[3669] Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, &c., cliii, 1896, p. 280.
[3670] Hist. de Jules César, ii, 194, 199.
[3671] Ib., pp. 198-9.
[3672] Trebonius defeated Cassivellaunus about the 20th of July of the Julian calendar; and we may assume that Caesar did not begin to march towards the territories of Cassivellaunus until the following day. By the 5th of August he had returned to his naval camp. In those 17 days he marched to the Thames; crossed it at or near Brentford; marched on through the territory of Cassivellaunus into that of the Trinovantes (Essex); marched thence to the stronghold of Cassivellaunus, which was not far off; captured it in a single day; and marched back to the coast. Altogether the distance that he marched cannot have been less than about 200 miles. Evidently, therefore, he would not have had time enough to negotiate with Cassivellaunus and to receive the hostages whom he demanded before he returned to the coast.
Bergk insists (Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, 13 Supplementband, 1884, pp. 616-8) that the campaign must have been finished at the beginning of August of the Julian calendar, because Caesar (B. G., v, 22, § 4) tells us that when it was finished the summer was nearly at an end, and, according to Caesar himself, autumn began on the 11th of August. But when Bergk says that, according to Caesar, autumn began on the 11th of August he seems to forget that this date was fixed in the Julian calendar, eight years after the invasion of Britain. He also forgets that the word aestas, in the Commentaries, denotes, not a season which ended on a fixed date, but the period during which campaigning was practicable; and two passages prove that it extended at least as far as the middle of September. In the last chapter of his First Book Caesar remarks that in a single ‘summer’ he had finished two important campaigns (una aestate duobus maximis bellis confectis); and it has been proved that the decisive battle of the second campaign was fought about the 14th of September (Rice Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, p. 642). In the 20th chapter of the Fourth Book he says that he determined to invade Britain (in 55 B.C.), although only a small part of the ‘summer’ remained, and in this part of the world ‘winter’ set in early (Exigua parte aestatis reliqua Caesar, etsi in his locis ... maturae sunt hiemes, tamen in Britanniam proficisci contendit); and we know that he did not land in Britain until the 26th of August (see pp. 600-3, supra). The second passage, moreover, is one of many which prove that Caesar generally took no account of spring and autumn, but (like Thucydides) divided the year into two seasons,—aestas, the season in which campaigning was practicable, and hiems. He only once uses the word ver (spring), namely, in B. G., vi, 3, § 4; and only three times—once only in the Gallic War (vii, 35, § 1), twice in the Civil War (iii, 2, § 3; 87, § 3)—uses the word autumnus; and in none of these four passages is there any reference to campaigning. The Latin word for ‘winter’, properly so called, is not hiems but bruma.
[3673] B. G., v, 17, § 5—18, § 1.—Ex hac fuga protinus quae undique convenerant auxilia discesserunt, neque post id tempus umquam summis nobiscum copiis hostes contenderunt. Caesar cognito consilio eorum ad flumen Tamesim in fines Cassivellauni exercitum duxit.
[3674] About the 20th of October Cicero wrote to his brother (Q. fr., iii, 3, § 1), ‘for more than fifty days I have heard nothing from you or from Caesar’ (dierum iam amplius quinquaginta intervallo nihil a te, nihil a Caesare ... adfluxit). The last letter which he had received was the one written by Caesar on the 1st of September.
[3675] Hist. de Jules César, ii, 194.
[3676] B. G., v, 22, §§ 1-3.
[3677] See p. 726, supra.