Stukeley delin.
E. Kirkall Sculp.
Simoni Degg Ar. d.d. W. Stukeley
It was not suitable to his honour, or his security, to quarter in the city of London; but he pitched his camp, where now is Pancras church: his prætorium is still very plain, overagainst the church, in the foot-path, on the west side of the brook; the vallum and the ditch visible: its breadth from east to west forty paces; its length from north to south sixty paces.
This was his prætorium, where his own tent was pitched in the centre; the prætorian cohorts around it. There was no great magnificence in Cæsar’s tent, here placed; it was not his manner. L. Aurunculeius Cotta, who was here present, in his commentaries writes, when Cæsar was in Britain, although he had acquired the highest fame by his great actions, yet was he so temperate in his manner of life, such a stranger to pomp, that he had only three servants in his tent. Cotta was killed the next year in Gaul. When I came attentively to consider the situation of it, and the circumjacent ground, I easily discerned the traces of his whole camp: a great many ditches, or divisions of the pastures, retain footsteps of the plan of the camp; agreeable to their usual form, as in the plate engraved: and whenever I take a walk thither, I enjoy a visionary scene of the whole camp of Cæsar, as described in the Plate before us; a scene as just as if beheld, and Cæsar present.
His army consisted of about 40,000 men, four legions with their horse. After long debate of authors concerning the quantity of a Roman legion, I infer, from Josephus so very often using the expression of ten thousand, many ten thousands, and the like, that the usual and general number of soldiers in a legion was ten thousand.
Authors generally state a legion at 6666 men; but they must mean strictly the soldiery, without officers or horse: so that I conclude a complete legion of foot and horse to be 10,000. Polibius, Vol. 2. book iii. writes, in the war of Hannibal, each legion consisted of 5000, besides the auxiliaries, together with 900 horse; and therefore we may well judge, a legion with its officers should be reckoned 10,000.
| Romans | 5000 |
| Auxiliaries | 4000 |
| Horse | 900 |
| Officers | 100 |
| ——— | |
| 10,000 |
Strabo writes, the Romans generally had their horses from Gaul.
Cæsar had now no apparent enemy; he had leisure to repose his men, after their military toil. He was in the territory of a friend and ally of the Roman state, whom he had highly obliged in restoring him to his paternal kingdom: nor was it his purpose to abide here for any time: he therefore did not fortify his whole camp with a broad ditch and vallum for security; but the army was disposed in its ordinary form and manner: it might be bounded by a slight ditch and bank, as that of the whole length of the camp on the west side, (the foot-path from the bowling-green accompanying; or it might be staked out with pallisado’s called valli) which returns again on part of the north side, at the porta decumana, till it meets the ditch that passes on the west of Cæsar’s prætorium, and so continued downward, to the houses at the Brill.