certain:—the existence of the heights to which he refers is alone sufficient to prove that Caesar did not land either at Lympne or at Hythe or at any point between those two places. This is a matter on which I confidently appeal to any military expert who has studied the records of ancient warfare. Caesar might no doubt have landed at Hythe without any extraordinary difficulty; but if he had been so foolish as to land there, he would have found that his difficulties were only beginning. Never, even when fighting against an uncivilized enemy, did he attempt to force his way up a hill if it was possible to avoid doing so.[3128] If he had landed either at Lympne or at Hythe, he could not have turned the line of heights which extends behind those two places: he could not have penetrated into the interior of the country unless he had passed them; and he could not have passed them except at a cost of life which the least experienced of his officers would have been too prudent to incur. Furthermore, however ‘open’ the country may have been on the western side of ‘the [imaginary] creek of Lympne’, he could not have landed there if, as Lewin admits,[3129] the country was under water at high tide.

The argument which Lewin bases upon the word mollis has no value; for he does not fully understand the meaning of the word. Mollis, in the passage which we are considering, simply means that the shore was one where the anchorage was good, and where the ships, if they were driven aground, would suffer comparatively little:[3130] it probably also implies that the shore was gently sloping.[3131] Moreover, even if the word mollis implied that the shore on which Caesar landed was composed of shingle, Lewin would not be justified in concluding that Caesar landed at Hythe or Lympne unless he could prove that no other shingle beach in Kent satisfied the requirements of Caesar’s narrative.

The statements of Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Plutarch, and Dion Cassius, upon which Lewin lays so much stress, are not really evidence at all; and if he had been a classical scholar, he would never have quoted them. Nor, indeed, was his scholarship sufficient to enable him to understand what they meant. The passage quoted from Lucan occurs in a rhetorical speech which he puts into the mouth of Pompey:— Rheni gelidis quod fugit ab undis Oceanumque vocans incerti stagna profundi Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis. Stagna of course simply denotes the English Channel, about which Lucan’s ideas were vague; and the point of the line is the suggestion that Caesar, in order to magnify the difficulties of his expedition, mendaciously described ‘the pools of a shifting sea’ as an ocean.[3132] As to Valerius Maximus, the idea of going to his collection of anecdotes for the details of Caesar’s military operations is really funny;[3133] but if he is to be counted an authority, he does not support Lewin’s theory, but overthrows it.[3134] Lewin[3135] insists that ‘the vada described by Valerius Maximus as caused by the flux and reflux of the tide are evidently the vada referred to by Caesar (iv, 26)’. Now ‘the vada referred to by Caesar’ were the shallow places of the shore on which he landed; and ‘the vada described by Valerius Maximus’ were, according to Lewin’s final view, in Hythe harbour. Yet Lewin emphatically denies that Caesar landed in Hythe harbour! Furthermore, Lewin assures us that the ‘islands’ of which Valerius Maximus speaks were composed of earth, and have been ‘carted away’. But Valerius Maximus says nothing about islands: the only island which he mentions is Britain. As to the marshes, Heller[3136] points out that Lewin is wrong in concluding from the narratives of Plutarch and Dion that the coast on which Caesar landed was marshy. Dion’s word τενάγη is simply his translation of Caesar’s vada, and means not ‘marshes’ but ‘shallows’.[3137] Plutarch, as the words εἰς τόπον ἑλώδη καὶ μεστὸν ὑδάτων (‘into a marshy place full of water’), which are explained by the following words ῥεύματα τελματώδη (‘marshy [or muddy] streams’), clearly show, was not speaking of a combat on the seashore, but of one which took place inland; and when Lewin identifies Plutarch’s ῥεύματα τελματώδη with Dion’s τενάγη, he simply exposes his own ignorance of Greek. Moreover, Plutarch is so deficient in accuracy and precision that his description of an incident of this kind is useless for the purpose of topographical identification.

