The Project Gutenberg eBook, Early Britain--Roman Britain, by Edward Conybeare

EARLY BRITAIN.

ROMAN BRITAIN

BY

EDWARD CONYBEARE

WITH MAP

1903

ERRATA.

PREFACE

A little book on a great subject, especially when that book is one of a "series," is notoriously an object of literary distrust. For the limitations thus imposed upon the writer are such as few men can satisfactorily cope with, and he must needs ask the indulgence of his readers for his painfully-felt shortcomings in dealing with the mass of material which he has to manipulate. And more especially is this the case when the volume which immediately precedes his in the series is such a mine of erudition as the 'Celtic Britain' of Professor Rhys.

In the present work my object has been to give a readable sketch of the historical growth and decay of Roman influence in Britain, illustrated by the archaeology of the period, rather than a mainly archaeological treatise with a bare outline of the history. The chief authorities of which I have made use are thus those original classical sources for the early history of our island, so carefully and ably collected in the 'Monumenta Historica Britannica';[^[1]] which, along with Huebner's 'Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum[2],' must always be the foundation of every work on Roman Britain. Amongst the many other authorities consulted I must acknowledge my special debt to Mr. Elton's 'Origins of English History'; and yet more to Mr. Haverfield's invaluable publications in the 'Antiquary' and elsewhere, without which to keep abreast of the incessant development of my subject by the antiquarian spade-work now going on all over the land would be an almost hopeless task.

EDWARD CONYBEARE.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A complete Bibliography of Roman Britain would be wholly beyond the scope of the present work. Much of the most valuable material, indeed, has never been published in book form, and must be sought out in the articles of the 'Antiquary,' 'Hermes,' etc., and the reports of the many local Archaeological Societies. All that is here attempted is to indicate some of the more valuable of the many scores of sources to which my pages are indebted.

To begin with the ancient authorities. These range through upwards of a thousand years; from Herodotus in the 5th century before Christ, to Gildas in the 6th century after. From about 100 A.D. onwards we find that almost every known classical authority makes more or less mention of Britain. A list of over a hundred such authors is given in the 'Monumenta Historica Britannica'; and upwards of fifty are quoted in this present work. Historians, poets, geographers, naturalists, statesmen, ecclesiastics, all give touches which help out our delineation of Roman Britain.

Amongst the historians the most important are—Caesar, who tells his own tale; Tacitus, to whom we owe our main knowledge of the Conquest, with the later stages of which he was contemporary; Dion Cassius, who wrote his history in the next century, the 2nd A.D.;[^[3]] the various Imperial biographers of the 3rd century; the Imperial panegyrists of the 4th, along with Ammianus Marcellinus, who towards the close of that century connects and supplements their stories; Claudian, the poet-historian of the 5th century, whose verses throw a lurid gleam on his own disastrous age, when Roman authority in Britain was at its last gasp; and finally the British writers, Nennius and Gildas, whose "monotonous plaint" shows that authority dead and gone, with the first stirring of our new national life already quickening amid the decay.

Of geographical and general information we gain most from Strabo, in the Augustan age, who tells what earlier and greater geographers than himself had already discovered about our island; Pliny the Elder, who, in the next century, found the ethnology and botany of Britain so valuable for his 'Natural History'; Ptolemy, a generation later yet, who includes an elaborate survey of our island in his stupendous Atlas (as it would now be called) of the world;[^[4]] and the unknown compilers of the 'Itinerary,' the 'Notitia,' and the 'Ravenna Geography.' To these must be added the epigrammatist Martial, who lived at the time of the Conquest, and whose references to British matters throw a precious light on the social connection between Britain and Rome which aids us to trace something of the earliest dawn of Christianity in our land.[^[5]]

ANCIENT AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK

LATER AUTHORITIES

The constant accession of new material, especially from the unceasing spade-work always going on in every quarter of the island, makes modern books on Roman Britain tend to become obsolete, sometimes with startling rapidity. But even when not quite up to date, a well-written book is almost always very far from worthless, and much may be learnt from any in the following list:—

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

CONTENTS

[A MAP OF BRITAIN to illustrate THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.]

[ERRATA.]

[PREFACE]

[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

[ANCIENT AUTHORITIES REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK]

[LATER AUTHORITIES]

[CHAPTER I]

PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN

[§ A.]—Palaeolithic Age—Extinct fauna—River-bed men—Flint implements—Burnt stones—Worked bones—Glacial climate

[§ B.]—Neolithic Age—"Ugrians"—Polished flints—Jadite—Gold ornaments—Cromlechs
—Forts—Bronze Age—Copper and tin—Stonehenge

[§ C.]—Aryan immigrants—Gael and Briton—Earliest classical nomenclature—British Isles
—Albion—Ierne—Cassiterides—Phoenician tin trade viâ Cadiz

[§ D.]—Discoveries of Pytheas—Greek tin trade viâ Marseilles—Trade routes—Ingots—Coracles
—Earliest British coins—Lead-mining

[§ E.]—Pytheas trustworthy—His notes on Britain—Agricultural tribes—Barns—Manures—Dene
Holes—Mead—Beer—Parched corn—Pottery—Mill-stones—Villages—Cattle—Pastoral
tribes—Savage tribes—Cannibalism—Polyandry—Beasts of chase—Forest trees—British
clothing and arms—Sussex iron

[§ F.]—Celtic types—"Roy" and "Dhu"—Gael—Silurians—Loegrians—Basque peoples—Shifting
of clans—Constitutional disturbances—Monarchy—Oligarchy—Demagogues—First inscribed coins

[§ G.]—Clans at Julian invasion—Permanent natural boundaries—Population Celtic settlements
—"Duns"—Maiden Castle

[§ H.]—Religious state of Britain—Illustrated by Hindooism—Totemists—Polytheists—Druids
—Bards—Seers—Druidic Deities—Mistletoe—Sacred herbs—"Ovum Anguinum"—Suppression
of Druidism—Druidism and Christianity

[CHAPTER II]

THE JULIAN INVASION

B.C. 55, 54

[§ A.]—Caesar and Britain—Breakdown of Roman Republican institutions—Corruption abroad
and at home—Rise of Caesar Conquest of Gaul

[§ B.]—Sea-fight with Veneti and Britons—Pretexts for invading Britain—British dominion of
Divitiacus—Gallic tribes in Britain—Atrebates—Commius

[§ C.]—Defeat of Germans—Bridge over Rhine—Caesar's army—Dread of ocean—Fleet at
Boulogne—Commius sent to Britain—Channel crossed—Attempt on Dover—Landing
at Deal—Legionary sentiment—British army dispersed

[§ D.]—Wreck of fleet—Fresh British levy—Fight in corn-field—British chariots—Attack on
camp—Romans driven into sea

[§ E.]—Caesar worsted—New fleet built—Caesar at Rome—Cicero—Expedition of 54 B.C.
—Unopposed landing—Pro-Roman Britons—Trinobantes—Mandubratius—British army
surprised—"Old England's Hole"

[§ F.]—Fleet again wrecked—Britons rally under Caswallon—Battle of Barham Down—Britons fly
to London—Origin of London—Patriot army dispersed

[§ G.]—Passage of Thames—Submission of clans—Storm of Verulam—Last patriot effort in
Kent—Submission of Caswallon—Romans leave Britain—"Caesar Divus"

[CHAPTER III]

THE ROMAN CONQUEST

B.C. 54-A.D. 85

[§ A.]—Britain after Julius Caesar—House of Commius—Inscribed coins—House of Cymbeline
—Tasciovan—Commians overthrown—Vain appeal to Augustus—Ancyran Tablet—Romano-British
trade—Lead-mining—British fashions in Rome—Adminius banished by Cymbeline—Appeal
to Caligula—Futile demonstration—Icenian civil war—Vericus banished—Appeal to
Claudius—Invasion prepared

[§ B.]—Aulus Plautius—Reluctance to embark—Narcissus—Passage of Channel—Landing at
Portchester—Strength of expedition—Vespasian's legion—British defeats—Line of Thames
held—Arrival of Claudius—Camelodune taken—General submission of island

[§ C.]—Claudius triumphs—Gladiatorial shows—Last stand of Britons—Gallantry of Titus—Ovation
of Plautius—Distinctions bestowed—Triumphal arch—Commemorative coinage—Conciliatory
policy—British worship of Claudius—Cogidubnus—Attitude of clans—Britain made Imperial
province

[§ D.]—Ostorius Pro-praetor—Pacification of Midlands—Icenian revolt—The Fleam Dyke—Iceni
crushed—Cangi—Brigantes—Silurian war—Storm of Caer Caradoc—Treachery of Cartismandua
—Caradoc at Rome—Death of Ostorius—Uriconium and Caerleon—Britain quieted—Death of
Claudius

[§ E.]—Neronian misgovernment—Seneca—Prasutagus—Boadicean revolt—Sack of Camelodune
—Suetonius in Mona—Druidesses—Sack of London and Verulam—Boadicea crushed at Battle
Bridge—Peace of Petronius

[§ F.]—Otho and Vitellius—Civil war—Army of Britain—Priscus—Agricola—Vespasian Emperor
—Cerealis—Brigantes put down—Silurians put down—Agricola Pro-praetor—Ordovices
put down—Frontinus—Pacification of South Britain—Roman civilization introduced—Caledonian
campaign—Galgacus—Agricola's rampart—Domitian—Resignation and death of Agricola

[CHAPTER IV]

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION

A.D. 85-211

[§ A.]—Pacification of Britain—Roman roads—London their centre—Authority for names—Watling
Street—Ermine Street—Icknield Way

[§ B.]—Romano-British towns—Ancient lists—Method of identification—Dense rural population
—Remains in Cam valley—Coins—Thimbles—Horseshoes

[§ C.]—Fortification of towns late—Chief Roman centres—London—York—Chester—Bath
—Silchester—Remains there found—Romano-British handicrafts—Pottery—Basket-work
—Mining—Rural life—Villas—Forests—Hunting-dogs—Husbandry—Britain under Pax Romana

[§ D.]—The unconquered North—Hadrian's Wall—Upper and Lower Britain—Romano-British
coinage—Wall of Antoninus—Britain Pro-consular

[§ E.]—Commodus Britannicus—Ulpius Marcellus—Murder of Perennis—Era of military turbulence
—Pertinax—Albinus—British army defeated at Lyons—Severus Emperor—Caledonian war
—Severus overruns Highlands

[§ F.]—Severus completes Hadrian's Wall—"Mile Castles"—"Stations"—Garrison
—The Vallum—Rival theories—Evidence—Remains—Coins—Altars—Mithraism—Inscription
to Julia Domna—"Written Rock" on Gelt—Cilurnum aqueduct

[§ G.]—Death of Severus—Caracalla and Geta—Roman citizenship—Extension to veterans
—Tabulae honestae missionis—Bestowed on all British provincials

[CHAPTER V]

THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN

A.D. 211-455

[§ A.]—Era of Pretenders—Probus—Vandlebury—First notice of Saxons—Origin of name—Count
of the Saxon Shore—Carausius—Allectus—Last Romano-British coinage—Britain Mistress of
the Sea—Reforms of Diocletian—Constantius Chlorus—Re-conquest of Britain—Diocletian
provinces—Diocletian persecution—The last "Divus"—General scramble for Empire—British
army wins for Constantine—Christianity established

[§ B.]—Spread of Gospel—Arianism—Britain orthodox—Last Imperial visit—Heathen temples
stripped—British Emperors—Magnentius—Gratian—Julian—British corn-trade—First inroad of
Picts and Scots—Valentinian—Saxon raids—Campaign of Theodosius—Re-conquest of
Valentia—Wall restored and cities fortified

[§ C.]—Roman evacuation of Britain begun—Maximus—Settlement of Brittany—Radagaisus
invades Italy—Twentieth Legion leaves Britain—Britain in the 'Notitia'—Final effort of
British army—The last Constantine—Last Imperial Rescript to Britain—Sack of Rome by
Alaric—Final collapse of Roman rule in Britain

[§ D.]—Beginning of English Conquest—Vortigern—Jutes in Thanet—Battle of Stamford
—Massacre of Britons—Valentinian III.—Latest Roman coin found in Britain—Progress
of Conquest—The Cymry—Survival of Romano-British titles—Arturian Romances—Procopius
—Belisarius—Roman claims revived by Charlemagne—The British Empire

[§ E.]—Survivals of Romano-British civilization—Romano-British Church—Legends of its origin
—St. Paul—St. Peter—Joseph of Arimathaea—Glastonbury—Historical notices—Claudia and
Pudens—Pomponia—Church of St. Pudentiana—Patristic references to Britain—Tertullian
—Origen—Legend of Lucius—Native Christianity—British Bishops at Councils—Testimony
of Chrysostom and Jerome

[§ F.]—British missionaries—Ninias—Patrick—Beatus—British heresiarchs—Pelagius—Fastidius
—Pelagianism stamped out by Germanus—The Alleluia Battle—Romano-British churches—Why
so seldom found—Conclusion

[INDEX]

[FOOTNOTES]

ROMAN BRITAIN

[25]

CHAPTER I

PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN

SECTION A.

Palaeolithic Age—Extinct fauna—River-bed men—Flint implements—Burnt stones—Worked
bones—Glacial climate.

A. 1.—All history, as Professor Freeman so well points out, centres round the great name of Rome. For, of all the great divisions of the human race, it is the Aryan family which has come to the front. Assimilating, developing, and giving vastly wider scope to the highest forms of thought and religion originated by other families, notably the Semitic, the various Aryan nationalities form, and have formed for ages, the vanguard of civilization. These nationalities are now practically co-extensive with Christendom; and on them has been laid by Divine Providence "the white man's burden"—the task of raising the rest of mankind along with themselves to an ever higher level—social, material, intellectual, and spiritual.

A. 2.—Aryan history is thus, for all practical purposes, the history of mankind. And a mere glance at [26] Aryan history shows how entirely its great central feature is the period during which all the leading forces of Aryanism were grouped and fused together under the world-wide Empire of Rome. In that Empire all the streams of our Ancient History find their end, and from that Empire all those of Modern History take their beginning. "All roads," says the proverb, "lead to Rome;" and this is emphatically true of the lines of historical research; for as we tread them we are conscious at every step of the Romani Nominis umbra, the all-pervading influence of "the mighty name of Rome."

A. 3.—And above all is this true of the history of Western Europe in general and of our own island in particular. For Britain, History (meaning thereby the more or less trustworthy record of political and social development) does not even begin till its destinies were drawn within the sphere of Roman influence. It is with Julius Caesar, that great writer (and yet greater maker) of History, that, for us, this record commences.

A. 4.—But before dealing with "Britain's tale" as connected with "Caesar's fate," it will be well to note briefly what earlier information ancient documents and remains can afford us with regard to our island and its inhabitants. With the earliest dwellers upon its soil of whom traces remain we are, indeed, scarcely concerned. For in the far-off days of the "River-bed" men (five thousand or five hundred thousand years ago, according as we accept the physicist's or the geologist's estimate of the age of our planet) Britain was not yet an island. Neither the Channel nor the North Sea as yet cut it off from the Continent when those primaeval savages herded beside the banks of its streams, along with elephant and hippopotamus, bison and elk, bear and hyaena; amid whose remains we find their roughly-chipped flint axes and arrow-heads, the fire-marked stones which they used in boiling their water, and the sawn or broken bases of the antlers which for some unknown purpose[^[6]] they were in the habit of cutting up—perhaps, like the Lapps of to-day, to anchor their sledges withal in the snow. For the great Glacial Epoch, which had covered half the Northern Hemisphere with its mighty ice-sheet, was still, in their day, lingering on, and their environment was probably that of Northern Siberia to-day. Some archaeologists, indeed, hold that they are to this day represented by the Esquimaux races; but this theory cannot be considered in any way proved.

