5. If Volusenus deserved the confidence which Caesar reposed in him, there cannot be the faintest doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced man who has studied military history or even Caesar’s Commentaries, and has taken the trouble to observe the features of the Kentish coast, as to the landing-place which he would have selected. He would not have wasted his time by cruising down the coast of Sussex: the first sight of the lofty hills which hem in East Wear Bay, of the cliffs which extend from Folkestone to Sandgate, and of the heights which back the coast from Shorncliffe to Lympne and beyond, would have warned him not to advise the great captain whom he served to land beneath them; but, as his galley glided past Kingsdown and neared Walmer, he saw, stretching away towards the neighbourhood of Sandwich, the open coast, offering easy access into the interior, of which he was in search. Here and here only, if Dover Harbour were held by an enemy, it would be safe to land. Here and here only it would be possible to follow up a victory by an effective cavalry charge.
6. Assuming that Caesar landed in East Kent, his narrative of the adventures of his cavalry transports and of the shipwrecks in 55 B.C., which, as we have seen,[3250] is inexplicable on any other theory, presents no difficulty. The transports which returned to the port whence they started would have been laid to on the port tack, and would have been carried back to Ambleteuse by the same wind which drove their sister ships westward down the Channel.[3251] This wind, which could not have driven ashore, in the immediate neighbourhood of their anchorage, vessels anchored off Lympne or Hythe, would inevitably have driven ashore, once they had parted their anchors, vessels lying off the coast between Walmer and Deal.[3252]
7. Finally, Caesar sailed on his second voyage to Britain with a south-west wind; and a south-west wind would obviously have been much more favourable to a voyage either from Boulogne or from Wissant to Deal or to any point on the coast of East Kent than to a voyage from Boulogne to Lympne or even Hythe.
It remains to consider objections.
1. I have already refuted Airy’s criticism of the view that Caesar anchored off the cliffs of Dover; and we have seen that Airy is compelled by his own argument to identify the cliffs which Caesar describes as ‘precipitous heights’, and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses of cliff’[3253] with cliffs ‘ten to thirty feet high’.[3254] He maintains that our interpretation of the words angustis montibus ‘must be guided by consideration of the character of place under which an officer would think of attempting to land’, and ‘must also depend upon the possibility of aiming a javelin from the heights’. ‘Both considerations,’ he insists, ‘exclude such lofty cliffs as those of Dover and Folkestone.’[3255] One might have expected that a man so clever as Airy would have perceived that Caesar never intended to land under angusti montes at all, whether they were 300 or, as Airy will have it, 10 feet high. He intended to land in the gap between the angusti montes, that is to say, in Dover Harbour.[3256] Airy, indeed, contends that ‘neither Caesar nor Volusenus would think for a moment of pushing his boats into a creek whose defenders could attack them on both sides’;[3257] but he forgets that Caesar had reason to expect that his landing would not be opposed.[3258] As a matter of fact, Caesar says nothing about javelins; but if Airy had stood on the beach at the foot of Dover cliffs and allowed an army standing above to pelt him with missiles, he would have speedily realized that it was possible to take aim from those ‘lofty cliffs’; and, if he had survived the experiment, he would have been a wiser and a sadder man.
2. Lewin[3259] says that ‘if we assume that Caesar was wholly ignorant of the British coast ... he could not have discovered the level at Deal’.
But what is the use of making absurd assumptions? As we have already seen, it is certain that before Caesar set foot in Britain he knew everything about the coast of East Kent that Volusenus could tell him.[3260]
3. It has been objected that the distance from Dover to Walmer exceeds the seven miles which separated Caesar’s anchorage from his landing-place. But no sensible man maintains that Caesar anchored exactly opposite Dover Harbour. He anchored off the cliffs east of Dover. He says that he sailed ‘about seven miles’ (circiter milia passuum VII[3261]) to his landing-place. The distance by sea from off Dover to a point just north of Walmer Castle is 7½ English miles, or a little less than 8⅛ Roman miles; from off the South Foreland to the same point 4⅞ English miles, or a little more than 5¼ Roman miles. Accordingly, if we assume that Caesar’s landing-place extended for about one mile north of Walmer Castle, and that his anchorage extended eastward for about one mile towards the South Foreland from a point about one mile east of Dover, the requirements of the Commentaries are satisfied absolutely; and even if the ship on the left of the line anchored just east of the harbour, off the Castle cliff, Caesar’s rough estimate, which he qualified by the word ‘about’ (circiter), is hardly violated. Surely the difference between ‘about seven’ and 8⅙ is not worth cavilling over.[3262]
4. Lewin[3263] maintains that the beach at Deal does not correspond with Caesar’s account of his disembarkation. The Romans, he argues, evidently landed on a gradually shelving shore; whereas ‘at Deal the beach ... descends so steeply that with a three hours’ flood transports can come up to the water’s edge’.[3264] Again, remarking that Caesar describes the shore on which he landed as ‘open’ (apertum) and ‘level’ (planum), he says that ‘between Walmer and Deal ... the ground is uneven, and cannot be called flat’. Lastly, he recalls the witnesses whose evidence he had cited in support of his own theory. ‘Caesar, Dion Cassius, Plutarch, and Valerius Maximus, all ... refer to the marshes at the place of landing ... who has ever heard of a marsh at Deal.’[3265] And again, ‘Valerius Maximus speaks of two small islands at the landing-place.... It was never suggested that islands did exist or could have existed at Deal.’[3266]
Now, to begin with, Lewin assumes that the beach between Walmer and Deal has undergone no change, and was as steep 2,000 years ago as it is to-day. In a previous article[3267] I have shown that this assumption is untenable. Secondly, Lewin misunderstands Caesar’s narrative. As some of the Britons threw their missiles from the shore,[3268] it is evident that the deep water[3269] in which the Roman ships grounded was within the range of a sling or of an arrow, that is to say, quite close to the shore. Thirdly, no shore is or could conceivably be ‘level’: the shore between Walmer and Deal is, as anybody may satisfy himself by the evidence of his own eyes, free from obstructions[3270] (apertum) and, speaking generally, evenly shelving (planum)[3271]. Caesar applied these epithets to the shore on which he ran his ships aground, not to ‘the ground’ behind it. As to the arguments which Lewin bases upon the statements of Plutarch, Dion Cassius, and Valerius Maximus, I have already shown[3272] that they are worthless; but if the story told by Valerius Maximus were worth anything, it would not support, but destroy Lewin’s theory. For, as we have seen, Valerius Maximus[3273] speaks not of ‘two small islands’ but of one large island (Britannica insula), and a rock (scopulus); and there are no rocks off Hythe or Lympne.[3274] Moreover, although the fact is of no consequence, there are rocks, called the ‘Malms’, which are visible at low water, during spring tides, opposite Deal;[3275] and in the time of Caesar there were marshes behind the sand-hills north of Deal.