There is, therefore, no evidence that there was any marshy ground at or near Caesar’s landing-place; and if there was, the fact does not prove that he landed at Hythe.[3138]

5. Lewin[3139] next proceeds to examine Caesar’s narrative of the events which followed his first disembarkation,—the hauling up of the galleys on dry land, the wreck caused by the storm which occurred on the night of the full moon, and the subsequent attack by the British charioteers. The whole account, he tells us, corresponds with the topography of Lympne and Hythe, but of no other place. The shingle field between Dymchurch Wall and Shorncliffe, being ‘sound and dry, without any mixture of ooze’, deserves Caesar’s epithet, aridum:[3140] the ‘steep place’ (declivis ac praeceps locus[3141]), down which the British chariots charged, is ‘in this part of the marsh on the north’; the spring tide, driven by ‘a strong south-east wind’, would have poured over the shingle, and waterlogged Caesar’s galleys. ‘It is a singular confirmation,’ says Lewin, ‘of our hypothesis of the debarcation at Romney Marsh that the range of high water is greater here than at any other point of the southern coast. At Dungeness, for example, the mean range is twenty-one feet three quarters, while at Deal it is only sixteen feet.’ Finally, he anticipates the objection that if Caesar had landed near Hythe, he would have moored his ships within Hythe harbour, and thereby avoided the destruction which overtook so many of them. He explains that ‘the narrow and winding gut which constituted the port’ was ‘little capable of receiving a fleet’, and that, ‘as it ... could only be entered and quitted at high water, and as its banks were lined by a hostile population, the mooring of the Roman vessels within it would be certain destruction,’ but ‘it would be highly useful for keeping up his communication with the Continent’.

That Caesar’s ships could have been hauled up on the shingle between Dymchurch Wall and Shorncliffe; that the said shingle might have been described as ‘aridum’; that a ‘steep place’ existed ‘in this part of the marsh on the north’;[3142] and that the tide, driven by ‘a strong south-easterly wind’, might have waterlogged Caesar’s ships if they had been drawn up on the beach at Hythe,—all these things may be admitted: but they avail nothing to establish Lewin’s theory unless he can prove that on the east coast of Kent there was no place which answered equally well to Caesar’s narrative; and it is amusing to find that in another passage[3143] he rightly insists that the wind which he here calls ‘south-easterly’ was ‘from the north-east’. The comparison which he makes between ‘the range of high water’ at Romney Marsh and at Deal is irrelevant; for I doubt whether he would have seriously maintained that a spring tide between Walmer and Deal, heightened by a storm, would have been insufficient to cause the damage which Caesar described.

The objection which Lewin anticipates, and waves aside, is not thereby disposed of. If the reader will examine Lewin’s map, he will see that Hythe harbour would have been amply large enough to accommodate Caesar’s fleet;[3144] and if it could only be entered at high water, the Portus Itius, according to Lewin himself,[3145] was in the same case. That Caesar would have landed close to a harbour which he afterwards found ‘highly useful’, without mentioning its existence, is, to say the least, unlikely. Moreover, Lewin omits to tell us in what respect Caesar could have found a harbour ‘highly useful’ even for ‘keeping up his communication with the Continent’, if the dispatch vessels which kept up the communication never entered the harbour; nor does he explain what would have been the use of their entering the harbour when, on his own showing, they could not have remained there without ‘certain destruction’, but after they had entered it, must have forthwith gone out again, and have been hauled up on the beach outside along with the others.

6. It remained for Lewin to point out the spot on the banks of a river about twelve miles from the Roman camp, where the Britons disputed Caesar’s advance on the day after his second landing in Britain. He maintained that Wye on the Stour, between Ashford and Canterbury, answered in every detail to Caesar’s account, and denied that any such place could be found on the theory that Caesar landed near Deal.[3146]

Airy[3147] objects that the Stour at Wye is ‘little wider than a wide ditch’, and that, as it flows ‘between sound meadows, where there is not, and never has been, any marsh or broad stream’, it never could have been wider. Lewin[3148] replies that he has himself seen the Stour at Wye when it was so full of water that ‘the mill had constantly at work four pairs of stones from 5.30 a.m. till 8 p.m., except for a short time at noon’; and I may add that it is more than ten yards wide.[3149] Caesar does not describe the stream at all: he merely calls it a flumen; and he calls the Oze and the Ozerain, the two streams which encompass Alesia[3150] (the modern Mont Auxois), and which are narrower than the Stour at Wye, by the same name. Moreover, as Lewin[3151] justly remarks, Caesar, in describing the combat which took place on the banks of the stream in question, and the subsequent attack upon the British stronghold,[3152] ‘does not make the river the important part of the defence.’ The Stour at Wye and the features of the surrounding country correspond sufficiently well with Caesar’s account; but this does not constitute a positive argument in favour of Lewin’s theory unless it can be proved that, on the theory that Caesar landed in East Kent, it is impossible to discover a stream which satisfies the requirements of his narrative.

