THE DISEMBARKATION OF THE ROMANS IN 55 B. C.
‘The men ... weighed down with their heavy cumbrous armour, had to leap down from the ships and keep their foothold in the waves,’ &c. (militibus autem ... magno et gravi onere armorum oppressis simul et de navibus desiliendum et in fluctibus consistendum, &c.[3378]) This passage has occasioned needless perplexity to commentators who forgot that the ships’ bows may have projected considerably, and also that when they were run aground they would necessarily have been buried for a considerable depth.[3379] Thus it would have been possible to jump into four feet six inches or five feet of water from the bow of a ship whose draught was a good deal more.
THE SITE OF CAESAR’S CAMP IN 55, AND OF HIS NAVAL CAMP IN 54 B. C.
I have proved in an earlier article that Caesar landed in 55 B.C. between Walmer Castle and Deal Castle, and in the following year between Deal Castle and Sandwich.[3380] Camden,[3381] who assumed that Caesar landed at the same place on both his expeditions, remarked that ‘for a considerable length under this shore [in the neighbourhood of Deal] are a number of heaps like banks which some suppose to have been blown up by the wind; but’, he added, ‘I rather take them for the fortifications or defences for ships which Caesar was ten days and nights throwing up.’ If Camden was referring to the sand-dunes between Sandown and Sandwich, it is of course unnecessary to discuss his conjecture. Hasted[3382] thought that the camp of 55 B.C. might be represented by ‘remains of entrenchments still visible’, (1) ‘close to the shore between Deal and Walmer Castle’, or (2) ‘within the country round Walmer Church’, or (3) ‘upon a rise ... between Deal and Upper Deal’. But these are mere guesses; and Professor Flinders Petrie, in his ‘Notes on Kentish Earthworks’,[3383] says nothing which can support either Hasted or Camden, except that ‘there is said to be a fosse around Walmer Church’. I can only add that nobody will learn anything by going to look for it. Dowker,[3384] who deluded himself into the belief that Caesar had landed near Sandwich in 55 as well as in 54 B.C., held that he had encamped in the first year between Sandwich and Worth, in the second on Richborough Hill. But Dowker himself maintained that Richborough Hill was isolated at spring tides; and would Caesar have omitted to mention that he had sailed into the Rutupian estuary? I am inclined to believe that he encamped in 54 B.C. on the gently rising ground near Worth.
Last year (1902) I spent two days in examining the coast between Kingsdown and Sandown.[3385] The conclusion to which I came was that in 55 B.C. Caesar must have encamped either on the plateau between Walmer Castle and Kingsdown, or, much more probably, on the rising ground north-west of the plateau which is now covered by part of the town of Walmer. On returning to London, I opened the second volume of Napoleon’s Histoire de Jules César, and found on pages 160 and 161 that Colonel Stoffel had adopted the latter alternative.
THE WAR-CHARIOTS OF THE BRITONS
‘Chariots,’ says Caesar,[3386] ‘are used in action in the following way. First of all the charioteers drive all over the field, the warriors hurling missiles; and generally they throw the enemy’s ranks into confusion by the mere terror inspired by their horses and the clatter of the wheels. As soon as they have penetrated between the troops of cavalry the warriors jump off the chariots and fight on foot. The drivers meanwhile gradually withdraw from the action, and range the cars in such a position that if the warriors are hard pressed by the enemy’s numbers, they may easily get back to them. Thus they exhibit in action the mobility of cavalry combined with the steadiness of infantry; and they become so expert from constant habit and practice that they will drive their horses at full gallop, keeping them well in hand, down a steep incline, check and turn them in an instant, run along the pole, stand on the yoke, and step backwards again to the car with the greatest nimbleness’ (Genus hoc est ex essedis pugnae. Primo per omnes partes perequitant et tela coiciunt atque ipso terrore equorum et strepitu rotarum ordines plerumque perturbant, et cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt, ex essedis desiliunt et pedibus proeliantur. Aurigae interim paulatim ex proelio excedunt atque ita currus conlocant ut, si illi a multitudine hostium premantur, expeditum ad suos receptum habeant. Ita mobilitatem equitum, stabilitatem peditum in proeliis praestant, ac tantum usu cotidiano et exercitatione efficiunt uti in declivi ac praecipiti loco incitatos equos sustinere et brevi moderari ac flectere et per temonem percurrere et in iugo insistere et se inde in currus citissime recipere consuerint).