A. 5.—Whether, indeed, they were "men" at all, in any real sense of the word, may well be questioned. For of the many attempts which philosophers in all ages have made to define the word "man," the only one which is truly defensible is that which differentiates him from other animals, not by his physical or intellectual, but by his spiritual superiority. Many other creatures are as well adapted in bodily conformation for their environment, and the lowest savages are intellectually at a far lower level of development than the highest insects; but none stand in the same [27] relation to the Unseen. "Man," as has been well said, "is the one animal that can pray." And there is nothing amongst the remains of these "river-bed men" to show us that they either did pray, or could. Intelligence, such as is now found only in human beings, they undoubtedly had. But whether they had the capacity for Religion must be left an unsolved problem. In this connection, however, it may be noted that Tacitus, in describing the lowest savages of his Germania [c. 46], "with no horses, no homes, no weapons, skin-clad, nesting on the bare ground, men and women alike, barely kept alive by herbs and such flesh as their bone-tipped arrows can win them," makes it his climax that they are "beneath the need of prayer;"—adding that this spiritual condition is, "beyond all others, that least attainable by man."

SECTION B.

Neolithic Age—"Ugrians"—Polished flints—Jadite—Gold ornaments—Cromlechs—Forts—Bronze
Age—Copper and tin—Stonehenge.

B. 1.—Whatever they were, they vanish from our ken utterly, these Palaeolithic savages, and are followed, after what lapse of time we know not, by the users of polished flint weapons, the tribes of the Neolithic period. And with them we find ourselves in touch with the existing development of our island. For an island it already was, and with substantially the same area and shores and physical features as we have them still. Our rivers ran in the same valleys, our hills rose [28] with the same contour, in those far-off days as now. And while the place of flint in the armoury of Britain was taken first by bronze and then by iron, these changes were made by no sudden breaks, but so gradually that it is impossible to say when one period ended and the next began.

B.2.—It is almost certain, however, that the Neolithic men were not of Aryan blood. They are commonly spoken of by the name of Ugrians,[^[7]] the "ogres"[^[8]] of our folk-lore; which has also handed down, in the spiteful Brownie of the wood and the crafty Pixie of the cavern, dimly-remembered traditions of their physical and mental characteristics. Indeed it is not impossible that their blood may still be found in the remoter corners of our land, whither they were pushed back by the higher civilization of the Aryan invaders, before whom they disappeared by a process in which "miscegenation" may well have played no small part. But disappear they did, leaving behind them no more traces than their flint arrow-heads and axes (a few of these being of jadite, which must have come from China or thereabouts), together with their oblong sepulchral barrows, from some of which the earth has weathered away, so that the massive stones imbedded in it as the last home of the deceased stand exposed as a "dolmen" or "cromlech." But an appreciable number of the earthworks which stud our [29] hill-tops, and are popularly called "Roman" or "British" camps, really belong to this older race. Such are "Cony Castle" in Dorset, and the fortifications along the Axe in Devon.

B. 3.—During the neolithic stage of their development the Ugrians were acquainted with but one metal, gold, and some of their stone weapons and implements are thus ornamented. For gold, being at once the most beautiful, the most incorruptible, the most easily recognizable, and the most easily worked of metals, is everywhere found as used by man long before any other. But before the Ugrian races vanish they had learnt to use bronze, which shows them to have discovered the properties not only of gold, but of both tin and copper. All three metals were doubtless obtained from the streams of the West. They had also become proficients, as their sepulchral urns show, in the manufacture of pottery. They could weave, moreover, both linen and woollen being known, and had passed far beyond the mere savage.

B. 4.—The race, indeed, which could erect Avebury and Stonehenge, as we may safely say was done by this people,[^[9]] must have possessed engineering skill of [30] a very high order, and no little accuracy of astronomical observation. For the mighty "Sarsen" stones have all been brought from a distance,[^[10]] and the whole vast circles are built on a definite astronomical plan; while so careful is the orientation that, at the summer solstice, the disc of the rising sun, as seen from the "altar" of Stonehenge, appears to be poised exactly on the summit of one of the chief megaliths (now known as "The Friar's Heel"). From this it would seem that the builders were Sun-worshippers; and amongst the earliest reports of Britain current in the Greek world we find the fame of the "great round temple" dedicated to Apollo. But no Latin author mentions it; so that it is doubtful whether it was ever used by the Aryan, or at least by the Brythonic, immigrants. These brought their own worship and their own civilization with them, and all that was highest in Ugrian civilization and worship faded before them, such Ugrians as remained having degenerated to a far lower level when first we meet with them in history.

SECTION C.

Aryan immigrants—Gael and Briton—Earliest classical nomenclature—British Isles—Albion—Ierne
—Cassiterides—Phoenician tin trade viâ Cadiz.

[31]

C. 1.—How or when the first swarms of the Aryan migration reached Britain is quite unknown.[^[11]] But they undoubtedly belonged to the Celtic branch of that family, and to the Gaelic (Gadhelic or Goidelic) section of the branch, which still holds the Highlands of Scotland and forms the bulk of the population of Ireland. By the 4th century B.C. this section was already beginning to be pressed northwards and westwards by the kindred Britons (or Brythons) who followed on their heels; for Aristotle (or a disciple of his) knows our islands as "the Britannic[^[12]] Isles." That the Britons were in his day but new comers may be argued from the fact that he speaks of Great Britain by the name of Albion, a Gaelic designation subsequently driven northwards along with those who used it. In its later form Albyn it long remained as loosely equivalent to North Britain, and as Albany it still survives in a like connection. Ireland Aristotle calls Ierne, the later Ivernia or Hibernia; a word also found in the Argonautic poems ascribed to the mythical Orpheus, and composed probably by Onomacritus about 350 B.C., wherein the Argo is warned against approaching "the Iernian islands, the home of dark and noisome mischief." This is the passage familiar to the readers of Kingsley's 'Heroes.'[^[13]]

[32]

C. 2.—Aristotle's work does no more than mention our islands, as being, like Ceylon, not pelagic, but oceanic. To early classical antiquity, it must be remembered, the Ocean was no mere sea, but a vast and mysterious river encircling the whole land surface of the earth. Its mighty waves, its tides, its furious currents, all made it an object of superstitious horror. To embark upon it was the height of presumption; and even so late as the time of Claudius we shall find the Roman soldiers feeling that to do so, even for the passage of the Channel, was "to leave the habitable world."

C. 3.—But while the ancients dreaded the Ocean, they knew also that its islands alone were the source of one of the most precious and rarest of their metals. Before iron came into general use (and the difficulty of smelting it has everywhere made it the last metal to do so), tin had a value all its own. It was the only known substance capable of making, along with copper, an alloy hard enough for cutting purposes—the "bronze" which has given its name to one entire Age of human development. It was thus all but a necessary of life, and was eagerly sought for as amongst the choicest objects of traffic.

C. 4.—The Phoenicians, the merchant princes of the dawn of history, succeeded, with true mercantile instinct, in securing a monopoly of this trade, by being the first to make their way to the only spots in the world where tin is found native, the Malay region in the East, Northern Spain and Cornwall in the West. That tin was known amongst the Greeks by its Sanscrit [33] name Kastira[^[14]] κασσιτερός [kassiteros], shows that the Eastern source was the earliest to be tapped. But the Western was that whence the supply flowed throughout the whole of the classical ages; and, as the stream-tin of the Asturian mountains seems to have been early exhausted, the name Cassiterides, the Tin Lands, came to signify exclusively the western peninsula of Britain. Herodotus, in the 5th century B.C., knew this name, but, as he frankly confesses, nothing but the name.[^[15]] For the whereabouts of this El Dorado, and the way to it, was a trade secret most carefully kept by the Phoenician merchants of Cadiz, who alone held the clue. So jealous were they of it that long afterwards, when the alternative route through Gaul had already drawn away much of its profitableness, we read of a Phoenician captain purposely wrecking his ship lest a Roman vessel in sight should follow to the port, and being indemnified by the state for his loss.

SECTION D.

Discoveries of Pytheas—Greek tin trade viâ Marseilles—Trade routes—Ingots—Coracles
—Earliest British coins—Lead-mining.

D. 1.—But contemporary with Aristotle lived the great geographer Pytheas; whose works, unfortunately, we know only by the fragmentary references to them [34] in later, and frequently hostile, authors, such as Strabo, who dwell largely on his mistakes, and charge him with misrepresentation. In fact, however, he seems to have been both an accurate and truthful observer, and a discoverer of the very first order. Starting from his native city Massilia (Marseilles), he passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and traced the coast-line of Europe to Denmark (visiting Britain on his way), and perhaps even on into the Baltic.[^[16]] The shore of Norway (which he called, as the natives still call it, Norgé) he followed till within the Arctic Circle, as his mention of the midnight sun shows, and then struck across to Scotland; returning, apparently by the Irish Sea, to Bordeaux and so home overland. This truly wonderful voyage he made at the public charge, with a view to opening new trade routes, and it seems to have thoroughly answered its purpose. Henceforward the Phoenician monopoly was broken, and a constant stream of traffic in the precious tin passed between Britain and Marseilles.[^[17]]

D. 2.—The route was kept as secret as possible; Polybius tells us that the Massiliots, when interrogated by one of the Scipios, professed entire ignorance of Britain; but Pytheas (as quoted by his contemporary Timaeus, as well as by later writers) states that the metal was brought by coasters to a tidal island, Ictis, whence it was shipped for Gaul. This island was six days' sail from the tin diggings, and can scarcely be any but [35] Thanet. St. Michael's Mount, now the only tidal island on the south coast, was anciently part of the mainland; a fact testified to by the forest remains still seen around it. Nor could it be six days' sail from the tin mines. The Isle of Wight, again, to which the name Ictis or Vectis would seem to point, can never have been tidal at this date. But Thanet undoubtedly was so in mediaeval times, and may well have been so for ages, while its nearness to the Continent would recommend it to the Gallic merchants. Indeed Pytheas himself probably selected it on this account for his new emporium.

D. 3.—In his day, as we have seen, the tin reached this destination by sea; but in the time of the later traveller Posidonius[^[18]] it came in wagons, probably by that track along the North Downs now known as the "Pilgrims' Way." The chalk furnished a dry and open road, much easier than the swamps and forests of the lower ground. Further west the route seems to have been viâ Launceston, Exeter, Honiton, Ilchester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Alton; an ancient track often traceable, and to be seen almost in its original condition near "Alfred's Tower," in Somerset, where it is known as "The Hardway." And this long land transit argues a considerable degree of political solidarity throughout the south of the island. The tale of Posidonius is confirmed by Caesar's statement [36] that tin reached Kent "from the interior," i.e. by land. It was obtained at first from the streams of Dartmoor and Cornwall, where abundant traces of ancient washings are visible, and afterwards by mining, as now. And when smelted it was made up into those peculiar ingots which still meet the eye in Cornwall, and whose shape seems never to have varied from the earliest times. Posidonius, who visited Cornwall, compares them to knuckle-bones[^[19]] αστρηαγαλοι [astrhagaloi]

D. 4.—The vessels which thus coasted from the Land's End to the South Foreland are described as on the pattern of coracles, a very light frame-work covered with hides. It seems almost incredible that sea-going craft could have been thus constructed; yet not only is there overwhelming testimony to the fact throughout the whole history of Roman Britain, but such boats are still in use on the wild rollers which beat upon the west coast of Ireland, and are found able to live in seas which would be fatal to anything more rigidly built. For the surf boats in use at Madras a similar principle is adopted, not a nail entering into their construction. They can thus face breakers which would crush an ordinary boat to pieces. This method of ship-building was common all along the northern coast of Europe for ages.[^[20]] Nor were these [37] coracles only used for coasting. As time went on, the Britons boldly struck straight across from Cornwall to the Continent, and both the Seine and the Loire became inlets for tin into Gaul, thus lessening the long land journey—not less than thirty days—which was required, as Polybius tells us, to convey it from the Straits of Dover to the Rhone. (This journey, it may be noted, was made not in wagons, as through Britain, but on pack-horses.)

D. 5.—Thus it reached Marseilles; and that the trade was founded by the Massiliot Pytheas is borne testimony to by the early British coins, which are all modelled on the classical currency of his age. The medium in universal circulation then, current everywhere, like the English sovereign now, was the Macedonian stater, newly introduced by Philip, a gold coin weighing 133 grains, bearing on the one side the laureated head of Apollo, on the other a figure of Victory in a chariot. Of this all known Gallic and British coins (before the Roman era) are more or less accurate copies. The earliest as yet found in Britain do not date, according to Sir John Evans, our great authority on this subject,[^[21]] from before the 2nd century B.C. They are all dished coins, rudely struck, and rapidly growing ruder as time goes on. The head early becomes a mere congeries of dots and lines, but one horse of the chariot team remains recognizable to quite the end of the series.

D. 6.—These coins have been found in very large [38] numbers, and of various types, according to the locality in which they were struck. They occur as far north as Edinburgh; but all seem to have been issued by one or other of the tribes in the south and east of the island, who learnt the idea of minting from the Gauls. Whence the gold of which the coins are made came from is a question not yet wholly solved: surface gold was very probably still obtainable at that date from the streams of Wales and Cornwall. But it was long before any other metal was used in the British mints. Not till after the invasion of Julius Caesar do we find any coins of silver or bronze issued, though he testifies to their existence. The use of silver shows a marked advance in metallurgy, and is probably connected with the simultaneous development of the lead-mining in the Mendip Hills, of which about this time we first begin to find traces.

SECTION E.

Pytheas trustworthy—His notes on Britain—Agricultural tribes—Barns—Manures—Dene
Holes—Mead—Beer—Parched corn—Pottery—Mill-stones—Villages—Cattle—Pastoral tribes
—Savage tribes—Cannibalism—Polyandry—Beasts of chase—Forest trees—British clothing
and arms—Sussex iron.

E. 1.—The trustworthiness of Pytheas is further confirmed by the astronomical observations which he records. He notices, for example, that the longest day in Britain contains "nineteen equinoctial hours." Amongst the ancients, it must be remembered, an "hour," in common parlance, signified merely the twelfth part, on any given day, of the time between [39] sunrise and sunset, and thus varied according to the season. But the standard hour for astronomical purposes was the twelfth part of the equinoctial day, when the sun rises 6 a.m. and sets 6 p.m., and therefore corresponded with our own. Now the longest day at Greenwich is actually not quite seventeen hours, but in the north of Britain it comes near enough to the assertion of Pytheas to bear out his tale. We are therefore justified in giving credence to his account of what he saw in our country, the earliest that we possess. He tells us that, in some parts at least, the inhabitants were far from being mere savages. They were corn-growers (wheat, barley, and millet being amongst their crops), and also cultivated "roots," fruit trees, and other vegetables. What specially struck him was that, "for lack of clear sunshine[^[22]]," they threshed out their corn, not in open threshing-floors, as in Mediterranean lands, but in barns.

E. 2.—From other sources we know that these old British farmers were sufficiently scientific agriculturalists to have invented wheeled ploughs,[^[23]] and to use a variety of manures; various kinds of mast, loam, and chalk in particular. This treatment of the soil was, according to Pliny, a British invention[^[24]] (though the Greeks of Megara had also tried it), and he thinks it worth his while to give a long description of the [40] different clays in use and the methods of their application. That most generally employed was chalk dug out from pits some hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but widening towards the bottom. [Petitur ex alto, in centenos pedes actis plerumque puteis, ore angustatis; intus spatiante vena.]

