[383] Titus Livius, XLIV. 37.
[384] We must now go back to the fourteenth day before the full moon, that is, to the 17th of August, 699, to find a day on which high tide took place at Dover towards midday.
[385] Mr. Lewin has stated that the country between Deal and Sandwich produces no wheat. This assertion is tolerably true for the tongue of marshy land which separates those two localities; but what does it signify, since wheat grows in great quantities in all the part of the county of Kent situated to the west of the coast which extends from the South Foreland to Deal and Sandwich?
[386] It is almost impossible to fix with certainty the day when Cæsar quitted Britain; we know only that it was a short time before the equinox (propinqua die æquinoxii), which, according to the calculations of M. Le Verrier, fell on the 26th of September, and that the fleet started a little after midnight. If we admit a passage of nine hours, with a favorable wind (ipse idoneam tempestatem nactus), as on the return of the second expedition, Cæsar would have arrived at Boulogne towards nine o’clock in the morning. As the fleet could not enter the port until the tide was in, it is sufficient, to know approximatively the date of Cæsar’s return, to seek what day in the month of September, 699, there was high tide at that hour at Bolougne. Now, in this port, the tide is always at its height towards nine o’clock in the morning two or three days before full moon and before new moon; therefore, since the full moon of the month of September, 699, took place on the 14th, it must have been about the 11th or 12th of September that Cæsar returned to Gaul. As to the two ships which were driven farther down, Mr. Lewin (Invasion of Britain by J. Cæsar) explains this accident in a very judicious manner. He states that we read in the tide-tables of the English Admiralty the following recommendation: “In approaching Boulogne when the tide is flowing in, great attention must be paid, because the current, which, on the English side, drags a ship towards the east, on the Boulogne side drags them, on the contrary, towards the Somme.” Nothing, then, is more natural than that the two Roman transport ships should be driven ashore to the south of Boulogne.
[387] “It was there (the mouth of the Seine) that Cæsar established his naval arsenal, when he passed over to that island (Britain.)” (Strabo, II. 160.)
[388] De Bello Gallico, V. 3, 4.
[389] The Meldæ dwelt on the Marne, in the country around Meaux; and as we have seen, according to Strabo, that Cæsar had established his naval arsenal at the mouth of the Seine, there is nothing extraordinary in the circumstance that some of the ships were built near Meaux. But it is not reasonable to suppose, with some writers, that the Meldæ dwelt at the mouth of the Scheldt, and believe that Cæsar had left important shipyards in an enemy’s country, and out of reach of protection.
[390] The five legions which Cæsar led into Britain made, at about 5,000 men each, 25,000 men. There were, in addition to these, 2,000 cavalry. If we suppose, as in the first expedition, twenty-five horses per ship, it would require eighty to contain the cavalry. In the preceding year, eighty transport ships had been sufficient for two legions, without baggage—200 ought to have been enough for five legions; but as the “Commentaries” give us to understand that those vessels were narrower, and that the troops had their baggage, it may be believed that they required double the number of ships, that is, 400, for the transport of the five legions, which would make about sixty-two men in a ship. There would remain 160 transport ships for the Gaulish and Roman chiefs, the valets, and the provisions. The twenty-eight galleys were, no doubt, the true ships of war, destined to protect the fleet and the landing.
[391] According to a passage in the “Commentaries” (Book V. 26), there was in the Roman army a body of Spanish cavalry.
[392] Dio Casstas, XL. 1.