Vogel[3679] points out that Cicero,[3680] in a letter written just after the 23rd of November—the 26th of October of the Julian calendar—referred to two letters which he had received from Quintus, and also to a third, which Quintus had handed to Labienus for transmission the day before he dispatched the earlier of the other two, but which had not yet arrived. Now Labienus had remained in Gaul during the invasion of Britain.[3681] It is clear, therefore, that these three letters were not written until after Quintus had returned to Gaul. On the other hand, they would seem to have been the first letters which Quintus wrote to his brother after his return. For Cicero, in the letter in which he referred to them, said, ‘where your Nervii dwell and how far off, I have no idea’ (Ubi enim isti sint Nervii et quam longe absint, nescio[3682]). The Nervii were the tribe in whose country Quintus, with his legion, was to pass the winter.[3683] Evidently Quintus, when he wrote the two letters which Cicero received, had not yet reached the country of the Nervii; for otherwise he could not, on the previous day, have been with Labienus, who was to winter in the country of another tribe. Probably, as Vogel concludes, he wrote from Samarobriva, or Amiens, where Caesar had his head quarters and where the arrangements for the distribution of the legions were made.[3684] Again, in the letter which has been already quoted, Cicero wrote to Quintus, ‘Pray be careful to let me know to whom I am to give the letter which I shall then send you,—to Caesar’s letter-carriers, for him to forward it direct to you, or to those of Labienus?’ (Tu velim cures ut sciam quibus nos dare oporteat eas quas ad te deinde litteras mittemus, Caesarisne tabellariis, ut is ad te protinus mittat, an Labieni[3685]). Vogel remarks that ‘this question is only intelligible on the hypothesis that Quintus was only just beginning to take up his quarters in Gaul’ at the time when he wrote the two letters which Cicero had just received. Now a letter would have required about 25 days for transmission from Samarobriva to Rome;[3686] and accordingly the letters to which Cicero referred, assuming that he replied to them promptly, would have been written about the end of October. Vogel, who thinks that they must have been written within a fortnight after Quintus and Caesar returned to Gaul, infers that they cannot have returned earlier than the 15th of October, the 17th of September of the Julian calendar. His reasoning is ingenious; but unfortunately we do not know exactly how soon after the receipt of his brother’s second letter Cicero wrote, or how many days intervened between the arrival of the first and of the second.
On the whole, it appears to me that all we can say for certain regarding the date of Caesar’s return is this. It cannot be fixed earlier than several days after the 29th of August of the Julian calendar,—the date of the letter in which he informed Cicero that he was on the point of bringing back the army. Bearing in mind that it occurred when ‘the equinox was at hand’, we may place it about the middle of September.
TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES
On April 25, 1902, I observed more carefully than I had ever done before the coast between Sandgate and West Hythe. To speak of the hills between Sandgate and Hythe as angusti montes is sheer nonsense. Caesar would never have attempted to force a passage inland at any point between Lympne and Sandgate;[3687] nor would the Britons have abandoned these loca superiora, which lay ready to hand. There are, indeed, depressions in the line of hills—(1) just west of Sandgate railway station, (2) nearly opposite the Seabrook (now Imperial) Hotel, and (3) west of Hythe, just west of the point where the road diverges from the military canal; but if Caesar had attempted to force these gaps, he would have found himself entangled in the hills behind. 27.4.02.
Quite recently I explored the easternmost and the westernmost of the three valleys which partially break the continuity of the hills behind Hythe. Neither would have been [reasonably] practicable for an invading army [in the conditions of ancient warfare]. The road leading through the former, which branches off from the road [running from Sandgate] to Hythe, is level for the first 120 yards, and then ascends rapidly for a short distance. Then it is tolerably level until about 100 yards before one gets to the cross-road which turns off to the left, when it ascends rapidly for a long way. A column moving along it would have been exposed to attack from the hills on either side, and particularly on the west. 3.9.03.
On the return voyage from Boulogne [September 5, 1903] I most carefully scrutinized the whole coast-line between Sandgate and the Foreland, as I had often done before on land. Caesar’s description of the angusti montes is applicable only to Shakespeare’s Cliff and the cliffs which extend from the Castle Hill to the neighbourhood of Kingsdown. It is not applicable even to the imposing heights which bound East Wear Bay, because, although they might fairly be called angusti montes, the missiles of which Caesar speaks could only have been thrown on to the beach from the precipitous but low chalk cliffs which form the lowest part of these heights; whereas he plainly means that the missiles would [or rather, could] have been thrown by the enemy who were standing in omnibus collibus; and if he anchored off East Wear Bay, the colles were a quarter of a mile or more from the sea. The low chalk cliffs of East Wear Bay would never have been called montes, although they are the lowest part of a range of montes. The notion that the cliffs between East Wear Bay and Folkestone Harbour, or the cliffs on which the ‘Leas’ stand, as seen from a vessel half a mile from the shore, would have been called angusti montes or montes at all is simply ludicrous. No! It is absolutely certain that Caesar’s angusti montes were the cliffs of Dover,—the cliffs between [and including] the Castle Hill and the Foreland. And as for Airy’s theory, how could cliffs ‘ten to thirty feet high’ have been called angusti montes by an observer standing on the deck of a ship five nautical miles away?[3688]
[Cicero’s description (Att., iv, 16, § 7) of the cliffs which ‘walled in the approaches to the island’—mirificis molibus—is applicable only to the heights behind East Wear Bay and the cliffs of Dover.]