E. 3.—Here we have an exact picture of those mysterious excavations some of which still survive to puzzle antiquaries under the name of Dene Holes. They are found in various localities; Kent, Surrey, and Essex being the richest. In Hangman's Wood, near Grays, in Essex, a small copse some four acres in extent, there are no fewer than seventy-two Dene Holes, as close together as possible, their entrance shafts being not above twenty yards apart. These shafts run vertically downwards, till the floor of the pit is from eighty to a hundred feet below the surface of the ground. At the bottom the shaft widens out into a vaulted chamber some thirty feet across, from which radiate four, five, or even six lateral crypts, whose dimensions are usually about thirty feet in length, by twelve in width and height. When the shafts are closely clustered, the lateral crypts of one will extend to within a few feet of those belonging to its neighbours, but in no case do they communicate with them (though the recent excavations of archaeologists have thus connected whole groups of Dene Holes). Many theories have been elaborated to account for their existence, but the data are conclusive against their having been either habitations, tombs, store-rooms, or hiding-places; and, in 1898, Mr. [41] Charles Dawson, F.S.A., pointed out that, in Sussex, chalk and limestone are still quarried by means of identically such pits. The chalk so procured is found a far more efficacious dressing for the soil than that which occurs on the surface, and moreover is more cheaply got than by carting from even a mile's distance. At the present day, as soon as a pit is exhausted (that is as soon as the diggers dare make their chambers no larger for fear of a downfall), another is sunk hard by, and the first filled up with the débris from the second. In the case of the Dene Holes, this débris must have been required for some other purpose; and to this fact alone we owe their preservation. It is probable that the celebrated cave at Royston in Hertfordshire was originally dug for this purpose, though afterwards used as a hermitage.

E. 4.—Pytheas is also our authority for saying that bee-keeping was known to the Britons of his day;[^[25]] a drink made of wheat and honey being one of their intoxicants. This method of preparing mead (or metheglin) is current to this day among our peasantry. Another drink was made from barley, and this, he tells us, they called κονρμι [kourmi], the word still used in Erse for beer, under the form cuirm. Dioscorides the physician, who records this (and who may perhaps have tried our national beverage, as he lived shortly after the Claudian conquest of Britain), pronounces it [42] "head-achy, unwholesome, and injurious to the nerves": κεφαλαλγές ἐστι καὶ κακόχυμον, καὶ τοῦ νεύρου βλαπτικόν [kephalalges esti kai kakhochymon, kai tou neurou].

E. 5.—Not all the tribes of Britain, however, were at this level of civilization. Threshing in barns was only practised by those highest in development, the true Britons of the south and east. The Gaelic tribes beyond them, so far as they were agricultural at all, stored the newly-plucked ears of corn in their underground dwellings, day by day taking out and dressing κατεργαζομένους [katergazomenous] what was needed for each meal. The method here referred to is doubtless that described as still in use at the end of the 17th century in the Hebrides.[^[26]] "A woman, sitting down, takes a handful of corn, holding it by the stalks in her left hand, and then sets fire to the ears, which are presently in a flame. She has a stick in her right hand, which she manages very dexterously, beating off the grains at the very instant when the husk is quite burnt.... The corn may be thus dressed, winnowed, ground, and baked, within an hour of reaping."

When kept, it may usually have been stored, like that of Robinson Crusoe, in baskets;[^[27]] for basket-making was a peculiarly British industry, and Posidonius found "British baskets" in use on the [43] Continent. But probably it was also hoarded—again in Crusoe fashion—in the large jars of coarse pottery which are occasionally found on British sites. These, and the smaller British vessels, are sometimes elaborately ornamented with devices of no small artistic merit. But all are hand-made, the potter's wheel being unknown in pre-Roman days.

E. 6.—Nor does the grinding of corn, even in hand-mills, seem to have been universal till the Roman era, the earlier British method being to bruise the grain in a mortar.[^[28]] Without the resources of civilization it is not easy to deal with stones hard enough for satisfactory millstones. We find that the Romans, when they came, mostly selected for this use the Hertfordshire "pudding-stone," a conglomerate of the Eocene period crammed with rolled flint pebbles, sometimes also bringing over Niederendig lava from the Rhine valley, and burr-stone from the Paris basin for their querns.

E. 7.—These tribes are described as living in cheap εὐτελεῖς [euteleis], dwellings, constructed of reeds or logs, yet spoken of as subterranean.[^[29]] Light has been thrown on this apparent contradiction by the excavation in 1889 of the site of a British village at Barrington in Cambridgeshire. Within a space of about sixty yards each way, bounded by a fosse some six feet wide and four deep, were a collection of roughly circular pits, distributed in no recognizable system, from twelve to [44] twenty feet in diameter and from two to four in depth. They were excavated in the chalky soil, and from each a small drainage channel ran for a yard or two down the gentle slope on which the settlement stood. Obviously a superstructure of thatch and wattle would convert these pits into quite passable wigwams, corresponding to the description of Pytheas. This whole village was covered by several feet of top-soil in which were found numerous interments of Anglo-Saxon date. It had seemingly perished by fire, a layer of incinerated matter lying at the bottom of each pit.

E. 8.—The domestic cattle of the Britons were a diminutive breed, smaller than the existing Alderney, with abnormally developed foreheads (whence their scientific name Bos Longifrons). Their remains, the skulls especially, are found in every part of the land, with no trace, in pre-Roman times, of any other breed. The gigantic wild ox of the British forests (Bos Primigenius) seems never to have been tamed by the Celtic tribes, who, very possibly, like the Romans after them, may have brought their own cattle with them into the island. According to Professor Rolleston the small size of the breed is due to the large consumption of milk by the breeders. (He notes that the cattle of Burmah and Hindostan are identically the same stock, and that in Burmah, where comparatively little milk is used, they are of large size. In Hindostan, on the contrary, where milk forms the staple food of the population, the whole breed is stunted, no calf having, for ages, been allowed its due supply of nutriment.) The Professor also holds that [45] these small oxen, together with the goat, sheep, horse, dog, and swine (of the Asiatic breed), were introduced into Britain by the Ugrian races in the Neolithic Age; and that the pre-Roman Britons had no domestic fowls except geese.[^[30]]

E. 9.—If these considerations are of weight they would point to an excessive dependence on milk even amongst the agricultural tribes of Britain. And there were others, as we know, who had not got beyond the pastoral stage of human development. These, as Strabo declares, had no idea of husbandry, "nor even sense enough to make cheese, though milk they have in plenty."[^[31]] And some of the non-Aryan hordes seem to have been mere brutal savages, practising cannibalism and having wives in common. Both practices are mentioned by the latest as well as the earliest of our classical authorities. Jerome says that in Gaul he himself saw Attacotti (the primitive inhabitants of Galloway) devouring human flesh, and refers to their sexual relations, which more probably imply some system of polyandry, such as still prevails in Thibet, than mere promiscuous intercourse. Traces of this system long remained in the rule of "Mutter-recht," which amongst several of the more remote septs traced inheritance invariably through the mother and not the father.

E. 10.—These savages knew neither corn nor cattle. Like the "Children of the Mist" in the pages of Walter Scott,[^[32]] their boast was "to own no lord, receive [46] no land, take no hire, give no stipend, build no hut, enclose no pasture, sow no grain; to take the deer of the forest for their flocks and herds," and to eke out this source of supply by preying upon their less barbarous neighbours "who value flocks and herds above honour and freedom." Lack of game, however, can seldom have driven them to this; for the forests of ancient Britain seem to have swarmed with animal life. Red deer, roebuck, wild oxen, and wild swine were in every brake, beaver and waterfowl in every stream; while wolf, bear, and wild-cat shared with man in taking toll of their lives. The trees of these forests, it may be mentioned, were (as in some portions of Epping Forest now) almost wholly oak, ash, holly, and yew; the beech, chestnut, elm, and even the fir, being probably introduced in later ages.

E. 11.—Of the British tribes, however, almost none, even amongst these wild woodlanders, were the naked savages, clothed only in blue paint, that they are commonly imagined to have been. On the contrary, they could both weave and spin; and the tartan, with its variegated colours, is described by Caesar's contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, as their distinctive dress, just as one might speak of Highlanders at the present day.[^[33]] Pliny mentions that all the colours used were [47] obtained from native herbs and lichens,[^[34]] as is still the case in the Hebrides, where sea-weed dyes are mostly used. Woad was used for tattooing the flesh with blue patterns, and a decoction of beechen ashes for dyeing the hair red if necessary, whenever that colour was fashionable.[^[35]] The upper classes wore collars and bracelets of gold, and necklaces of glass and amber beads.

E. 12.—This last item suggests an interesting question as to whence came the vast quantities of amber thus used. None is now found upon our shores, except a very occasional fragment on the East Anglian beaches. But the British barrows bear abundant testimony to its having been in prehistoric times the commonest of all materials for ornamental purposes—far commoner than in any other country. Beads are found by the myriad—a single Wiltshire grave furnished a thousand—mostly of a discoid shape, and about an inch in diameter. Larger plates occasionally appear, and in one case (in Sussex) a cup formed from a solid block of exceptional size. If all this came from the Baltic, the main existing source of our amber,[^[36]] it argues a considerable trade, of which [48] we find no mention in any extant authority. Pytheas witnesses to the amber of the Baltic, and says nothing, so far as we know, of British amber. But, according to Pliny,[^[37]] his contemporary Solinus speaks of it as a British product; and at the Christian era it was apparently a British export.[^[38]] The supply of amber as a jetsom is easily exhausted in any given district; miles of Baltic coast rich in it within mediaeval times are now quite barren; and the same thing has probably taken place in Britain. The rapid wearing away of our amber-bearing Norfolk shore is not unlikely to have been the cause of this change; the submarine fir-groves of the ancient littoral, with their resinous exudations, having become silted over far out at sea.[^[39]] The old British amber sometimes contained flies. Dioscorides[^[40]] applies to it the epithet πτερυγοφόρον [pterugophoron] ["fly-bearing">[.

E. 13.—The chiefs were armed with large brightly-painted shields,[^[41]] plumed (and sometimes crested) helmets, and cuirasses of leather, bronze, or chain-mail. The national weapons of offence were darts, pikes (sometimes with prongs—the origin of Britannia's trident), and broadswords; bows and arrows being more rarely used. Both Diodorus Siculus [v. 30] and Strabo [iv. 197] describe this equipment, and specimens of all the articles have, at one place or another, been found in British interments.[^[42]] The arms are [49] often richly worked and ornamented, sometimes inlaid with enamel, sometimes decorated with studs of red coral from the Mediterranean.[^[43]] The shields, being of wood, have perished, but their circular bosses of iron still remain. The chariots, which formed so special a feature of British militarism, were also of wood, painted, like the shields, and occasionally ironclad.[^[44]] The iron may have been from the Sussex fields. We know that in Caesar's day rings of this metal were one of the forms of British currency, so that before his time the Britons must have attained to the smelting of this most intractable of metals.

SECTION F.

Celtic types—"Roy" and "Dhu"—Gael—Silurians—Loegrians—Basque peoples—Shifting of
clans—Constitutional disturbances—Monarchy—Oligarchy—Demagogues—First inscribed coins.

F. 1.—Our earliest records point to the existence among the Celtic tribes in Britain of the two physical types still to be found amongst them; the tall, fair, red-haired, blue-eyed Gael, whom his clansmen denominate "Roy" (the Red), and the dark complexion, hair and eyes, usually associated with shorter stature, which go with the designation "Dhu" (the Black). Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu are familiar illustrations of this nomenclature. In classical times these types were much less intermingled than now, and were characteristic of separate races. The former prevailed [50] almost exclusively amongst the true Britons of the south and east, and the Gaelic septs of the north, while the latter was found throughout the west, in Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. The Silurians, of Glamorgan, are specially noted as examples of this "black" physique, and a connection has been imagined between them and the Basques of Iberia, an idea originating with Strabo.

F. 2.—That a good deal of non-Aryan blood was, and is, to be found in both regions is fairly certain; but any closer correlation must be held at any rate not proven. For though Strabo asserts that the Silurians differ not only in looks but in language from the Britons, while in both resembling the Iberians, it is probable that he derives his information from Pytheas four centuries earlier. At that date non-Aryan speech may very possibly still have lingered on in the West, but there is no trace whatever to be found of anything of the sort in the nomenclature of the district during or since the Roman occupation. All is unmitigated Celtic. We may, however, possibly find a confirmation of Strabo's view in the word Logris applied to Southern Britain by the Celtic bards of the Arturian cycle. The word is said to be akin to Liger (Loire), and tradition traced the origin of the Loegrians to the southern banks of that river, which were undoubtedly held by Iberian (Basque) peoples at least to the date when Pytheas visited those parts. The name, indeed, seems to be connected with that of the Ligurians, a kindred non-Aryan community, surviving, in historical times, only amongst the Maritime Alps.

[51]

F. 3.—It is probable that the status of each clan was continually shifting; and what little we know of their names and locations, their rise and their fall, presents an even more kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria than the mediaeval history of the Scotch Highlands, or the principalities of Wales, or the ever-changing septs of ancient Ireland. Tribes absorbed or destroyed by conquering tribes, tribes confederating with others under a fresh name, this or that chief becoming a new eponymous hero,—such is the ceaseless spectacle of unrest of which the history of ancient Britain gives us glimpses.

F. 4.—By the time that these glimpses become anything like continuous, things were further complicated by two additional elements of disturbance. One of these was the continuous influx of new settlers from Gaul, which was going on throughout the 1st century B.C. Caesar tells us that the tribes of Kent, Sussex, and Essex were all of the Belgic stock, and we shall see that the higher politics of his day were much influenced by the fact that one and the same tribal chief claimed territorial rights in Gaul and Britain at once; just like so many of our mediaeval barons. The other was the coincidence that just at this period the British tribes began to be affected by the turbulent stage of constitutional development connected, in Greece and Rome, with the abolition of royalty.

F. 5.—The primitive Aryan community (so far, at least, as the western branch of the race is concerned) everywhere presents to us the threefold element of King, Lords, and Commons. The King is supreme, [52] he reigns by right of birth (though not according to strict primogeniture), and he not only reigns but governs. Theoretically he is absolute, but practically can do little without taking counsel with his Lords, the aristocracy of the tribe, originally an aristocracy of birth, but constantly tending to become one of wealth. The Commons gather to ratify the decrees of their betters, with a theoretical right to dissent (though not to discuss), a right which they seldom or never at once care and dare to exercise.

F. 6.—In course of time we see that everywhere the supremacy of the Kings became more and more distasteful to the Aristocracy, and was everywhere set aside, sometimes by a process of quiet depletion of the Royal prerogative, sometimes by a revolution; the change being, in the former case, often informal, with the name, and sometimes even the succession, of the eviscerated office still lingering on. The executive then passed to the Lords, and the state became an oligarchical Republic, such as we see in Rome after the expulsion of the Tarquins. Next came the rise of the Lower Orders, who insisted with ever-increasing urgency on claiming a share in the direction of politics, and in every case with ultimate success. Almost invariably the leaders who headed this uprising of the masses grasped for themselves in the end the supreme power, and as irresponsible "Dictators," "Tyrants," or "Emperors" took the place of the old constitutional Kings.

F. 7.—Such was the cycle of events both in Rome and in the Greek commonwealths; though in the [53] latter it ran its course within a few generations, whilst amongst the law-abiding Romans it was a matter of centuries. And the pages of Caesar bear abundant testimony to the fact that in his day the Gallic tribes were all in the state of turmoil which mostly attended the "Regifugium" period of development. Some were still under their old Kings; some, like the Nervii, had developed a Senatorial government; in some the Commons had set up "Tyrants" of their own. It was this general unrest which contributed in no small degree to the Roman conquest of Gaul. And the same state of things seems to have been begun in Britain also. The earliest inscribed British coins bear, some of them the names of Kings and Princes, others those of peoples, others again designations which seem to point to Tyrants. To the first class belong those of Commius, Tincommius, Tasciovan, Cunobelin, etc.; to the second those of the Iceni and the Cassi; to the last the northern mintage of Volisius, a potentate of the Parisii, who calls himself Domnoverus, which, according to Professor Rhys,[^[45]] literally signifies "Demagogue."