D’Anville, the famous French geographer, added little or nothing to the case for Hythe. He maintained that the ‘higher ground’ to which the Britons withdrew on descrying the Roman flotilla in 54 B.C. must have been the line of heights which extends just behind Hythe.[3153] But the passage in which Caesar describes the retirement of the Britons, so far from implying that the ‘higher ground’ was close to the landing-place, implies the very reverse; for Caesar, immediately after telling us that the Britons had retired to higher ground, expressly states that the position on which he found them posted was about twelve miles from his camp near the sea.[3154]

Lewin has now had a fair hearing; and those who are interested in the question will decide whether he has made out his case. Over and above what has been said in refutation of his arguments there remain other facts which make it absolutely certain that Caesar did not land either at Hythe or at Lympne.

1. Caesar, as we have seen, tells us that when he sailed from the Portus Itius for Britain in 54 B.C. the wind was from the south-west.[3155] Now a south-west wind would not have been favourable to a voyage from Boulogne to Hythe, much less to Lympne. The wind would have been abeam even if it had been possible to keep the ships heading in the direction of Hythe, that is to say, even if they had made no lee-way: the ships, being shallow and flat-bottomed,[3156] would have made considerable lee-way; and two or three hours after the voyage began the current turned east-north-east, and continued to run in that direction until daybreak[3157]. It is curious that so adroit a controversialist as Lewin should have inadvertently quoted an opinion which damaged his own case. He tells us[3158] that a Mr. John Dougall, in an unpublished tract, remarked that Caesar would have called the south-west wind favourable if he had sailed from Boulogne for the South Foreland. But, on Lewin’s theory, Caesar sailed, not for the South Foreland but for Hythe; and Lewin naïvely tells us that, in Dougall’s opinion, Caesar would never have called the wind favourable if it had been on the beam. Certainly he would not have done so when the tide was setting in the wrong direction.

2. Another objection to the theory that Caesar landed at Hythe or Lympne is that it involves the assumption that when he started on his first voyage, he steered for the unsuitable port of Folkestone, or else that, although he was in possession of Volusenus’s report, he did not know where he intended to land, and steered at haphazard. According to Lewin’s original idea,[3159] he first anchored off the cliffs of Dover. This is the view which naturally commends itself to every unbiassed reader of the Commentaries; but, as Lewin afterwards saw, it is irreconcilable with the theory that Caesar sailed from his anchorage either to Hythe or to Lympne; for Caesar tells us that he sailed 7 Roman miles, and Hythe is almost 11, Lympne about 14, Roman miles from the nearest point of the Dover cliffs.[3160] Lewin thus found himself obliged to relinquish his original view, and to maintain that Caesar anchored off Folkestone,[3161] or, as he suggests in another passage, and implies in his map,[3162] off East Wear Bay. But second thoughts are not always best. Lewin insists that Folkestone ‘would be the natural port for Boulogne’.[3163] Why? Surely not because the steamboats of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Company discharge their passengers there! ‘The natural port for Boulogne’ would be the port to which, having regard to the prevailing winds and the currents, it would be easiest to sail, and which would best accommodate Caesar’s fleet. That port was Dover. Caesar’s narrative shows that he required a capacious harbour;[3164] and the port of Folkestone was too small.

3. Another consideration—one of several which, strange to say, have hitherto been overlooked—is alone fatal to the theory that Caesar landed either at Hythe or at Lympne. He tells us, in regard to his first landing, that his troops were not able to pursue the enemy far ‘because the cavalry had not been able to keep their course and make the island’.[3165] These words unmistakably imply that if he had had his cavalry with him, he would have been able to make good use of them; and in fact he says expressly that, in repelling the attack which the Britons made upon his camp just before his departure from Britain in 55 B.C., he actually did employ Commius’s small troop of cavalry.[3166] The camp, so Lewin assures us when he is advocating the cause of Lympne, was ‘in the marsh’.[3167] How, then, would Caesar have been able to utilize his cavalry? Would he have sent them up the steep slopes on which stand the ruins of Stutfall Castle? Even on the incredible hypothesis that Romney Marsh had been embanked by the Britons[3168] the cavalry would have been useless; for how could they have acted in a country intersected by sluices?[3169] It is possible, indeed, that if Caesar had landed at Hythe, his cavalry might have acted in ‘the field to the south and east of Hythe’, in which Lewin finally assumes that the combat took place on the day of the landing,—if the Britons had patiently waited to receive their charge, and if the field was not under water.[3170] But before the cavalry could have come into action the Britons would have been on the hills behind.

