Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Reading and writing.

Nor indeed are indications wanting that Britons of the upper class—not Druids only—had some tincture of letters. The Druids of Gaul, and presumably also of Britain, used Greek characters in official documents and private correspondence.[1100] Diodorus[1101] affirms that it was common among the Gauls to throw letters, addressed to the dead, on to the funeral pile. The Romans, after they had defeated the Helvetii, found in their encampment a schedule, on which were recorded in Greek characters the numbers of the armed men, the women, and the children who had migrated into Gaul.[1102] A few years later, when Caesar was marching through the territory of a Belgic tribe to relieve a besieged camp commanded by Quintus Cicero, he wrote him a letter in Greek characters—possibly in Greek[1103]—which he entrusted to a Gallic trooper. Unless he made his interpreter write the letter in Celtic, he evidently had reason to fear that, if it were intercepted, some of the Belgae would be able to read the Latin; in any case that some of them knew how to read. Is it not reasonable to infer that a British Belgian here and there was as good a scholar as his kinsmen over the water? At all events the British inscribed coins, the earlier of which at least must have been the work of native die-sinkers, are evidence that before the birth of Christ there were Britons who had mastered the art of writing, and had even acquired some slight knowledge of Latin.[1104] But the origins of Celtic literature, sacred and profane, were of course purely oral. Bards, who were apparently Druids of an inferior grade, sat at the tables of the great; accompanied them with their harps to festivals; sang their praises and satirized their enemies; and recited poems in honour of valiant warriors who had fallen in battle.[1105]

Inequalities in culture.

It must not, however, be supposed that the same level of culture had been attained in every part of the island. The Scottish specimens of Late Celtic workmanship are for the most part later than the Claudian conquest;[1106] and it is probable that in outlying districts even of England and Wales iron tools in pre-Roman times were rare or unknown. No objects of the Early Iron Age which are regarded as purely British have been found in Lancashire;[1107] and even on Cranborne Chase, where one might have expected that continental improvements would have been adopted at least as early as in the far western settlement at Glastonbury, the searching exploration of Pitt-Rivers could detect no signs of any interval between the Bronze Age and the period of the Roman occupation.[1108] Indeed the association of late bronze implements and weapons with iron harness-rings and bridle-bits at Hagbourne Hill[1109] suggests that some of the deposits which are assigned to the Bronze Age may have belonged either to a period of transition or even to the time when, in South-Eastern Britain, the use of iron was universal.[1110] Readers of the Commentaries would see nothing surprising in this. Caesar was told that the people of the interior for the most part did not grow corn, but lived on milk and flesh-meat and clothed themselves in skins.[1111] This information was somewhat misleading; for remains of four different kinds of corn were counted at Hunsbury; and since cloth and linen were worn in Yorkshire by the well-to-do even in the Bronze Age,[1112] it is not to be supposed that their successors had lost the arts of spinning and weaving. Still, Caesar’s statement points to an ascertained truth. It has been well observed that the western and northern uplands held out far longer against the Roman conquest than the central, eastern, and southern lowlands, and that they were never really Romanized at all.[1113] From the earliest times their inhabitants had been less open to continental and civilizing influences; and one of the gifts which Nature had bestowed upon Britain was that the regions more accessible from over sea were also more fitted to sustain an industrial population.[1114] Later on, however, we shall find reason, in the juxtaposition of old and new sepulchral rites, to believe that even in Kent such influences had not prevented the survival of the earlier culture.[1115]

Intertribal war and political development.

Moreover, notwithstanding the progress in material civilization, intertribal fighting was of course still frequent even in the south, and even after the Belgic tribes had settled down in the territories which their swords had won, and established themselves as the dominant people of Britain. Both Caesar[1116] and Tacitus[1117] spoke of these wars; but if they had been silent, the numerous strongholds which were still occupied, permanently, or as occasion required, the weapons that have been found in them, the beach-rolled pebbles, the round chipped flints, and the bullets of baked clay which lie heaped in and near them would tell the same tale;[1118] nor indeed is it necessary to insist upon a fact which is universal in the stage of culture in which the Britons then were. What is worthy of remark is that war was probably entered upon from motives other than those which had caused the struggles of earlier ages. Raids were no doubt still undertaken, especially in the poorer and less settled districts, by mere plunderers and cattle-lifters. But clans were tending to become welded, not only by the voluntary combination which was necessary for defence, but also perhaps by the sword of the ambitious captain, into the larger communities which Caesar called civitates[1119]; and successful chiefs were assuming the state of petty kings. As trade increased, and with it wealth, the king of a tribe which was fortunately situated would seize opportunities of acquiring dominion or overlordship over others. Though forest or mountain or fen might enable even small tribes to hold their own, and though the success of a strong king might not endure, it is possible, as we shall see, to discern in Caesar’s memoirs signs that attempts were already being made to achieve such sovereignty as might eventually lead towards political union, and we may suppose that in Britain also there were astute princes who, like the Aeduan Dumnorix, saw that they could strengthen their position by diplomacy or marriage.[1120]

Instances of female sovereignty: the condition of women.

We all learned in childhood that the Britons admitted the sovereignty of women. In the middle of the first century Cartismandua was queen of the Brigantes;[1121] and a few years later, when the Iceni revolted against Rome, their general was Boudicca, who is better known by the barbarous misnomer of Boadicea.[1122] The Gauls may have had the same institution; and perhaps it would hardly be worth noticing if it were not apparently inconsistent with what Caesar tells us about the status of Gallic wives. They were indeed permitted to own property. The bride brought a dowry to her husband; but he was obliged to add an equivalent from his own estate and to administer the whole as a joint possession, which, with its accumulated increments, went to the survivor.[1123] On the other hand, the husband had the power of life and death over his wife[1124] as well as his children; and when a man of rank died his relations, if they had any suspicion of foul play, examined his wife, like a slave, by torture, and, if they found her guilty, condemned her to perish in the flames of the funeral pyre.[1125]

Political and social conditions of Britain and Gaul compared.

When we try to form an idea of the political and the social conditions of Britain in the later days of its independence, we naturally turn to Caesar’s account of Gaul in the hope of supplementing the scanty and scattered scraps of information which he has left about the country which was less known to him. We must, however, bear in mind that Britain had not yet come under the two currents of influence, German and Roman, which had profoundly affected Gaul, and in some measure prepared it to accept Roman dominion; and also that even the south-east was in a more rudimentary stage than the neighbouring country, though perhaps not more than the backward parts of Belgic Gaul.