SECTION G.

Clans at Julian invasion—Permanent natural boundaries—Population—Celtic settlements—"Duns"
—Maiden Castle.

G. 1.—The earliest of these inscribed coins, however, take us no further back than the Julian invasion; [54] and it is to Caesar's Commentaries that we are indebted for the first recorded names of any British tribes. It is no part of his design to give any regular list of the clans or their territories; he merely makes incidental mention of such as he had to do with. Thus we learn of the four nameless clans who occupied Kent (a region which has kept its territorial name unchanged from the days of Pytheas), and also of the Atrebates, Cateuchlani, Trinobantes, Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi.

G. 2.—To the localities held by these tribes Caesar bears no direct evidence; but from his narrative, as well as from local remains and later references, we know that the Trinobantes possessed Essex, and the Cenimagni (i.e. "the Great Iceni" as they were still called,[^[46]] though their power was on the wane), East Anglia; while the Cateuchlani, already beginning to be known as the Cassivellauni (or Cattivellauni), presumably from their heroic chieftain Caswallon (or Cadwallon),[^[47]] corresponded roughly to the later South Mercians, between the Thames and the Nene. The Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi were less considerable, and must evidently have been situated on the marches between their larger neighbours. The name of the Cassi may still, perhaps, cling to their [55] old home, in the Cashio Hundred and Cassiobury, near Watford; while conjecture finds traces of the Ancalites in Henley, and of the Bibroci in Bray, on either side of the Thames.

G. 3.—The Atrebates, who play a not unimportant part (as will be seen in the next chapter) in Caesar's connection with Britain, were apparently in possession of the whole southern bank of the Thames, from its source right down to London—the river then, as in Anglo-Saxon times, being a tribal boundary throughout its entire length. This would make the Bibroci a sub-tribe of the Atrebatian Name, and also the Segontiaci, if Henry of Huntingdon (writing in the 12th century with access to various sources of information now lost) is right in identifying Silchester, the Roman Calleva, with their local stronghold Caer Segent.

G. 4.—But the whole attempt to locate accurately any but the chiefest tribes found by the Romans in Britain is too conjectural to be worth the infinite labour that has been expended upon the subject by antiquaries. All we can say with certainty is that forest and fen must have cut up the land into a limited number of fairly recognizable districts, each so far naturally separated from the rest as to have been probably a separate or quasi-separate political entity also. Thus, not only was the Thames a line of demarcation, only passable at a few points, from its estuary nearly to the Severn Sea, but the southern regions cut off by it were parted by Nature into five main districts. Sussex was hemmed in by the great forest of Anderida, and that [56] of Selwood continued the line from Southampton to Bristol. Kent was isolated by the Romney marshes and the wild country about Tunbridge, while the western peninsula was a peninsula indeed when the sea ran up to beyond Glastonbury. In this region, then, the later Wessex, we find five main tribes; the men of Kent, the Regni south of the Weald, the Atrebates along the Thames, the Belgae on the Wiltshire Avon, and the Damnonii of Devon and Cornwall, with (perhaps) a sub-tribe of their Name, the Durotriges, in Dorsetshire.

G. 5.—Like the south, the eastern, western, and northern districts of England were cut off from the centre by natural barriers. The Fens of Cambridgeshire and the marshes of the Lea valley, together with the dense forest along the "East Anglian" range, enclosed the east in a ring fence; within which yet another belt of woodland divided the Trinobantes of Essex from the Iceni of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Severn and the Dee isolated what is now Wales, a region falling naturally into two sub-divisions; South Wales being held by the Silurians and their Demetian subjects, North Wales by the Ordovices. The lands north of the Humber, again, were barred off from the south by barriers stretching from sea to sea; the Humber itself on the one hand, the Mersey estuary on the other, thrusting up marshes to the very foot of the wild Pennine moorlands between. And the whole of this vast region seems to have been under the Brigantes, who held the great plain of York, and exercised more or less of a hegemony over the [57] Parisians of the East Riding, the Segontii of Lancashire, and the Otadini, Damnonii, and Selgovae between the Tyne and the Forth. Finally, the Midlands, parcelled up by the forests of Sherwood, Needwood, Charnwood, and Arden, into quarters, found space for the Dobuni in the Severn valley (to the west of the Cateuchlani), for the Coritani east of the Trent, and for their westward neighbours the Cornavii.[^[48]]

G. 6.—All these tribes are given in Ptolemy's geography, but only a few, such as the Iceni, the Silurians, and the Brigantes, meet us in actual history; whilst, of them all, the Damnonian name alone reappears after the fall of the Roman dominion. Thus the accepted allotment of tribal territory is largely conjectural. North of the Forth all is conjecture pure and simple, so far as the location of the various Caledonian sub-clans is concerned. We only know that there were about a dozen of them; the Cornavii, Carini, Carnonacae, Cerones, Decantae, Epidii, Horestae, Lugi, Novantae, Smertae, Taexali, Vacomagi, and Vernicomes. Some of these may be alternative names.

G. 7.—The practical importance of the above-mentioned natural divisions of the island is testified to by the abiding character of the corresponding political divisions. The resemblance which at once strikes the eye between the map of Roman and Saxon Britain is no mere coincidence. Physical considerations [58] brought about the boundaries between the Roman "provinces" and the Anglo-Saxon principalities alike. Thus a glance will show that Britannia Prima, Britannia Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis correspond to the later Wessex, Wales, Northumbria, and Mercia (with its dependency East Anglia).[^[49]] And even the sub-divisions remained approximately the same. In Anglo-Saxon times, for example, the Midlands were still divided into the same four tribal territories; the North Mercians holding that of the British Cornavii, the South Mercians that of the Dobuni, the Middle Angles that of the Coritani, and the South Angles that of the Cateuchlani. So also the Icenian kingdom, with its old boundaries, became that of the East Angles, and the Trinobantian that of the East Saxons.

G. 8.—What the entire population of Britain may have numbered at the Roman Conquest is, again, purely a matter of guess-work. But it may well have been not very different in amount from what it was at the Norman Conquest, when the entries in Domesday roughly show that the whole of England (south of the Humber) was inhabited about as thickly as the Lake District at the present day, and contained some two million souls. The primary hills, and the secondary plateaux, where now we find the richest corn lands of [59] the whole country, were in pre-Roman times covered with virgin forest. But in the river valleys above the level of the floods were to be found stretches of good open plough land, and the chalk downs supplied excellent grazing. Where both were combined, as in the valleys of the Avon and Wily near Salisbury, and that of the Frome near Dorchester, we have the ideal site for a Celtic settlement. In such places we accordingly find the most conspicuous traces of the prehistoric Briton; the round barrows which mark the burial-places of his chiefs, and the vast earthworks with which he crowned the most defensible dun, or height, in his territory.

G. 9.—These fortified British duns are to be seen all over England. Sometimes they have become Roman or mediaeval towns, as at Old Sarum; sometimes they are still centres of population, as at London, Lincoln, and Exeter; and sometimes, as at Bath and Dorchester, they remain still as left by their original constructors. For they were designed to be usually untenanted; not places to dwell in, but camps of refuge, whither the neighbouring farmers and their cattle might flee when in danger from a hostile raid. The lack of water in many of them shows that they could never have been permanently occupied either in war or peace.[^[50]] Perhaps the best remaining [60] example is Maiden[^[51]] Castle, which dominates Dorchester, being at once the largest and the most untouched by later ages. Here three huge concentric ramparts, nearly three miles in circuit, gird in a space of about fifty acres on a gentle swell of the chalk ridge above the modern town by the river. A single tortuous entrance, defended by an outwork, gives access to the levelled interior. All, save the oaken palisades which once topped each round of the barrier, remains as it was when first constructed, looking down, now as then, on the spot where the population for whose benefit it was made dwelt in time of peace. For English Dorchester is the British town whose name the Romans, when they raised the square ramparts which still encircle it, transliterated into Durnovaria. Durnovaria in turn became, on Anglo-Saxon lips, Dornwara-ceaster, Dorn-ceaster, and finally Dorchester.

G. 10.—We have already, on physical grounds, assigned these Durotriges to the Damnonian Name. There were certainly fewer natural obstacles between them and the men of Devon to the west than between them and the Belgae to the northward. Caesar, however, distinctly states that the Belgic power extended to the coast line, so the Britons of the Frome valley may have been conquered by them. Or the Durotriges may be a Belgic tribe after all. For, as we have pointed out, our evidence is of the scantiest, and there is every reason to suppose that the era of the [61] Roman invasion was one of incessant political confusion in the land.

SECTION H.

Religious state of Britain—Illustrated by Hindooism—Totemists—Polytheists—Druids—Bards
—Seers—Druidic Deities—Mistletoe—Sacred herbs—"Ovum Anguinum"—Suppression of
Druidism—Druidism and Christianity.

H. 1.—The religious state of the country seems to have been in no less confusion than its political condition. The surviving "Ugrian" inhabitants appear to have sunk into mere totemists and fetish worshippers, like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism, with a Pantheon filled by every possible device, by the adoration of every kind of natural phenomenon, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds and clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees, by the creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses of war, commerce, healing, and all the congeries of mutually tolerant devotions which we see in the Brahmanism of to-day. And, as in Brahmanism, all these devotions were under the shadow of a sacerdotal and prophetic caste, wielding vast influence, and teaching, esoterically at least, a far more spiritual religion.

H. 2.—These were the Druids, whose practices and tenets fortunately excited such attention at Rome that we know more about them by far than we could collect concerning either Jews or Christians from classical authors. And though most of our authorities [62] refer to Druidism as practised in Gaul, yet we have the authority of Caesar for Britain being the special home and sanctuary of the faith, to which the Gallic Druids referred as the standard for their practices.[^[52]] We may safely, therefore, take the pictures given us by him and others, as supplying a representation of what took place in our land ere the Romans entered it.

H. 3.—The earliest testimony is that of Julius Caesar himself, in his well-known sketch of contemporary Druidism ('De Bello Gallico,' vi. 14-20). He tells us that the Druids were the ministers of religion, the sacrificial priesthood of the nation, the authorized expounders of the Divine will. All education and jurisprudence was in their hands, and their sentences of excommunication were universally enforced. The Gallic Druids were under the dominion of a Primate, who presided at the annual Chapter of the Order, and was chosen by it; a disputed election occasionally ending in an appeal to arms. As a rule, however, Druids were supposed not to shed blood, they were free from all obligation to military service, and from all taxation of every kind. These privileges enabled them to recruit their ranks—for they were not an hereditary caste—from the pick of the national youth, in spite of the severe discipline of the Druidical novitiate. So great was the mass of sacred literature required to be committed to memory that a training of twenty years was sometimes needed. All had to be learnt orally, for the matter was too sacred to be written down, though the Druids were well acquainted [63] with writing, and used the Greek alphabet,[^[53]] if not the Greek language,[^[54]] for secular purposes. Caesar's own view is that this refusal to allow the inditing of their sacred books was due to two causes: first, the fear lest the secrets of the Order should thus leak out, and, secondly, the dread lest reading should weaken memory, "as, in fact, it generally does." Even so, amongst the Brahmans there are, to this day, many who can not only repeat from end to end the gigantic mass of Vedic literature, but who know by heart also with absolute accuracy the huge and complicated works of the Sanscrit grammarians.

H. 4.—Caesar further tells us that the Druids taught the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and that their course of education included astronomy, geography, physics, and theology. The attributes of their chief God corresponded, in his view, with those of the Roman Mercury. Of the minor divinities, one, like Apollo, was the patron of healing; a second, like Minerva, presided over craft-work; a third, like Jupiter, was King of Heaven, and a fourth, like Mars, was the War-god.[^[55]] Their calendar was constructed on the principle that each night belongs to the day before it (not to that after it, as was the theory amongst the Mediterranean nations), and they reckoned all periods [64] of time by nights, not days, as we still do in the word "fortnight." For this practice they gave the mystical reason that the Celtic races were the Children of Darkness. At periods of national or private distress, human sacrifices were in vogue amongst them, sometimes on a vast scale. "They have images [simulacra] of huge size, whose limbs when enclosed [contexta] with wattles, they fill with living men. The wattles are fired and the men perish amid the hedge of flame [circumventi flamma exanimantur homines]." It is usually supposed that these simulacra were hollow idols of basket-work. But such would require to be constructed on an incredible scale for their limbs to be filled with men; and it is much more probable that they were spaces traced out upon the ground (like the Giant on the hill above Cerne Abbas in Dorset), and hedged in with the wattles to be fired.

H. 5.—From the historian Diodorus Siculus, whose life overlapped Caesar's, we learn that Druid was a native British name. "There are certain philosophers and theologians held in great honour whom they call Druids."[^[56]] Whether this designation is actually of Celtic derivation is, however, uncertain. Pliny thought it was from the Greek affected by the Druids and connected with their oak-tree worship. Professor Rhys mentions that the earliest use of the word in extant Welsh literature is in the Book of Taliesin, under the form Derwyddon,[^[57]] and that in Irish is to be found the cognate form Drui. But [65] these are as likely to be derived from the Greek δρουίδες [drouides], as this from them. Diodorus adds that they have mighty influence, and preside at all sacred rites, "as possessing special knowledge of the Gods, yea, and being of one speech ὁμοφώνων [homophônôn] with them." This points to some archaic or foreign language, possibly Greek, being used in the Druidical ritual. Their influence, he goes on to say, always makes for peace: "Oft-times, when hosts be arrayed, and either side charging the one against the other, yea, when swords are out and spears couched for the onset, will these men rush between and stay the warriors, charming them to rest κατεπᾴσαντες [katepasantes], like so many wild beasts."

H. 6.—With the Druids Diodorus associates two other religiously influential classes amongst the Britons, the Bards (βάρδοι) [bardoi] and the Seers (μάντεις) [manteis]. The former present the familiar features of the cosmopolitan minstrel. They sing to harps (ὀργάνων ταῖς λύραις ὁμοίων) [organôn tais lurais homoiôn], both fame and disfame. The latter seem to have corresponded with the witch-doctors of the Kaffir tribes, deriving auguries from the dying struggles of their victims (frequently human), just as the Basuto medicine-men tortured oxen to death to prognosticate the issue of the war between Great Britain and the Boers in South Africa. Strabo, in the next generation, also mentions together these three classes, Bards, Seers, ούάτεις [Ouateis] = Vates and Druids. The latter study natural science and ethics (πρὸς τῆ φυσιολογίᾳ καὶ τὴν ἠθικὴν φιλοσοφιαν) [pros tê phusiologia kai tên êthikên philosophian askousin]. They teach the immortality of the soul, and believe the [66] Universe to be eternal, "yet, at the last, fire and water shall prevail."

H. 7.—Pomponius Mela, who wrote shortly before the Claudian conquest of Britain, says that the Druids profess to know the shape and size of the world, the movements of the stars, and the will of the Gods. They teach many secrets in caves and woods, but only to the nobles of the land. Of this esoteric instruction one doctrine alone has been permitted to leak out to the common people—that of the immortality of the soul—and this only because that doctrine was calculated to make them the braver in battle. In accordance with it, food and the like was buried with the dead, for the use of the soul. Even a man's debts were supposed to pass with him to the shades.