I do not deny that the cavalry could have managed to trot up Lympne Hill or the hills behind Hythe, if Caesar had been so foolish as to give the order.[3171] But the point is that the absence of the cavalry prevented Caesar from pursuing the fugitives far; and that the hills would have effectually concealed from him the nature of the country that lay beyond them, its woods, defiles, and other obstacles. Does he not tell us himself that when he had gained a victory on the day after his second landing in Britain, ‘he forbade [his troops] to pursue the fugitives far, partly because he had no knowledge of the ground’ (eos fugientes longius Caesar prosequi vetuit, et quod loci naturam ignorabat,[3172] &c.)? Worse ground for the manœuvring of cavalry than the wooded heights which extended behind Hythe and West Hythe it would have been hard for Volusenus to find.

4. Heller[3173] has acutely seen that Caesar’s account of the movements of one division of the ships which carried his cavalry is irreconcilable with the theory that he landed at any point on the south coast of Britain. Caesar[3174] tells us that the storm which arose when these vessels were sighted from his camp drove some of them ‘to the lower and more westerly part of the island’ (aliae ad inferiorem partem insulae, quae est propius solis occasum, ... deicerentur). ‘This,’ says Heller, ‘can only mean a different side of the island from that on which Caesar was: if he had meant to designate a point on the same side, he would have said, paulo infra ac propius solis occasum.[3175] If one compares the expression which he actually uses in the thirteenth chapter of his Fifth Book—unum latus est contra Galliam. Huius lateris alter angulus, qui est ad Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallia naves appelluntur, ad orientem solem, inferior ad meridiem spectat[3176]—it becomes clear that in the passage in which the fate of the eighteen ships is described inferior pars insulae means the southern side of the island. Consequently Caesar implies that his camp was on the eastern angle.’

5. One of the episodes which Caesar describes in his narrative of the first expedition is, in spite of the ingenuity with which Lewin has tried to make it fit in with his theory, irreconcilable with the view that he landed either at Hythe or Lympne. One day, when the 7th legion had gone out to cut corn, Caesar learned from the troops on guard in front of the camp that an extraordinary quantity of dust was visible in the direction in which the legion had gone. He marched to the rescue, and, after he had advanced some little distance (paulo longius), he found that the legion was hard pressed by the enemy. The place where the legionaries had been reaping was the only one in which the corn had not yet been cut; and the enemy, anticipating that they would come there, posted themselves in ambush in a wood close by.[3177] Lewin[3178] argues that the camp must have been in Romney Marsh, ‘probably on the seaside’; but he stultifies his own argument by admitting, in his appendix, that the marsh was inundated at every high tide.[3179] In his text he admits that neither the cornfield nor the wood could have been in the marsh; and he could not at first conceive how, if they had been anywhere else, the dust raised by the combatants could have been seen from the ground in front of the camp. But, he continues, ‘when I visited Hythe by land, and walked from it to the old port of Limne, and mounted the hill, I discovered the explanation. On reaching the top I stepped at once into a cornfield ... and on my right was Park Wood.... What I had taken from the sea for a hill ... had no descent on the north side ... and corn growing so near to the edge that even the reapers, if labouring in that part of the field, might have been seen from the camp. The whole narrative was now realized to the mind’s eye.... The legion had marched up to the standing fields of corn on the high ground, and the Britons, starting from their lurking-place at the side, had intercepted their retreat, and surrounded them at just such an interval from the edge that the combatants were out of sight and hearing, but the dust flying in the air had attracted the attention of the guard ... at a mile’s distance below.’

Now observe what becomes of Lewin’s explanation. First, ‘the old port of Limne,’ to which he walked, became, before the publication of his second edition, a figment of the imagination! Having obtained, as he tells us, ‘more accurate information,’ he strenuously denied its existence, and accordingly transferred Caesar’s landing-place to Hythe.[3180] Yet in this same second edition the ‘explanation’ is offered as confidently as ever! Secondly, he asks us to believe that the only cornfield which the Romans had left unreaped was the one nearest them! Thus the ‘explanation’ which Lewin discovered with such pride collapses; and his theory, which cannot stand without it, falls like a house of cards. What explanation he would have discovered on the theory that Caesar landed at Hythe, he wisely omits to say.