M. G. Lafaye[3387] gathers from this description that the object of the warrior in running along the pole was to jump down in order to throw his javelin and to avoid being impeded in his movements by the proximity of the driver. M. Lafaye assures us that certain coins represent warriors moving on to the poles of their chariots in order to hurl their javelins: but they do not represent them as about to jump down;[3388] and Caesar says that the warrior, after he had run along the pole, stepped back again on to the car.
Caesar[3389] tells us that, after he had crossed the Thames in 54 B.C., Cassivellaunus dismissed the whole of his forces except 4,000 essedarii. Most commentators have inferred, I think rightly, from this statement that Cassivellaunus had 4,000 chariots; but it seems possible that by 4,000 essedarii Caesar may have meant 2,000 warriors and 2,000 drivers.[3390] Napoleon the Third,[3391] on the other hand, assumes that there were ‘six essedarii par char’. It is unnecessary to make any assumptions; for, according to Diodorus Siculus,[3392] who derived his information from Posidonius, every Gallic chariot carried a driver and one warrior. Furthermore, a coin of the Hostilian family, which was struck between 49 and 46 B.C.,[3393] depicts a chariot drawn by two horses, and driven by a charioteer, who is accompanied by one warrior, armed with an oblong buckler.
Professor E. B. Tylor,[3394] referring to Pomponius Mela,[3395] Lucan,[3396] and Silius Italicus,[3397] argues that the Britons used chariots armed with scythes: Tacitus,[3398] who derived his information from Agricola, says that the British army which encountered the latter in the Grampians included covinnarii, who, according to Pomponius Mela, were warriors who fought in scythed chariots;[3399] and Jornandes[3400] says that the chariots of the Britons were armed with scythes: but if the Britons whom Caesar encountered had used such chariots, he would certainly have mentioned the fact;[3401] and no scythes are to be seen on the Roman coins which depict war-chariots. Moreover, of the numerous interments of warriors with chariots that have been discovered in the department of the Marne not one showed any traces of scythes;[3402] nor have any such traces ever been found in Great Britain.[3403]
I have remarked in my narrative of Caesar’s second invasion[3404] that very few chariot-burials have been found in this country. It is noteworthy that of the whole number—not more than a dozen—all but two were in Yorkshire, and not one in Scotland; and also that whereas in many of the Gallic interments the chariot was placed in the grave entire, only the wheels and other detached parts were buried in Britain. The most famous of these discoveries was made nearly a century ago in a barrow on Arras Farm, close to the road between Beverley and York. Here in a large round grave in the chalk was found the skeleton of a man, inclining from which, one on each side, were two wheels, each two feet eleven inches in diameter.[3405] ‘Under and adjoining to each wheel,’ writes Thurnam,[3406] ‘were the remains of the skeletons of two small horses, neither of them exceeding thirteen hands.’[3407]
In the paragraph in which Caesar describes the tactics of the charioteers he says that ‘as soon as they have penetrated between the troops of cavalry, the warriors jump off the chariots and fight on foot’ (cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt, ex essedis desiliunt et pedibus proeliantur). The editors generally assume that equitum turmas means ‘the hostile troops of cavalry’; but von Göler,[3408] with whom Napoleon III[3409] agrees, rejects this view. He argues that in Caesar’s first campaign in Britain, in his account of which the passage in question occurs, the Britons were not opposed by any cavalry, for Caesar had none with him; and that the paragraph is not to be regarded simply as a general description of the tactics of the charioteers, but also as an explanation of the tactics which they had pursued in the combat described in the preceding paragraph. Moreover, he insists that if the warriors had jumped off their chariots when they had penetrated between troops of hostile cavalry, and had then allowed the drivers to turn round and move back, it would have been impossible for them to get on to the chariots again in case of need: hostile cavalry which allowed them to do this would have been worthless. ‘According to my interpretation,’ von Göler concludes, ‘we are to understand by et cum se inter equitum turmas insinuaverunt that the warriors had penetrated within the intervals of their own cavalry ... the moment of jumping down, always hazardous, was protected by their own cavalry, just as nowadays cavalry protect the limbering up and unlimbering of the horse-artillery associated with them.’ See also pp. 136-7, and Taf. vii, fig 7, of von Göler’s book, and pp. 688-91, infra.
THE OPERATIONS OF THE BRITONS DURING THE LAST FEW DAYS OF CAESAR’S FIRST EXPEDITION
After describing how he rescued the 7th legion, which had been sent out on a foraging expedition and surprised by a British force, Caesar tells us that he led this legion and the force with which he had marched to its assistance back to camp. ‘Meanwhile,’ he continues, ‘our people were all busy, and the Britons who were still in their districts moved off’ (dum haec geruntur, nostris omnibus occupatis, qui erant in agris reliqui discesserunt[3410]). The words ‘the Britons who were still in their districts’ (qui erant in agris reliqui) evidently refer back to two passages in the thirtieth and thirty-second chapters of the Fourth Book of the Commentaries. In the former we read that after the storm which wrecked several of Caesar’s ships the British chiefs who had disbanded their levies and come into the Roman camp ‘renewed their oaths of mutual fidelity, and began to move away one by one from the camp and to fetch their tribesmen secretly from the districts’ (itaque rursus coniuratione facta, paulatim ex castris discedere et suos clam ex agris deducere coeperunt). In the thirty-second chapter Caesar says that, just before the 7th legion was attacked, ‘some of the natives still remained in the districts’ (pars hominum in agris remaneret). Evidently, then, the meaning of the passage which I quoted at the beginning of this note is that during and after the attack on the 7th legion, and while the Roman soldiers were employed in various duties, those Britons who had not yet left their respective districts in order to rally round their leaders did so. However, the meaning which is obvious to the ordinary mind does not satisfy von Göler,[3411] who insists that the MS. reading, nostris omnibus occupatis, qui erant in agris reliqui discesserunt, yields no satisfactory sense, and offers in place of it one of his conjectural emendations:—(nostris omnibus occupatis,) quae erant in agris relicta (discesserunt). After a few moments of bewilderment the reader suddenly apprehends von Göler’s meaning. He fancied that occupatis meant ‘having been taken possession of’, and was ignorant that nostris omnibus in Caesarian Latin could not mean ‘all our belongings’; so he persuaded himself that Caesar intended to convey that the Britons, ‘having appropriated all our property, which had been left in the fields, made off’! ‘The Romans,’ he explains, ‘had not only not been able to convey into camp the corn which they had cut, but, on account of the surprise, they must even have abandoned their tools for cutting and gathering the corn.’
Comment is needless.