H. 8.—Our picture of the Druids is completed by Pliny,[^[58]] writing shortly after the Claudian conquest. Approaching the subject as a naturalist he does not mention their psychological tenets, but gives various highly interesting pieces of information as to their superstitions with regard to natural objects, especially plants. "The Druids," he says, "(so they call their Magi) hold nothing so sacred as the mistletoe and that tree whereon it groweth, if only this be an oak. Oak-groves, indeed, they choose for their own sake, neither do they celebrate any sacred rite without oak-leaves, so that they appear to be called Druids from the Greek word for this tree. Whatsoever mistletoe, then, groweth on such a tree they hold it [67] for a heaven-sent sign, and count that tree as chosen by their God himself. Yet but very rarely is it so found, and, when found, is sought with no small observance; above all on the sixth day of the moon (which to this folk is the beginning of months and years alike),[^[59]] and after the thirtieth year of its age, because it is by then in full vigour of strength, nor has its half-tide yet come. Hailing it, in their own tongue, as 'Heal-all,' they make ready beneath the tree, with all due rites, feast and sacrifice. Then are brought up two bulls of spotless white, whose horns have never ere this known the yoke. The priest, in white vestments, climbeth the tree, and with a golden sickle reapeth the sacred bough, which is caught as it falls in a white robe [sagum]. Then, and not till then, slay they the victims, praying that their God will prosper this his gift to those on whom he hath bestowed the same."

H. 9.—A drink made from mistletoe, or possibly the mere insertion of the branch into drinking water, was held by the Druids, Pliny adds, as an antidote to every kind of poison. Other herbs had like remedial properties in their eyes. The fumes of burning "selago"[^[60]] were thus held good for affections of the eyesight, only, however, when the plant was plucked with [68] due ceremonies. The gatherer must be all in white, with bare and washen feet, and must hallow himself, ere starting on his quest, with a devotional partaking of bread and wine [sacro facto ... pane vinoque]. He must by no means cut the sacred stem with a knife, but pluck it, and that not with bare fingers, but through the folds of his tunic, his right hand being protruded for this purpose beneath his left, "in thievish wise" [velut a furante]. Another herb, "samolum," which grew in marshy places, was of avail in all diseases both of man and beast. It had to be gathered with the left hand, and fasting, nor might the gatherer on any account look back till he reached some runlet [canali] in which he crushed his prize and drank.

H. 10.—Pliny's picture has the interest of having been drawn almost at the final disappearance of Druidism from the Roman world. For some reason it was supposed to be, like Christianity, peculiarly opposed to the genius of Roman civilization, and never came to be numbered amongst the religiones licitae of the Empire. Augustus forbade the practice of it to Roman citizens,[^[61]] Tiberius wholly suppressed it in Gaul,[^[62]] and, in conquering Britain, Claudius crushed it with a hand of iron. Few pictures in the early history of Britain are more familiar than the final extirpation of the last of the Druids, when their sacred island of Mona (Anglesey) was stormed by the Roman legionaries, and priests and priestesses perished [69] en masse in the flames of their own altars.[^[63]] Their desperate resistance was doubtless due to the fact that Rome was the declared and mortal enemy of their faith. So baneful, indeed, did Druidism come to be considered, that to hold even with the least of its superstitions was treated at Rome as a capital offence. Pliny tells us of a Roman knight, of Gallic birth, who was put to death by Claudius for no other reason than that of being in possession of a certain stone called by the Druids a "snake's egg," and supposed to bring good luck in law-suits.[^[64]]

H. 11.—This stone Pliny himself had seen, and describes it (in his chapter on the use of eggs) as being like a medium-sized apple, having a cartilaginous shell covered with small processes like the discs on the arms of an octopus. This can scarcely have been, as most commentators suppose, the shell of an echinus (with which Pliny was well acquainted), even if fossil. His description rather seems to point to some fossil covered with ostrea sigillina, such as are common in British green-sands. He adds an account of the Druidical view of its production, how it is the solidified poison of a number of serpents who put their heads together to eject it, and how, even when set in gold, it will float, and that against a stream. This "egg," it will be seen, was from Gaul. The British variant of the superstition was that the snakes thus formed a ring of poison matter, larger or smaller according to the [70] number engaged, which solidified into a gem known as Glain naidr, "Adder's glass."[^[65]] The small rings of green or blue glass, too thick for wear, which are not uncommonly found in British burial-places, are supposed to represent this gem. So also, possibly, are the much larger rings of roughly-baked clay which occur throughout the Roman period. For superstitions die hard, and Gough assures us that even in 1789 such "adder-beads" or "snake-stones" were considered "lucky" in Wales and Cornwall, and were still ascribed to the same source as by the Druids of old.

H. 12.—After its suppression by Claudius, Druidism still lingered on in Britain beyond the Roman pale, and amid the outlaws of the Armorican forests in Gaul, but in a much lower form. The least worthy representatives of the Brahmanic caste in India are those found in the least civilized regions, whose tendency is to become little better than sorcerers.[^[66]] And in like manner it is as sorcerers that the later Druids of Scotland and Ireland meet us in their legendary encounters with St. Patrick and St. Columba. They are called "The School of Simon the Druid" (i.e. Simon Magus), and a 9th-century commentary designates Jannes and Jambres as "Druids." But the word did not wholly lose its higher associations. It [71] is applied to the Wise Men in an early Welsh hymn on the Epiphany; and in another, ascribed to Columba himself, the saint goes so far as to say, "Christ, the Son of God, is my Druid."[^[67]]

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[73]

CHAPTER II

THE JULIAN INVASION, B.C. 55, 54

SECTION A.

Caesar and Britain—Breakdown of Roman Republican institutions—Corruption abroad and at
home—Rise of Caesar—Conquest of Gaul.

A. 1.—If the connection of Britain with Rome is the pivot on which the whole history of our island turns, it is no less true that the first connection of Rome with Britain is the pivot whereon all Roman history depends. For its commencement marks the furthest point reached in his career of conquest by the man without whom Roman history must needs have come to a shameful and disastrous end—Julius Caesar.

A. 2.—The old Roman constitution and the old Roman character had alike proved wholly unequal to meet the strain thrown upon them by the acquisition of the world-wide empire which they had gained for their city. Under the stress of the long feud between its Patrician and Plebeian elements that constitution had developed into an instrument for the regulation of public affairs, admirably adapted for a City-state, where [74] each magistrate performs his office under his neighbour's eye and over his own constituents; constantly amenable both to public opinion and to the checks provided by law. But it never contemplated Pro-consuls bearing sway over the unenfranchised populations of distant Provinces, whence news filtered through to Rome but slowly, and where such legal checks as a man had to reckon with were in the hands of a Court far more ready to sympathize with the oppression of non-voters than to resent it.

A. 3.—And these officials had deteriorated from the old Roman rectitude, as the Spartan harmosts deteriorated under conditions exactly similar in the days of the Lacedaemonian supremacy over Hellas. And, in both cases, the whole national character was dragged down by the degradation of what we may call the Colonial executive. Like the Spartan, the Roman of "the brave days of old" was often stern, and even brutal, towards his enemies. But he was a devoted patriot, he was true to his plighted faith, and above all he was free from all taint of pecuniary corruption. The earlier history of both nations is full of legends illustrating these points, which, whether individually true or not, bear abundant testimony to the national ideal. But with irresponsible power, Roman and Spartan alike, while remaining as brutally indifferent as ever to the sufferings of others, lost all that was best in his own ethical equipment. Instead of patriotism we find unblushing self-interest as the motive of every action; in place of good faith, the most shameless dishonesty; and, for the old contempt [75] of ill-gotten gains, a corruption so fathomless and all-pervading as fairly to stagger us. The tale of the doings of Verres in a district so near Rome as Sicily shows us a depth of mire and degeneration to which no constitution could sink and live.

A. 4.—Nor could the Roman constitution survive it. From the Provinces the taint spread with fatal rapidity to the City itself. The thirst for lucre became the leading force in the State; for its sake the Classes more and more trampled down the Masses; and entrance to the Classes was a matter no longer of birth, but of money alone. And all history testifies that the State which becomes a plutocracy is doomed indeed. Of all possible forms of government—autocracy, oligarchy, democracy—that is the lowest, that most surely bears within itself the seeds of its own inevitable ruin.

A. 5.—So it was with the Roman Republic. As soon as this stage was reached it began to "stew in its own juice" with appalling rapidity. Reformers, like the Gracchi, were crushed; and the commonwealth went to pieces under the shocks and counter-shocks of demagogues like Clodius, conspirators like Catiline, and military adventurers such as Marius and Sulla—for whose statue the Senate could find no more constitutional title than "The Lucky General" [Sullae Imperatori Felici] Well-meaning individuals, such as Cicero and Pompey, were still to be found, and even came to the front, but they all alike proved unequal to the crisis; which, in fact, threw up one man, and one only, of force to become a real maker [76] of history—Caius Julius Caesar, the first Roman invader of Britain.

A. 6.—Caesar was at the time of this invasion (55 B.C.) some forty-five years old; but he had not long become a real power in the political arena. Sprung from the bluest blood of Rome—the Julian House tracing their origin to the mythical Iulus, son of Aeneas, and thus claiming descent from the Goddess Venus—we might have expected to find him enrolled amongst the aristocratic conservatives, the champions of the régime of Sulla. But though a mere boy at the date of the strife between the partisans of Sulla and Marius (B.C. 88-78), Caesar was already clear-sighted enough to perceive that in the "Classes" of that day there was no help for the tempest-tossed commonwealth. Accordingly he threw in his lot with the revolutionary Marian movement, broke off a wealthy matrimonial engagement arranged for him by his parents to become the son-in-law of Cinna, and in the very thick of the Sullan proscriptions, braved the Dictator by openly glorying in his connection with the defeated reformers. How he escaped with his life, even at the intercession, if it was indeed made, of the Vestals, is a mystery; for Sulla (who had little regard for religious, or any other, scruples) was deliberately extirpating every soul whom he thought dangerous to the plutocracy, and is said to have pronounced "that boy" as "more to be dreaded than many a Marius." He did, however, escape; but till the vanquished party recovered in some degree from this ruthless massacre of their leaders, he could take no prominent part in [77] politics. The minor offices of Quaestor, Aedile, and Praetor he filled with credit, and meanwhile seemed to be giving himself up to shine in Society, which was not, in Rome, then at its best; and his reputation for intrigue, his skill at the gaming-table, and his fashionable swagger were the envy of all the young bloods of the day.

A. 7.—The Catiline conspiracy (B.C. 63), and the irregular executions that followed its suppression, at length gave him his opportunity. While the Senate was hailing Cicero as "the Father of his country" for the stern promptitude which enabled him, as Consul, to say "Vixere" ["They have lived">[ in answer to the question as to the doom of the conspirators, Caesar had electrified the assembly by his denunciation of the view that, in whatsoever extremity, the blood of Roman citizens might be shed by a Roman Consul, secretly and without legal warrant. Henceforward he took his place as the special leader on whom popular feeling at Rome more and more pinned its hopes. As Pontifex Maximus he gained (B.C. 63) a shadowy but far from unreal religious influence; as Pro-praetor he solidified the Roman dominion in Spain (where he had already been Quaestor); and on his return (B.C. 60) reconciled Crassus, the head of the moneyed interest, with Pompey, the darling of the Army, and by their united influence was raised next year to the Consulship.

A. 8.—A Roman Consul invariably, after the expiration of his year of office, was sent as Pro-consul to take charge of one of the Provinces, practically having a good deal of personal say as to which should [78] be assigned to him. Caesar thus chose for his proconsular government the district of Gaul then under Roman dominion, i.e. the valley of the Po, and that of the Rhone. In making this choice Caesar was actuated by the fact that in Gaul he was more likely than anywhere else to come in for active service. Unquiet neighbours on the frontier, Germans and Helvetians, were threatening invasion, and would have to be repelled. And this would give the Pro-consul the chance of doing what Caesar specially desired, of raising and training an army which he might make as devoted to himself as were Pompey's veterans to their brilliant chieftain—the hero "as beautiful as he was brave, as good as he was beautiful." Without such a force Caesar foresaw that all his efforts to redress the abuses of the State would be in vain. As Consul he had carried certain small instalments of reform; but they had made him more hated than ever by the classes at whose corruption they were aimed, and might any day be overthrown. And neither Pompey nor Crassus were in any way to be depended upon for his plans in this direction.

A. 9.—Events proved kinder to him than he could have hoped. His ill-wishers at Rome actually aided his preparations for war; for Caesar had not yet gained any special military reputation, while the barbarians whom he was to meet had a very high one, and might reasonably be expected to destroy him. And the Helvetian peril proved of such magnitude that he had every excuse for making a much larger levy than there was any previous prospect [79] of his securing. On the surpassing genius with which he manipulated the weapon thus put into his hand there is no need to dwell. Suffice it to say that in spite of overwhelming superiority in numbers, courage yet more signal, a stronger individual physique, and arms as effective, his foes one after another vanished before him. Helvetians, Germans, Belgians, were not merely conquered, but literally annihilated, as often as they ventured to meet him, and in less than three years the whole of Gaul was at his feet.

SECTION B.

Sea-fight with Veneti and Britons—Pretexts for invading Britain—British dominion of Divitiacus
—Gallic tribes in Britain—Atrebates—Commius.

B. 1.—One of the last tribes to be subdued (in B.C. 56) was that which, as the chief seafaring race of Gaul, had the most intimate relations with Britain, the Veneti, or men of Vannes, who dwelt in what is now Brittany.[^[68]] These enterprising mariners had developed a form of vessel fitted to cope with the stormy Chops of the Channel on lines exactly opposite to those of the British "curraghs."[^[69]] Instead of being so light as to rise to every lift of the waves, and with frames so flexible as to bend rather than break under their every stress, the Venetian ships were of the most massive construction, built wholly of the stoutest oak planking, and with timbers upwards of a foot in [80] thickness. All were bolted together with iron pins "as thick as a man's thumb." Forecastle and poop were alike lofty, with a lower waist for the use of sweeps if needful. But this was only exceptional, sails being the usual motive power. And these were constructed chiefly with a view to strength. Instead of canvas, they were formed of untanned hides. And instead of hempen cables the Veneti were so far ahead of their time as to use iron chains with their anchors; an invention which perished with them, not to come in again till the 19th century. Their broad beam and shallow keel enabled these ships to lie more conveniently in the tidal inlets on either side of the Channel.[^[70]]

B. 2.—Thus equipped, the Veneti had tapped the tin trade at its source, and established emporia at Falmouth, Plymouth, and Exmouth; on the sites of which ancient ingots, Gallic coins of gold, and other relics of their period have lately been discovered. Thence they conveyed their freight to the Seine, the Loire, and even the Garonne. The great Damnonian clan, which held the whole of Devon and Cornwall, were in close alliance with them, and sent auxiliaries to aid in their final struggle against Caesar. Indeed they may possibly have drawn allies from a yet wider area, if, as Mr. Elton conjectures, the prehistoric boats which have at various times been found in the silt at Glasgow may be connected with their influence.[^[71]]

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B. 3.—Caesar describes his struggle with the Veneti and their British allies as one of the most arduous in his Gallic campaigns. The Roman war galleys depended largely upon ramming in their sea-fights, but the Venetian ships were so solidly built as to defy this method of attack. At the same time their lofty prows and sterns enabled them to deliver a plunging fire of missiles on the Roman decks, and even to command the wooden turrets which Caesar had added to his bulwarks. They invariably fought under sail, and manoeuvred so skilfully that boarding was impossible. In the end, after several unsuccessful skirmishes, Caesar armed his marines with long billhooks, instructing them to strike at the halyards of the Gallic vessels as they swept past. (These must have been fastened outboard.) The device succeeded. One after another, in a great battle off Quiberon, of which the Roman land force were spectators, the huge leathern mainsails dropped on to the decks, doubtless "covering the ship as with a pall," as in the like misfortune to the Elizabethan Revenge in her heroic defence against the Spanish fleet, and hopelessly crippling the vessel, whether for sailing or rowing. The Romans were at last able to board, and the whole Venetian fleet fell into their hands. The strongholds on the coast were now stormed, and the entire population either slaughtered or sold into slavery, as an object lesson to the rest of the confederacy of the fate in store for those who dared to stand out against the Genius of Rome.

