[2801] Nouv. Biogr. gén., xxiii, 1858, p. 802.
[2802] See my Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, pp. 387-94.
[2803] Archaeol. Journal, xxi, 1864, p. 227.
[2804] Journal of Philology, xx, 1892, p. 192. Gosselin (Recherches sur la géogr., iv, 87-90) attempts to prove that Ptolemy confused two itineraries, and accordingly located the promontory between the Somme and Gesoriacum instead of on the north of the latter.
Henry (Essai ... sur l’arrondissement communal de Boulogne-sur-mer, pp. 3-6, 33), referring to Pomponius Mela (iii, 7, §§ 59, 68), maintains that by the word promontorium the ancients sometimes designated not merely a cape but also all its ‘collateral dependencies’; and accordingly he argues that the Ἴτιον ἄκρον comprised Capes Grisnez and Blancnez, and Cap d’Alprech!
Desjardins (Géogr. de la Gaule rom., i, 371-2) remarks that not only was Cap d’Alprech a more prominent headland 2000 years ago than to-day, but it is actually 9 metres, or about 30 feet, higher than Cape Grisnez; and he insists that the ancients, being unable to form an exact idea of the outline of a coast, took note of those geographical features which appeared to them remarkable, and would therefore have been more inclined to mention Cap d’Alprech than Cape Grisnez. I cannot help thinking that Desjardins would not have resorted to this argument if he had not persuaded himself that the identification of the Portus Itius with Boulogne depended upon the identification of Cap d’Alprech with the Itian promontory. The ancients did not know how to make accurate maps; but they had sufficient powers of observation to be able to see that Cape Grisnez marked the great bend in the coast of North-Eastern Gaul.
It is amusing to find that, whereas Desjardins in his first volume (p. 371) affirmed that the identification of the Itian promontory with Cape Grisnez, if it were admitted, would necessarily involve the identification of the Portus Itius with Wissant, in his third volume (p. 355) he queries his own identification of the promontory with Cap d’Alprech.
[2805] Celtic Britain, 1904, p. 303.
[2806] Archaeol. Journal, xxi, 1864, pp. 224-5.
[2807] Ib., pp. 221-2.