B. 4.—Caesar had now got a very pretty excuse for [82] extending his operations to Britain, and, as his object was to pose at Rome as "a Maker of Empire," he eagerly grasped at the chance. Something of a handle, moreover, was afforded him by yet another connection between the two sides of the Channel. Many people were still alive who remembered the days when Divitiacus, King of the Suessiones (at Soissons), had been the great potentate of Northern Gaul. In Caesar's time this glory was of the past, and the Suessiones had sunk to a minor position amongst the Gallic clans. But within the last half-century the sway of their monarch had been acknowledged not only over great part of Gaul, but in Britain also. Caesar's words, indeed, would almost seem to point to the island as a whole having been in some sense under him: Etiam Britanniae imperium obtinuit.[^[72]]

B. 5.—And traces of his rule still existed in the occupation of British districts by colonists from two tribes, which, as his nearest neighbours, must certainly have formed part of any North Gallic confederacy under him—the Atrebates and the Parisii. The former had their continental seat in Picardy; the latter, as their name tells us, on the Seine. Their insular settlements were along the southern bank of the Thames and the northern bank of the Humber respectively. How far the two sets of Parisians held together politically does not appear; but the Atrebates, [83] whether in Britain or Gaul, acknowledged the claim of a single magnate, named Commius, to be their paramount Chieftain.[^[73]] In this capacity he had led his followers against Caesar in the great Belgic confederacy of B.C. 58, and on its collapse, instead of holding out to the last like the Nervii, had made a timely submission. If convenient, this submission might be represented as including that of his British dominions; especially as we gather that a contingent from over-sea may have actually fought under his banner against the Roman eagles. Nay, it is possible that the old claims of the ruler of Soissons over Britain may have been revived, now that that ruler was Julius Caesar. It is even conceivable that his complaint of British assistance having been given to the enemy "in all our Gallic wars" may point to his having heard some form of the legend, whose echoes we meet with in Welsh Triads, that the Gauls who sacked Rome three centuries earlier numbered Britons amongst their ranks.

SECTION C.

Defeat of Germans—Bridge over Rhine—Caesar's army—Dread of ocean—Fleet at Boulogne
—Commius sent to Britain—Channel crossed—Attempt on Dover—Landing at Deal—Legionary
sentiment—British army dispersed.

C. 1.—For making use of these pretexts, however, Caesar had to wait a while. It was needful to bring [84] home to both supporters and opponents his brilliant success by showing himself in Rome, during the idle season when his men were in winter quarters. And when he got back to his Province with the spring of A.D. 55, his first attention had to be given to the Rhine frontier, whence a formidable German invasion was threatening. With his usual skill and war-craft—which, on this occasion, in the eyes of his Roman ill-wishers, seemed indistinguishable from treachery—he annihilated the Teutonic horde which had dared to cross the river; and then, by a miracle of engineering skill, bridged the broad and rapid stream, and made such a demonstration in Germany itself as to check the national trek westward for half a millennium.

C. 2.—By this time, as this wonderful feat shows, the Army of Gaul had become one of those perfect instruments into which only truly great commanders can weld their forces. Like the Army of the Peninsula, in the words of Wellington, "it could go anywhere and do anything." The men who, when first enlisted, had trembled before the Gauls, and absolutely shed tears at the prospect of encountering Germans, now, under the magic of Caesar's genius, had learnt to dread nothing. Often surprised, always outnumbered, sometimes contending against tenfold odds, the legionaries never faltered. Each individual soldier seems to have learnt to do instinctively the right thing in every emergency, and every man worshipped his general. For every man could see that it was Caesar and Caesar alone to whom every victory was [85] due. The very training of the engineers, the very devices, such as that of the Rhine bridge, by which such mighty results were achieved, were all due to him. Never before had any Roman leader, not even Pompey "the Great," awakened such devotion amongst his followers.

C. 3.—Caesar therefore experienced no such difficulty as we shall find besetting the Roman commanders of the next century, in persuading his men to follow him "beyond the world,"[^[74]] and to dare the venture, hitherto unheard of in the annals of Rome, of crossing the ocean itself. We must remember that this crossing was looked upon by the Romans as something very different from the transits hither and thither upon the Mediterranean Sea with which they were familiar. The Ocean to them was an object of mysterious horror. Untold possibilities of destruction might lurk in its tides and billows. Whence those tides came and how far those billows rolled was known to no man. To dare its passage might well be to court Heaven knew what of supernatural vengeance.

C. 4.—But Caesar's men were ready to brave all things while he led them. So, after having despatched his German business, he determined to employ the short remainder of the summer in a reconnaissance en force across the Channel, with a view to subsequent [86] invasion of Britain. He had already made inquiries of all whom he could find connected with the Britanno-Gallic trade as to the size and military resources of the island. But they proved unwilling witnesses, and he could not even get out of them what they must perfectly well have known, the position of the best harbours on the southern shores.

C. 5.—His first act, therefore, was to send out a galley under Volusenus "to pry along the coast," and meanwhile to order the fleet which he had built against the Veneti to rendezvous at Boulogne. Besides these war-galleys (naves longae) he got together eighty transports, enough for two legions, besides eighteen more for the cavalry.[^[75]] These last were detained by a contrary wind at "a further harbour," eight miles distant—probably Ambleteuse at the mouth of the Canche.[^[76]]

C. 6.—All these preparations, though they seem to have been carried out with extreme celerity, lasted long enough to alarm the Britons. Several clans sent over envoys, to promise submission if only Caesar would refrain from invading the country. This, [87] however, did not suit Caesar's purpose. Such diplomatic advantages would be far less impressive in the eyes of the Roman "gallery" to which he was playing than his actual presence in Britain. So he merely told the envoys that it would be all the better for them if he found them in so excellent and submissive a frame of mind on his arrival at their shores, and sent them back, along with Commius, who was to bring in his own clan, the Atrebates, and as many more as he could influence. And the Britons on their part, though ready to make a nominal submission to "the mighty name of Rome," were resolved not to tolerate an actual invasion without a fight for it. In every clan the war party came to the front, all negotiations were abruptly broken off, Commius was thrown into chains, and a hastily-summoned levy lined the coast about Dover, where the enemy were expected to make their first attempt to land.

C. 7.—Dover, in fact, was the port that Caesar made for. It was, at this date, the obvious harbour for such a fleet as his. All along the coast of Kent the sea has, for many centuries, been constantly retreating. Partly by the silting-up of river-mouths, partly by the great drift of shingle from west to east which is so striking a feature of our whole southern shore, fresh land has everywhere been forming. Places like Rye and Winchelsea, which were well-known havens of the Cinque Ports even to late mediaeval times, are now far inland. And though Dover is still our great south-eastern harbour, this is due entirely to the artificial extensions which have replaced the naturally [88] enclosed tidal area for which Caesar made. There is abundant evidence that in his day the site of the present town was the bed of an estuary winding for a mile or more inland between steep chalk cliffs,[^[77]] not yet denuded into slopes, whence the beach on either side was absolutely commanded.

C. 8.—Caesar saw at a glance that a landing here was impossible to such a force as he had with him. He had sailed from Boulogne "in the third watch"—with the earliest dawn, that is to say—and by 10 a.m. his leading vessels, with himself on board, were close under Shakespeare's Cliff. There he saw the British army in position waiting for him, crowning the heights above the estuary, and ready to overwhelm his landing-parties with a plunging fire of missiles. He anchored for a space till the rest of his fleet came up, and meanwhile called a council of war of his leading officers to deliberate on the best way of proceeding in the difficulty. It was decided to make for the open shore to the northwards (perhaps for Richborough,[^[78]] the next secure roadstead of those days), and at three in the afternoon the trumpet sounded, the anchors were weighed, and the fleet coasted onwards with the flowing tide.[^[79]]

C. 9.—The British army also struck camp, and [89] kept pace by land with the invaders' progress. First came the cavalry and chariot-men, the mounted infantry of the day; then followed the main body, who in the British as in every army, ancient or modern, fought on foot. We can picture the scene, the bright harvest afternoon—(according to the calculations of Napoleon, in his 'Life of Caesar,' it was St. Bartholomew's Day)—the calm sea, the long Roman galleys with their rows of sweeps, the heavier and broader transports with their great mainsails rounding out to the gentle breeze, and on cliff and beach the British ranks in their waving tartans—each clan, probably, distinguished by its own pattern—the bright armour of the chieftains, the thick array of weapons, and in front the mounted contingent hurrying onwards to give the foe a warm greeting ere he could set foot on shore.

C. 10.—Thus did invaders and defenders move on, for some seven miles, passing, as Dio Cassius notes, beneath the lofty cliffs of the South Foreland,[^[80]] till these died down into the flat shore and open beach of Deal. By this time it must have been nearly five o'clock, and if Caesar was to land at all that day it must be done at once. Anchor was again cast; but so flat was the shore that the transports, which drew at least four feet of water, could not come within some distance of it. Between the legionaries and the land stretched yards of sea, shoulder-deep to begin with, and concealing who could say what treacherous [90] holes and quicksands beneath its surface. And their wading had to be done under heavy fire; for the British cavalry and chariots had already come up, and occupied every yard of the beach, greeting with a shower of missiles every motion of the Romans to disembark. This was more than even Caesar's soldiers were quite prepared to face. The men, small shame to them, hesitated, and did not spring overboard with the desired alacrity. Caesar's galleys, however, were of lighter draught, and with them he made a demonstration on the right flank (the latus apertum of ancient warfare, the shield being on every man's left arm) of the British; who, under a severe fire of slings, arrows, and catapults, drew back, though only a little, to take up a new formation, and their fire, in turn, was for the moment silenced. And that moment was seized for a gallant feat of arms which shows how every rank of Caesar's army was animated by Caesar's spirit.

C. II.—The ensign of every Roman legion was the Roman Eagle, perched upon the head of the standard-pole, and regarded with all, and more than all, the feeling which our own regiments have for their regimental colours. As with them, the staff which bore the Eagle of the Legion also bore inscriptions commemorating the honours and victories the legion had won, and to lose it to the foe was an even greater disgrace than with us. For a Roman legion was a much larger unit than a modern regiment, and corresponded rather to a Division; indeed, in the completeness of its separate organization, it might almost be called an [91] Army Corps. Six thousand was its normal force in infantry, and it had its own squadrons of cavalry attached, its own engineer corps, its own baggage train, and its own artillery of catapults and balistae.[^[81]] There was thus even more legionary feeling in the Roman army than there is regimental feeling in our own.

C. 12.—At this time, however, this feeling, so potent in its effects subsequently, was a new development. Caesar himself would seem to have been the first to see how great an incentive such divisional sentiment might prove, and to have done all he could to encourage it. He had singled out one particular legion, the Tenth, as his own special favourite, and made its soldiers feel themselves the objects of his special regard. And this it was which now saved the day for him. The colour-sergeant of that legion, seeing the momentary opening given by the flanking movement of the galleys, after a solemn prayer that this might be well for his legion, plunged into the sea, ensign in hand. "Over with you, comrades," he cried, "if you would not see your Eagle taken by the enemy." With a universal shout of "Never, never" the legion followed; the example spread from ship to ship, and the whole Roman army was splashing and struggling towards the shore of Britain.

C. 13.—At the same time this was no easy task. As every bather knows, it is not an absolutely straightforward matter for even an unencumbered man to [92] effect a landing upon a shingle beach, if ever so little swell is on. And the Roman soldier had to keep his footing, and use his arms moreover for fighting, with some half-hundredweight of accoutrements about him. To form rank was, of course, out of the question. The men forced their way onward, singly and in little groups, often having to stand back to back in rallying-squares, as soon as they came within hand-stroke of the enemy.[^[82]] And this was before they reached dry land. For the British cavalry and chariots dashed into the water to meet them, making full use of the advantage which horsemen have under such circumstances, able to ply the full swing of their arms unembarrassed by the waves, not lifted off their feet or rolled over by the swell, and delivering their blows from above on foes already in difficulties. And on their side, they copied the flanking movement of the Romans, and wheeled round a detachment to fire upon the latus apertum of such invaders as succeeded in reaching shallower water.

C. 14.—Thus the fight, in Caesar's words, was an exceedingly sharp one. It was not decided till he sent in the boats of his galleys, and any other light craft he had, to mingle with the combatants. These [93] could doubtless get right alongside the British chariots; and now the advantage of position came to be the other way. A troop of irregular horsemen up to their girths in water is no match for a boat's crew of disciplined infantry. Moreover the tide was flowing,[^[83]] and driving the Britons back moment by moment. For a while they yet resisted bravely, but discipline had the last word. Yard by yard the Romans won their way, till at length they set foot ashore, formed up on the beach in that open order[^[84]] which made the unique strength of the Legions, and delivered their irresistible charge. The Britons did not wait for the shock. Their infantry was, probably, already in retreat, covered by the cavalry and chariots, who now in their turn gave rein to their ponies and retired at a gallop.

C. 15.—Caesar saw them go, and bitterly felt that his luck had failed him. Had he but cavalry, this retreat might have been turned into a rout. But his eighteen transports had failed to arrive, and his drenched and exhausted infantry were in no case for effective pursuit of a foe so superior in mobility. Moreover the sun must have been now fast sinking, and all speed had to be made to get the camp fortified [94] before nightfall. But the Roman soldier was an adept at entrenching himself. A rampart was hastily thrown up, the galleys beached at the top of the tide and run up high and dry beyond the reach of the surf, the transports swung to their anchors where the ebb would not leave them grounded, the quarters of the various cohorts assigned them, the sentries and patrols duly set; and under the summer moon, these first of the Roman invaders lay down for their first night on British soil.

SECTION D.

Wreck of fleet—Fresh British levy—Fight in corn-field—British chariots—Attack on camp—Romans
driven into sea.

D. 1.—Meanwhile the defeated Britons had made off, probably to their camp above Dover, where their leaders' first act, on rallying, was to send their prisoner, Commius, under a flag of truce to Caesar, with a promise of unconditional submission. That his landing had been opposed, was, they declared, no fault of theirs; it was all the witlessness of their ignorant followers, who had insisted on fighting. Would he overlook it? Yes; Caesar was ready to show this clemency; but, after conduct so very like treachery, considering their embassy to him in Gaul, he must insist on hostages, and plenty of them. A few were accordingly sent in, and the rest promised in a few days, being the quota due from more distant clans. The British forces were disbanded; indeed, as it was harvest time, they could scarcely have been kept embodied anyhow; and a great gathering of chieftains [95] was held at which it was resolved that all alike should acknowledge the suzerainty of Rome.

D. 2.—This assembly seems to have been held on the morrow of the battle or the day after, so that it can only have been attended by the local Kentish chiefs, unless we are to suppose (as may well have been the case), that the Army of Dover comprised levies and captains from other parts of Britain. But whatever it was, before the resolution could be carried into effect an unlooked-for accident changed the whole situation.

D. 3.—On the fourth day after the Roman landing, the south-westerly wind which had carried Caesar across shifted a few points to the southward. The eighteen cavalry transports were thus enabled to leave Ambleteuse harbour, and were seen approaching before a gentle breeze. The wind, however, continued to back against the sun, and, as usual, to freshen in doing so. Thus, before they could make the land, it was blowing hard from the eastward, and there was nothing for them but to bear up. Some succeeded in getting back to the shelter of the Gallic shore, others scudded before the gale and got carried far to the west, probably rounding-to under the lee of Beachy Head, where they anchored. For this, however, there was far too much sea running. Wave after wave dashed over the bows, they were in imminent danger of swamping, and, when the tide turned at nightfall, they got under weigh and shaped the best course they could to the southern shore of the Channel.

D. 4.—And this same tide that thus carried away his [96] reinforcements all but wrecked Caesar's whole fleet at Deal. His mariners had strangely forgotten that with the full moon the spring tides would come on; a phenomenon which had been long ago remarked by Pytheas,[^[85]] and with which they themselves must have been perfectly familiar on the Gallic coast. And this tide was not only a spring, but was driven by a gale blowing straight on shore. Thus the sleeping soldiers were aroused by the spray dashing over them, and awoke to find the breakers pounding into their galleys on the beach; while, of the transports, some dragged their anchors and were driven on shore to become total wrecks, some cut their cables, and beat, as best they might, out to sea, and all, when the tide and wind alike went down, were found next morning in wretched plight. Not an anchor or cable, says Caesar, was left amongst them, so that it was impossible for them to keep their station off the shore by the camp.

D. 5.—The army, not unnaturally, was in dismay. They were merely on a reconnaissance, without any supply of provisions, without even their usual baggage; perhaps without tents, certainly without any means of repairing the damage to the fleet. Get back to Gaul for the winter they must under pain of starvation, and where were the ships to take them?

D. 6.—The Britons, on the other hand, felt that their foes were now delivered into their hands. Instead of the submission they were arranging, the Council of the Chiefs resolved to make the most of the [97] opportunity, and teach the world by a great example that Britain was not a safe place to invade. Nor need this cost many British lives. They had only to refuse the Romans food; what little could be got by foraging would soon be exhausted; then would come the winter, and the starving invaders would fall an easy prey. The annihilation of the entire expedition would damp Roman ambitions against Britain for many a long day. A solemn oath bound one and all to this plan, and every chief secretly began to levy his clansmen afresh.

D. 7.—Naturally, hostages ceased to be sent in; but it did not need this symptom to show Caesar in how tight a place he now was. His only chance was to strain every nerve to get his ships refitted; and by breaking up those most damaged, and ordering what materials were available from the Continent, he did in a week or two succeed in rendering some sixty out of his eighty vessels just seaworthy.

D. 8.—And while this work was in progress, another event showed how imperative was his need and how precarious his situation. He had, in fact, been guilty of a serious military blunder in going with a mere flying column into Britain as he had gone into Germany. The Channel was not the Rhine, and ships were exposed to risks from which his bridge had been entirely exempt. Nothing but a crushing defeat would cut him off from retiring by that; but the Ocean was not to be so bridled.

[98]

D. 9.—It was, as we have said, the season of harvest, and the corn was not yet cut, though the men of Kent were busily at work in the fields. With regard to the crops nearest the camp, the legionaries spared them the trouble of reaping, by commandeering the corn themselves, the area of their operations having, of course, to be continually extended. Harvesters numbered by the thousand make quick work; and in a day or two the whole district was cleared, either by Roman or Briton. Caesar's scouts could only bring him word of one unreaped field, bordered by thick woodland, a mile or two from the camp, and hidden from it by a low swell of the ground. Mr. Vine, in his able monograph 'Caesar in Kent,' thinks that the spot may still be identified, on the way between Deal and Dover, where, by this time, a considerable British force was once more gathered. So entirely was the whole country on the patriot side, that no suspicion of all this reached the Romans, and still less did they dream that the unreaped corn-field was an elaborate trap, and that the woodlands beside it were filled, or ready for filling, by masses of the enemy. The Seventh legion, which was that day on duty, sent out a strong fatigue party to seize the prize; who, on reaching the field, grounded shields and spears, took off, probably, their helmets and tunics, and set to work at cutting down the corn, presumably with their swords.

D. 10.—Not long afterwards the camp guard reported to Caesar that a strange cloud of dust was rising beyond the ridge over which the legion had disappeared. Seeing at once that something was amiss, he hastily bade the two cohorts (about a [99] thousand men) of the guard to set off with him instantly, while the other legion, the Tenth, was to relieve them, and follow with all the rest of their force as speedily as possible. Pushing on with all celerity, he soon could tell by the shouts of his soldiers and the yells of the enemy that his men were hard pressed; and, on crowning the ridge, saw the remnant of the legion huddled together in a half-armed mass, with the British chariots sweeping round them, each chariot-crew[^[86]] as it came up springing down to deliver a destructive volley of missiles, then on board and away to replenish their magazine and charge in once more.

D. 11.—Even at this moment Caesar found time to note and admire the supreme skill which the enemy showed in this, to him, novel mode of fighting. Their driving was like that of the best field artillery of our day; no ground could stop them; up and down slopes, between and over obstacles, they kept their horses absolutely in hand; and, out of sheer bravado, would now and again exhibit such feats of trick-driving as to run along the pole, and stand on the yoke, while at full speed. Such skill, as he truly observed, could not have been acquired without constant drill, both of men and horses; and his military genius grasped at once the immense advantages given by these tactics, combining "the mobility of cavalry with the stability of infantry."

D. 12.—We may notice that Caesar says not a word [100] of the scythe-blades with which popular imagination pictures the wheels of the British chariots to have been armed. Such devices were in use amongst the Persians, and figure at Cunaxa and Arbela. But there the chariots were themselves projectiles, as it were, to break the hostile ranks; and even for this purpose the scythes proved quite ineffective, while they must have made the whole equipment exceedingly unhandy. In the 'De Re Militari' (an illustrated treatise of the 5th century A.D. annexed to the 'Notitia') scythed chariots are shown. But the scythes always have chains attached, to pull them up out of the way in ordinary manoeuvres. The Britons of this date, whose chariots were only to bring their crews up to the foe and carry them off again, had, we may be sure, no such cumbrous and awkward arrangement.[^[87]]

D. 13.—On this scene of wild onset Caesar arrived in the nick of time [tempore opportunissimo]. The Seventh, surprised and demoralized, were on the point of breaking, when his appearance on the ridge caused the assailants to draw back. The Tenth came up and formed; their comrades, possibly regaining some of their arms, rallied behind them, and the Britons did not venture to press their advantage home. But neither did Caesar feel in any case to retaliate the attack [alienum esse tempus arbitratus], and led his troops back with all convenient speed. The Britons, we may well believe, represented the affair as a [101] glorious victory for the patriot arms.[^[88]] They employed several days of bad weather which followed in spreading the tidings, and calling on all lovers of freedom or of spoil to join in one great effort for crushing the presumptuous invader.

D. 14.—The news spread like wild-fire, and the Romans found themselves threatened in their very camp (whence they had taken care not to stir since their check) by a mighty host both of horse and footmen. Caesar was compelled to fight, the legions were drawn up with their backs to the rampart, that the hostile cavalry might not take them in rear, and, after a long hand-to-hand struggle, the Roman charge once more proved irresistible. The Britons turned their backs and fled; this time cut up, in their retreat, by a small body of thirty Gallic horsemen whom Commius had brought over as his escort, and who had shared his captivity and release. So weak a force could, of course, inflict no serious loss upon the enemy, but, before returning to the camp, they made a destructive raid through the neighbouring farms and villages, "wasting all with fire and sword far and wide."

D. 15.—That same day came fresh envoys to treat for peace. They were now required to furnish twice as many hostages as before; but Caesar could not wait to receive them. They must be sent after him to the Continent. His position had become utterly [102] untenable; the equinoctial gales might any day begin; and he was only too glad to find wind and weather serve that very night for his re-embarkation. Under cover of the darkness he huddled his troops on board; and next morning the triumphant Britons beheld the invaders' fleet far on their flight across the Narrow Seas.

SECTION E.

Caesar worsted—New fleet built—Caesar at Rome—Cicero—Expedition of 54 B.C.—Unopposed
Landing—Pro-Roman Britons—Trinobantes—Mandubratius—British army surprised—"Old
England's Hole."

E. 1.—Caesar too had, on his side, gained what he wanted, though at a risk quite disproportionate to the advantage. So much prestige had he lost that on his disembarkation his force was set upon by the very Gauls whom he had so signally beaten two years before. Their attack was crushed with little difficulty and great slaughter; but that it should have been made at all shows that he was supposed to be returning as a beaten man. However, he now knew enough about Britain and the Britons to estimate what force would be needful for a real invasion, and energetically set to work to prepare it. To make such an invasion, and to succeed in it, had now become absolutely necessary for his whole future. At any cost the events of the year 55 must be "wiped off the slate;" the more so as, out of all the British clans, two only sent in their promised hostages. Caesar's dispatches home, we may be sure, [103] were admirably written, and so represented matters as to gain him a supplicatio, or solemn thanksgiving, of twenty days from the Senate. But the unpleasant truth was sure to leak out unless it was overlaid by something better. It did indeed so far leak out that Lucan[^[89]] was able to write: Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis.

"He sought the Britons; then, in panic dread,
Turned his brave back, and from his victory fled."

E. 2.—Before setting off, therefore, for his usual winter visit to Rome, he set all his legionaries to work in their winter quarters, at building ships ready to carry out his plans next spring. He himself furnished the drawings, after a design of his own, like our own Alfred a thousand years later.[^[90]] They were to be of somewhat lower free-board than was customary, and of broader beam, for Caesar had noted that the choppy waves of the Channel had not the long run of Mediterranean or Atlantic rollers. All, moreover, were to be provided with sweeps; for he did not intend again to be at the mercy of the wind. And with such zeal and skill did the soldiers carry out his instructions, by aid of the material which he ordered from the dockyards of Spain, that before the winter was over they had constructed no fewer than six hundred of these new vessels, besides eighty fresh war-galleys.

E. 3.—Caesar meanwhile was also at his winter's [104] work amid the turmoil of Roman politics. His "westward ho!" movement was causing all the stir he hoped for. We can see in Cicero's correspondence with Atticus, with Trebatius, and with his own brother Quintus (who was attached in some capacity to Caesar's second expedition), how full Rome was of gossip and surmise as to the outcome of this daring adventure. "Take care," he says to Trebatius, "you who are always preaching caution; mind you don't get caught by the British chariot-men."[^[91]] "You will find, I hear, absolutely nothing in Britain—no gold, no silver. I advise you to capture a chariot and drive straight home. Anyhow get yourself into Caesar's good books."[^[92]]

E. 4.—To be in Caesar's good books was, in fact, Cicero's own great ambition at this time. Despite his constitutional zeal, he felt "the Dynasts," as he called the Triumvirate, the only really strong force in politics, and was ready to go to considerable lengths in courting their favour—Caesar's in particular. He not only withdrew all opposition to the additional five years of command in Gaul which the subservient Senate had unconstitutionally decreed to the "dynast," but induced his brother Quintus to volunteer for service in the coming invasion of Britain. Through Quintus he invited Caesar's criticisms on his own very poor verses, and wrote a letter, obviously meant to be shown, expressing boundless gratification at a favourable notice: "If he thinks well of my poetry, I shall know it is no mere one-horse concern, but a real [105] four-in-hand." "Caesar tells me he never read better Greek. But why does he write ῥαθυμώτερα [rhathumôtera] ['rather careless'] against one passage? He really does. Do find out why."

E. 5.—This gentle criticism seems to have somewhat damped Cicero's ardour for Caesar and his British glories. His every subsequent mention of the expedition is to belittle it. In the spring he had written to Trebatius: "So our dear Caesar really thinks well of you as a counsel. You will be glad indeed to have gone with him to Britain. There at least you will never meet your match."[^[93]] But in the summer it is: "I certainly don't blame you for showing yourself so little of a sight-seer [non nimis φιλοθέωρον [philotheôron] in this British matter."[^[94]] "I am truly glad you never went there. You have missed the trouble, and I the bore of listening to your tales about it all."[^[95]] To Atticus he writes: "We are all awaiting the issue of this British war. We hear the approaches [aditus] of the island are fortified with stupendous ramparts [mirificis molibus]. Anyhow we know that not one scruple [scrupulum] of money exists there, nor any other plunder except slaves—and none of them either literary or artistic."[^[96]] "I heard (on Oct. 24) from Caesar and from my brother Quintus that all is over in Britain. No booty.... They wrote on September 26, just embarking."

E. 6.—Both Caesar and Quintus seem to have been excellent correspondents, and between them let Cicero [106] hear from Britain almost every week during their stay in the island, the letters taking on an average about a month to reach him. He speaks of receiving on September 27 one written by Caesar on September 1; and on September 13 one from Quintus ("your fourth")[^[97]] written August 10. And apparently they were very good letters, for which Cicero was duly grateful. "What pleasant letters," he says to Quintus, "you do write.... I see you have an extraordinary turn for writing (ὑπόθεσιν) [hypothesin] scribendi egregiam. Tell me all about it, the places, the people, the customs, the clans, the fighting. What are they all like? And what is your general like?"[^[98]] "Give me Britain, that I may paint it in your colours with my own brush [penicillo]."[^[99]] This last sentence refers to a heroic poem on "The Glories of Caesar," which Cicero seems to have meditated but never brought into being. Nor do we know anything of the contents of his British correspondence, except that it contains some speculations about our tide-ways; for, in his 'De Natura Deorum,'[^[100]] Cicero pooh-poohs the idea that such natural phenomena argue the existence of a God: "Quid? Aestus maritimi ... Britannici ... sine Deo fieri nonne possunt?"

E. 7.—Neither can we say what he meant by the "stupendous ramparts" against Caesar's access to our island. The Dover cliffs have been suggested, and the Goodwin Sands; but it seems much more probable that the Britons were believed to have artificially [107] fortified the most accessible landing-places. Perhaps they may have actually done so, but if they did it was to no purpose; for this time Caesar disembarked his army quite unopposed. On his return from Rome he had bidden his newly-built fleet, along with what was left of the old one, rendezvous at Boulogne; whence, after long delay through a continuous north-westerly breeze [Corus], he was at length enabled to set sail with no fewer than eight hundred vessels. Never throughout history has so large a navy threatened our shores. The most numerous of the Danish expeditions contained less than four hundred ships, William the Conqueror's less than seven hundred;[^[101]] the Spanish Armada not two hundred.

E. 8.—Caesar was resolved this time to be in sufficient strength, and no longer despised his enemies. He brought with him five out of his eight legions, some thirty thousand infantry, that is, and two thousand horse. The rest remained under his most trusted lieutenant, Labienus, to police Gaul and keep open his communications with Rome. According to Polyaenus[^[102]] (A.D. 180), he even brought over with him a fighting elephant, to terrify the natives and their horses. There is nothing impossible about the story; though it is not likely Caesar would have forgotten to mention so striking a feature of his campaign. One particular animal we may be sure he had with him, his own famous charger with the cloven hoof, which had been bred in his own stud, and would suffer on its [108] back none but himself. On it, as the rumour went, it had been prophesied by the family seer that he should ever ride to victory.

E. 9.—It was, as the Emperor Napoleon has calculated, on July 21 that, at sun-set this mighty armament put out before a gentle south-west air, which died away at midnight, leaving them becalmed on a waveless sea. When morning dawned Britain lay on their left, and they were drifting up the straits with the tide. By and by it turned, oars were got out, and every vessel made for the spot which the events of the previous year had shown to be the best landing-place.[^[103]] Thanks to Caesar's foresight the transports as well as the galleys could now be thus propelled, and such was the ardour of the soldiers that both classes of ships kept pace with one another, in spite of their different build. The transports, of course, contained men enough to take turns at the sweeps, while the galley oarsmen could not be relieved. By noon they reached Britain, and found not a soul to resist their landing. There had been, as Caesar learnt from "prisoners," a large force gathered for that purpose, but the terrific multitude of his ships had proved quite too demoralizing, and the patriot army had retired to "higher ground," to which the prisoners were able to direct the invader.

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E. 10.—There is obviously something strange about this tale. There was no fighting, the shore was deserted, yet somehow prisoners were taken, and prisoners singularly well informed as to the defenders' strategy. The story reads very much as if these useful individuals were really deserters, or, as the Britons would call it, traitors. We know that in one British tribe, at least, there was a pro-Roman party. Not long before this there had fled to Caesar in Gaul, Mandubratius, the fugitive prince of the Trinobantes, who dwelt in Essex. His father Immanuentius had been slain in battle by Cassivellaunus, or Caswallon[^[104]] (the king of their westward neighbours the Cateuchlani), now the most powerful chieftain in Britain, and he himself driven into exile.

E. 11.—This episode seems to have formed part of a general native rising against the over-sea suzerainty of Divitiacus, which had brought Caswallon to the front as the national champion. It was Caswallon who was now in command against Caesar, and if, as is very probable, there was any Trinobantian contingent in his army, they may well have furnished these "prisoners." For Caesar had brought Mandubratius with him for the express purpose of influencing the Trinobantes, who were in fact thus induced in a few weeks to set an example of submission to Rome, as soon as their fear of Caswallon was removed. And [110] meanwhile nothing is more likely than that a certain number of ardent loyalists should leave the usurper's ranks and hasten to greet their hereditary sovereign, so soon as ever he landed. The later British accounts develop the transaction into an act of wholesale treachery; Mandubratius (whose name they discover to mean The Black Traitor) deserting, in the thick of a fight, to Caesar, at the head of twenty thousand clansmen,—an absurd exaggeration which may yet have the above-mentioned kernel of truth.

E. 12.—But whoever these "prisoners" were, their information was so important, and in Caesar's view so trustworthy, that he proceeded to act upon it that very night. Before even entrenching his camp, leaving only ten cohorts and three hundred horse to guard the vessels, most of which were at anchor on the smooth sea, he set off at the head of his army "in the third watch," and after a forced march of twelve miles, probably along the British trackway afterwards called Watling Street, found himself at daybreak in touch with the enemy. The British forces were stationed on a ridge of rising ground, at the foot of which flowed a small stream. Napoleon considers this stream to have been the Lesser Stour (now a paltry rivulet, dry in summer, but anciently much larger), and the hill to have been Barham Down, the camping-ground of so many armies throughout British history.

E. 13.—The battle began with a down-hill charge of the British cavalry and chariots against the Roman horse who were sent forward to seize the passage of [111] the stream. Beaten back they retreated to its banks, which were now, doubtless, lined by their infantry. And here the real struggle took place. The unhappy Britons, however, were hopelessly outclassed, and very probably outnumbered, by Caesar's twenty-four thousand legionaries and seventeen hundred horsemen. They gave way, some dispersing in confusion, but the best of their troops retiring in good order to a stronghold in the neighbouring woods, "well fortified both by nature and art," which was a legacy from some local quarrel. Now they had strengthened it with an abattis of felled trees, which was resolutely defended, while skirmishers in open order harassed the assailants from the neighbouring forest [rari propugnabant e silvis]. It was necessary for the Seventh legion to throw up trenches, and finally to form a "tortoise" with their shields, as in the assault on a regularly fortified town, before the position could be carried. Then, at last, the Britons were driven from the wood, and cut up in their flight over the open down beyond. The spot where they made this last stand is still, in local legend, associated with the vague memory of some patriot defeat, and known by the name of "Old England's Hole." Traces of the rampart, and of the assailants' trenches, are yet visible.[^[105]]

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SECTION F.

Fleet again wrecked—Britons rally under Caswallon—Battle of Barham Down—Britons fly to
London—Origin of London—Patriot army dispersed.

F. 1.—It was Caesar's intention to give the broken enemy no chance of rallying. In spite of the dire fatigue of his men (who had now been without sleep for two nights, and spent the two succeeding days in hard rowing and hard fighting), he sent forward the least exhausted to press the pursuit. But before the columns thus detailed had got out of sight a message from the camp at Richborough changed his purpose. The mishap of the previous year had been repeated. Once more the gentle breeze had changed to a gale, and the fleet which he had left so smoothly riding at anchor was lying battered and broken on the beach. His own presence was urgently needed on the scene of the misfortune, and it would have been madness to let the campaign go on without him. So the pursuers, horse and foot, were hastily recalled, and, doubtless, were glad enough to encamp, like their comrades, on the ground so lately won, where they took their well-earned repose.

F. 2.—But for Caesar there could be no rest. Without the loss of a moment he rode back to the landing-place, where he found the state of things fully as bad as had been reported to him. Forty ships were hopelessly shattered; but by dint of strenuous efforts he [113] succeeded in saving the rest. All were now drawn on shore, and tinkered up by artificers from the legions, while instructions were sent over to Labienus for the building of a fresh fleet in Gaul. The naval station, too, was this time thoroughly fortified.

F. 3.—Ten days sufficed for the work; but meanwhile much of the fruit of the previous victory had been lost. The Britons, finding the pursuit checked, and learning the reason, had rallied their scattered force; and when Caesar returned to his camp at Barham Down he found before it a larger patriot army than ever, with Caswallon (who is now named for the first time) at its head. This hero, who, as we have said, may have been brought to the front through the series of inter-tribal wars which had ruined the foreign supremacy of Divitiacus in Britain, was by this time acclaimed his successor in a dignity corresponding in some degree to the mythical Pendragonship of Welsh legend.[^[106]] His own immediate dominions included at least the future districts of South Anglia and Essex, and his banner was followed by something very like a national levy from the whole of Britain south of the Forth. When we read of the extraordinary solidarity which animated, over a much larger area, the equally separate clans of Gaul in their rising against the Roman yoke a year later, there is nothing incredible, or even improbable, in the Britons having developed something of a like solidarity in their resistance to its being laid upon their necks. Burmann's 'Anthology' contains an epigram which bears witness to the existence [114] amongst us even at that date of the sentiment, "Britons never shall be slaves." Our island is described as "Libera non hostem non passa Britannia regem."[^[107]]

F. 4.—Even on his march from the new naval camp to Barham Down Caesar was harassed by incessant attacks from flying parties of Caswallon's chariots and horsemen, who would sweep up, deliver their blow, and retire, only to take grim advantage of the slightest imprudence on the part of the Roman cavalry in pursuit. And when, with a perceptible number of casualties, the Down was reached, a stronger attack was delivered on the outposts set to guard the working parties who were entrenching the position, and the fighting became very sharp indeed. The outposts were driven in, even though reinforced by two cohorts—each the First of its Legion, and thus consisting of picked men, like the old Grenadier companies of our own regiments. Though these twelve hundred regulars, the very flower of the Roman army, awaited the attack in such a formation that the front cohort was closely supported by the rear, the Britons pushed their assault home, and had "the extreme audacity" to charge clean through the ranks of both, re-form behind, and charge back again, with great loss to the Romans (whose leader, Quintus Labienus Durus, the Tribune, or Divisional General in command of one of the legions, was slain), and but little [115] to themselves. Not till several more cohorts were dispatched to the rescue did they at length retire.

F. 5.—This brilliant little affair speaks well both for the discipline and the spirit of the patriot army; and Caesar ungrudgingly recognizes both. He points out how far superior the British warriors were to his own men, both in individual and tactical mobility. The legionaries dare not break their ranks to pursue, under pain of being cut off by their nimble enemies before they could re-form; and even the cavalry found it no safe matter to press British chariots too far or too closely. At any moment the crews might spring to earth, and the pursuing horsemen find themselves confronted, or even surrounded, by infantry in position. Moreover, the morale of the British army was so good that it could fight in quite small units, each of which, by the skilful dispositions of Caswallon, was within easy reach of one of his series of "stations" (i.e. block-houses) disposed along the line of march, where it could rest while the garrison turned out to take its turn in the combat.

F. 6.—Against such an enemy it was obviously Caesar's interest to bring on, as speedily as possible, a general action, in which he might deliver a crushing blow. And, happily for him, their success had rendered the Britons over-confident, so that they were even deluded enough to imagine that they could face the full Roman force in open field. Both sides, therefore, were eager to bring about the same result. Next morning the small British squads which were hovering around showed ostentatious reluctance to [116] come to close quarters, so as to draw the Romans out of their lines. Caesar gladly met their views, and sent forward all his cavalry and three legions, who, on their part, ostentatiously broke rank and began to forage. This was the opportunity the Britons wanted—and Caesar wanted also. From every side, in front, flank, and rear, the former "flew upon" their enemies, so suddenly and so vigorously that ere the legions, prepared as they were for the onset, could form, the very standards were all but taken.

F. 7.—But this time it was with legions and not with cohorts that the enemy had to do. Their first desperate charge spent itself before doing any serious damage to the masses of disciplined valour confronting them, and the Romans, once in formation, were able to deliver a counter-charge which proved quite irresistible. On every side the Britons broke and fled; the main stream of fugitives unwisely keeping together, so that the pursuers, cavalry and infantry alike, were able to press the pursuit vigorously. No chance was given for a rally; amid the confusion the chariot-crews could not even spring to earth as usual; and the slaughter was such as to daunt the stoutest patriot. The spell of Caswallon's luck was broken, and his auxiliaries from other clans with one accord deserted him and dispersed homewards. Never again throughout all history did the Britons gather a national levy against Rome.

F. 8.—This break-up of the patriot confederacy seems, however, to have been not merely the spontaneous disintegration of a routed army, but a deliberately [117] adopted resolution of the chiefs. Caesar speaks of "their counsel." And this brings us to an interesting consideration. Where did they take this counsel, and why did the fleeing hosts follow one line of flight? And how was the line of the Roman advance so accurately calculated upon by Caswallon that he was able to place his "stations" along it beforehand? The answer is that there was an obvious objective for which the Romans would be sure to make; indeed there was almost certainly an obvious track along which they would be sure to march. There is every reason to believe that most of the later Roman roads were originally British trackways, broad green ribands of turf winding through the land (such as the Icknield Way is still in many parts of its course), and following the lines most convenient for trade.

F. 9.—But, if this is so, then that convergence of these lines on London, which is as marked a feature of the map of Roman Britain as it is of our railway maps now, must have already been noticeable. And the only possible reason for this must be found in the fact that already London was a noted passage over the Thames. That an island in mid-stream was the original raison d'être of London Bridge is apparent from the mass of buildings which is shown in every ancient picture of that structure clustering between the two central spans. This island must have been a very striking feature in primaeval days, coming, as it did, miles below any other eyot on the river, and must always have suggested and furnished a comparatively [118] easy crossing-place. Possibly even a bridge of some sort may have existed in 54 B.C.; anyhow this crossing would have been alike the objective of the invading, and the point d'appui of the defending army. And the line both of the Roman advance and of the British retreat would be along the track afterwards known as the Kentish Watling Street. For here again the late British legends which tell us of councils of war held in London against Caesar, and fatal resolutions adopted there, with every detail of proposer and discussion, are probably founded, with gross exaggeration, upon a real kernel of historic truth. It was actually on London that the Britons retired, and from London that the gathering of the clans broke up, each to its own.

SECTION G.

Passage of Thames—Submission of clans—Storm of Verulam—Last patriot effort in Kent
—Submission of Caswallon—Romans leave Britain—"Caesar Divus."

G. 1.—Caswallon, however, and his immediate realm still remained to be dealt with. His first act, on resolving upon continued resistance, would of course be to make the passage of the London tide-way impossible for the Roman army; and Caesar, like William the Conqueror after him, had to search up-stream for a crossing-place. He did not, however, like William, have to make his way so far as Wallingford before finding one. Deserters told him of a ford, though a difficult one, practicable for infantry, not many miles [119] distant. The traditional spot, near Walton-on-Thames, anciently called Coway Stakes, may very probably be the real place. Both name and stakes, however, have probably, in spite of the guesses of antiquaries, no connection with Caesar and his passage, but more prosaically indicate that here was a passage for cattle (Coway = Cow Way) marked out by crossing stakes.

G. 2.—The forces of Caswallon were accompanying the Roman march on the northern bank of the stream, and when Caesar came to the ford he found them already in position [instructas] to dispute his passage behind a chevaux de frise of sharpened stakes, more of which, he was told, were concealed by the water. If the Britons had shown their wonted resolution this position must have been impregnable. But Caswallon's men were disheartened and shaken by the slaughter on the Kentish Downs and the desertion of their allies. Caesar rightly calculated that a bold demonstration would complete their demoralization. So it proved. The sight of the Roman cavalry plunging into the steam, and the legionaries eagerly pressing on neck-deep in water, proved altogether too much for their nerves. With one accord, and without a blow, they broke and fled.[^[108]]

G. 3.—Nor did Caswallon think it wise again to gather them. He had no further hope of facing Caesar in pitched battle, and contented himself with keeping in touch with the enemy with a flying column of chariot-men some two thousand strong. His practice [120] was to keep his men a little off the road—there was still, be it noted, a road along which the Romans were marching—and drive off the flocks and herds into the woods before the Roman advance. He made no attempt to attack the legions, but if any foragers were bold enough to follow up the booty thus reft from them, he was upon them in a moment. Such serious loss was thus inflicted that Caesar had to forbid any such excursions, and to content himself with laying waste the fields and farms in immediate proximity to his route.

G. 4.—He was now in Caswallon's own country, and his presence there encouraged the Trinobantian loyalists openly to throw off allegiance to their conqueror and raise Mandubratius to his father's throne under the protection of Rome; sending to Caesar at the same time provisions for his men, and forty hostages whom he demanded of them. Caesar in return gave strict orders to his soldiers against plundering or raiding in their territory. This mingled firmness and clemency made so favourable an impression that the submission of the Trinobantes was followed by that of various adjoining clans, small and great, from the Iceni of East Anglia to the little riverside septs of the Bibroci and Ancalites, whose names may or may not be echoed in the modern Bray and Henley. The Cassi (of Cassiobury) not only submitted, but guided the Romans to Caswallon's own neighbouring stronghold in the forests near St. Alban's. It was found to be a position of considerable natural strength (probably on the site of the later Verulam), [121] and well fortified; but all the heart was out of the Cateuchlanians. When the assailing columns approached to storm the place on two sides at once, they hesitated, broke, and flung themselves over the ramparts on the other sides in headlong flight. Caesar, however, was able to head them, and his troops killed and captured large numbers, besides getting possession of all the flocks and herds, which, as usual, had been gathered for refuge within the stockade.

G. 5.—Caswallon himself, however, escaped, and now made one last bid for victory. So great was still the influence of his prestige that, broken as he was, he was able to prevail upon the clans of Kent to make a sudden and desperate onset upon the Naval Station at Richborough. All four of the chieftains beneath whose sway the county was divided (Cingetorix, Canilius, Taximagulus, and Segonax) rose with one accord at his summons. The attack, however, proved a mere flash in the pan. Even before it was delivered, the garrison sallied out vigorously, captured one of the British leaders, Lugotorix, slaughtered the assailants wholesale, and crushed the whole movement without the loss of a man. This final defeat of his last hopes broke even Caswallon's sturdy heart. His followers slain, his lands wasted, his allies in revolt, he bowed to the inevitable. Even now, however, he did not surrender unconditionally, but besought Caesar's protégé, the Atrebatian chieftain Commius, to negotiate terms with the conqueror.

G. 6.—To Caesar this was no small relief. The autumn was coming on, and Caswallon's guerrilla [122] warfare might easily eat up all the remainder of the summer, when he must needs be left alone, conquered or unconquered, that the Roman army might get back to its winter quarters on the Continent; more especially as ominous signs in Gaul already predicted the fearful tempest of revolt which, that winter, was to burst. Easy conditions were therefore imposed. Caswallon pledged himself, as Lord Paramount, that Britain should pay an annual tribute to the Roman treasury, and, as Chief of the Cateuchlani, that he would leave Mandubratius on the Trinobantian throne. Hostages were given, and the Roman forces returned with all convenient speed to the coast; this time, presumably, crossing the Thames in the regular way at London.